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I fought back a smile. I wanted to jump into his arms and tell him of course there was no harm in just having lunch, but I could feel the glare from the table he’d been sitting at. I sucked a breath through my teeth and chanced another glance at the girl. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said with a soft laugh. “I told you, there’s nothing there for me. And if choosing between people I see all the time, and the girl I love . . . Low, you know I’m going to choose you. Besides, I wasn’t even paying attention to them; I was thinking about you.”
“Sure you were, charmer,” I said teasingly.
Knox looked surprised that I didn’t believe him, but the look was quickly replaced by determination as he pulled out his phone. “Let me show you what I was doing just before you walked in.” Angling the phone toward me so I could see what had been pulled up, he brought the phone back to life.
I tilted my head and waited for him to explain what I was looking at as I glanced over what looked like a confir
mation to an order. My gasp came less than a second before his answer.
“Setting up a delivery.”
I had no doubt my smile was embarrassingly big by the time we were facing each other again. “My flowers are coming soon?”
Knox shrugged. “I don’t know, are they?”
I rolled my eyes, but my smile hadn’t dimmed. “Okay, I’ll stay if you answer something for me.” One dark eyebrow rose as he waited. “How much do you love me?”
That perfect, crooked smile flashed at me before he dropped his forehead to mine and whispered, “To the stars, Harlow. Always to the stars.”
Present Day—Richland
“OKAY,” I FOUND myself saying. “But it can’t be long.”
“That’s fine, I’ll take whatever time you can give me.” The hand holding my arm slid to the small of my back, and Knox turned toward the little sandwich place near the coffee shop.
“I know you got married, but why didn’t you finish school?” Knox asked after we’d gotten our food and were sitting at a table in the corner of the little bakery. “I was under the impression that graduating was important to your parents.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist and stared at the table for a few minutes as I tried to figure out what I could say. I knew what he was hinting at with those words . . . I knew only because my dad had told me years ago. But to let on that I knew would lead this conversation in a place it couldn’t go. So what could I say about why I didn’t finish school? Collin graduated when I finished my sophomore year and refused to let me continue going to school wasn’t exactly something I could just tell people.
“Did you have a baby?” Knox asked when I took too long responding.
“No!” My eyes widened, and I looked up at him in horror before I was able to conceal it. “I just—there wasn’t a point. H-he was two years ahead of me, so when he graduated and had a job lined up back here, there was no reason for him to stay there, or for us to be separated since we were getting married a few months later.”
Knox sat there studying me, his dark eyes narrowed with worry.
This was a bad idea; this was such a bad idea.
He finally smirked. “You always did like older guys.” His dark eyes flickered down to the food for a second. “Why don’t you eat.” It didn’t come across as a suggestion.
I picked off the edge of my sandwich and played with the bread as I prompted him to talk. “Tell me about you. Not finishing school and getting married is really the only thing that’s been going on with me since we last talked.”
I didn’t miss the way his eyes didn’t leave where my fingers were playing with the bread, or the way his face hardened when I turned everything around onto him. “Uh, I finished school. Went through fire academy, work for the department in Richland now.”
“Really?” I asked, a genuine smile crossing my face for the first time in years.
“Yeah. Was doing that the last year of school, so I’ve been there awhile now. I actually just finished a shift and was grabbing coffee before I headed back to Thatch.”
“That’s great, Knox!”
He flashed a smile at me, and nodded at my sandwich. “Actually eat it, Harlow.”
I took a bite for his benefit, and chewed slowly. “What else?”
“Keep eating,” he said softly. The words sounding like a cross between a plea and command. “I’ll talk if you eat.”
Panic gripped at my chest when I understood the worry in his eyes. He noticed the difference in my weight. It was different for my family, watching it gradually come off. Knox was seeing it all at once, and if the way his eyes kept anxiously darting over my body was anything to judge by, it was obvious that I looked drastically different. Trying to act like I didn’t have a clue about what he was seeing, or that I knew what he was doing, I rolled my eyes and took another large bite.
