She'd destroyed me at cornhole. She'd called me out with a timing that could've gone on stage. And then she'd told me no with a smile and a joke and pointed me toward the women who wanted what she didn't.
I'd been turned down before. Wait — no, I hadn't. This was new territory. And the real kicker was, I think I liked it.
I walked over. Not with the grin this time. Not with the lean or the tip of the hat or any of my normal moves. I just stood at the fence beside her — not too close, enough space for a whole other person between us — and watched the kids run.
"You again," she said. But there was no edge in it. Just the easy tone of a woman who'd had a good time at a party and wasn't braced for anything.
"Me again. Last time, I promise." I looked at the sky, not at her. "You were straight with me. I'm going to be straight back. I heard you. No dinner. No dating. Shop's closed."
"Glad we're clear." She smiled.
"Crystal. But here's the thing — I just moved back too. Been on the road twelve years, and I don't know how to be still yet. And you're new in town with a kid and no backup." I turned to look at her. "So what I'm offering isn't a date. I'm offering a friend. Someone who makes a decent grilled cheese and can carry heavy things and keeps a pinky promise. That's it. No angle." I paused. "And I can happily present a reference from Savannah, if that helps. She's known me forever. She'll vouch for me. Probably."
That got a smile out of her — a small one, but real. Like she couldn't quite help it. She looked at me, those sharp eyes moving across my face like she was reading a contract, searching for the clause that would cost her. Slow. Careful. Taking her time because she'd learned the hard way that kindness sometimes came with conditions.
I held still. Didn't smile, didn't charm. Just stood at a fence in the dark and meant what I said.
"Friends," Callie repeated. Testing the word.
"Friends."
She studied me for another long moment. Then something shifted — not a wall coming down, but a door being considered.
She nodded once, decided. "Okay, Clay. Friends."
Then Maisie came sprinting back — ringlets flying, pink boots kicking up dust — and grabbed mine and Callie's hand and announced to every human being within a thirty-foot radius:
"Clay is going to teach me to ride and we're going to be best friends and he's coming to our house for dinner, right, Clay?"
I looked at Callie over Maisie's head.
She closed her eyes. The look on her face said,This child will be the death of me.
I grinned. Couldn't help it.
"Right, sweetheart," I said.
And Callie Monroe — the woman who'd just told me with a laugh and a steady hand and the kindest rejection of my life that her shop was permanently closed — looked at her daughter and then at me and shook her head.
Then she tipped her head back and laughed.
Not a guarded laugh. Not a polite one. A free, full, helpless laugh that came from somewhere real — the sound of a woman standing in the middle of a good night and letting herself feel it. A mother watching her daughter be fearless. A woman lit up from the inside in a way that made me want to stand exactly this close to her for as long as she'd let me.
It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
That was the moment I knew I was done.
I just didn't know yet how completely.
Chapter 2
Callie
I was early. I was always early.
Not because I was eager — although I was, quietly, in a way I didn't let myself examine too closely. I was early because Preston used to punish lateness with silence. Three minutes late to dinner, and he wouldn't speak to me for two hours. Five minutes late to a gala and the drive home would be a masterclass in controlled disappointment — the sigh, the head shake, the "I just don't understand why it's so hard for you to be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there, Callie." He never yelled. Yelling would have been easier. Yelling was obvious. What Preston did was quieter. He made you feel like the problem was yours — your weakness, your failure. And after six years, I believed him.
So I was early. Fifteen minutes early. Always. The habit was scar tissue, and scar tissue didn’t know the wound was healed.
