Anold flingwas the phrase my brain supplied, efficient and cruel. The kind who had a set of keys once, and the kind of muscle memory that made hugging someone at a bar feel like skipping to the part where you remember a joke together. The kind who asked about him like she was ordering muscle memory with her Americano.
Riley cleared her throat softly. When I looked up, she wore an expression I recognized from women who poured drinks for a living and watched hearts try to be useful anyway. “You okay?”
“Yep,” I said too quickly. “Fine.”
“Uh-huh.”
I set my mug down carefully. The ceramic made a louder sound than it should have, like a punctuation mark I didn’t mean to add.
“How long has she been gone?” I asked, careful to make it sound like trivia.
“Couple years,” Riley said. “In and out before that. She… and Drew…” She trailed off, making a waffle hand that meantcomplicated and not mine to narrate.“They were friendly. They’ll probably stay friendly.”
I nodded, staring at the little crescents my fingernails had made in the cardboard sleeve. “Right.”
Riley leaned on the bar. “Melanie.”
I looked up.
“She’s not you,” she said simply.
It was meant to help, but it didn’t because the problem wasn’t Sawyer being Sawyer; it was me being me. The me who could sprint back to Seattle at the first sign of discomfort, who could decide the brave thing was whatever required the least vulnerability and the most spreadsheets.
I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “I know.”
“Lydia’s due here in five,” Riley said, mercifully changing lanes. “Want a gingerbread refill?”
“I think I need one,” I said.
While she pulled another shot, I went back to the window and watched the snow fall over a town that had been making a case for itself in me since the moment I arrived.
A blonde woman turned the corner up the block, her breath fogging the air, her step sure on the icy sidewalk. Maybe friendly meant nothing. Maybe it meant history that didn’t change just because I’d decided to show up for once.
The bell over the door chimed again, and a flurry of cold spiraled in. I didn’t turn. I wasn’t ready to see who the wind might bring next, or what part of myself would rise to meet it—coward or contender.
I wrapped my fingers tighter around the mug until the heat bit the skin and told myself to breathe, to wait, to be the version of Melanie who didn’t bolt at the first shadow of competition.
Outside, the snow kept falling, indifferent, pretty, and relentless. Inside, the gingerbread clung to the air and sugar-dusted my tongue, and I let myself admit one thing, if only for the length of a latte.
I wanted to stay.
I wanted to choose this.
Even if it meant running into Drew’s old ghosts.
Chapter Thirty
Drew
Dread hits funny.
It doesn’t announce itself like panic does; it slides in under the door, cold and certain, and waits for you to notice.
I noticed the second the bell over The Rusty Stag’s door chimed, and Janey Sawyer walked in.
She wore a neat camel coat, blonde hair pulled back tidily as a decision, snow still freckling the shoulders. Downtown was all white and glitter this morning, wreaths fat as hippos, and she looked like a catalog model set against it: composed, lowercase smiling, the kind of pretty that photographs well and complicates memory.
Around town, folks called her Sawyer—real estate brand, rental listings, that whole persona with the crisp fonts. But to me, there’d always been a different name attached to her—Janey. Which is probably why my gut reacted like I was stepping back onto black ice.
