“I made a choice that…cost me more than I expected,” she said. “A lot more.”
Connor waited. No pushing, no follow-up questions, but she could feel him listening intently. It reminded her of Dad and, boy, she liked that.
“I’m not ready to talk about the details,” she continued. “But coming here, burying myself in Lakeside, working eighteen-hour days? It’s definitely helping me…rebuild.”
“Spoken like an architect.”
She smiled. “Yep.”
“One who is about ten times smarter and more capable than Vance the Vile,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Kiddo.”
She laughed, so grateful he went light when it could have gone dark. “That’sMissKiddo to you.”
He leaned in, serious again. “Well, Meredith, we’re rebuilding together.” He lifted his wounded wrist. “To the reconstruction and healing.”
She touched her glass to his. “I’ll drink to that.”
When they finally got up to leave, the string lights were the only illumination on the deck, and the harbor was dark except for the dim glow of a few boats.
They walked to the parking lot, side by side, and there was a moment when the conversation paused. Not awkwardly. Just a beat too long, a look that held a fraction of a second more than it should have.
Connor broke it first. “Well, we made it through Monday. Who knows what the rest of the week holds, huh?”
She looked up at him and felt warmth rise in her face and was grateful for the dark. “Less of Vance and more of…”
“Good conversation,” he finished for her. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
He tapped a playlist—no surprise, they both loved Noah Kahan—which filled the car with acoustic guitar and haunting lyrics. When they reached the Summer House, she hustled toopen her door, not wanting to sit in the dark space alone with “Orange Juice” playing.
“See you tomorrow, Connor!”
He just smiled, a million unspoken words in his eyes, and she gave a weird little wave and walked to the house with a powerful realization she could no longer ignore.
This wasn’t about his hair or his hands or the way he looked in the late afternoon light.
Shelikedhim. Actually, genuinely, in a way that went past the surface and into the part of her that she’d locked down after Trevor. The part that wanted to trust someone again and was terrified of being wrong.
The last time she’d liked someone, he’d had a secret wife in Chicago, and she’d ended up in an emergency room.
But Connor McCarthy was not Trevor Whitlock. He was a dedicated, funny, intelligent dental student who’d heal for a semester, go back to Gainesville, and…be a distant acquaintance, since his father and her aunt were clearly in love.
Still, she liked him and couldn’t deny that that felt good.
Eli’s eyes opened at two in the morning and it wasn’t because an Acacia client up in Atlanta had called at ten last night about a failed structural inspection on the St. Germaine project.
He lay in the dark of his bedroom, staring at the ceiling fan making its slow rotation, and let the truth settle over him like a weight. Kate had been pulling away.
Not dramatically. Not in any way he could point to and say,There, that’s the problem. She still smiled at him across the kitchen. She still leaned into him on the deck when they watched the sunset. She’d kissed him goodnight tonight—briefly, on the cheek, the way you’d kiss someone you were fond of rather than someone you were in love with.
It had been days—maybe a week—since they’d had a substantive conversation. Somehow, she’d been too busy—Tessa’s wedding plans, Emma’s healing, Vivien wanted to have lunch, and, of course, the constant pull of Atlas. Kate was dodging something—filling every hour with tasks so there was no room left for the thing she didn’t want to face.
Kate, he knew, was avoiding him.
Andthat’swhat woke him up at two AM.
If he was being honest—and he knew no other way—he’d talked with Emma more than Kate these past weeks. At least, the conversations they’d shared had more weight.
Emma had found him on the deck after dinner one night and chatted with him over her Pop-Tarts and soda while he made eggs a few mornings later. He recognized a seeker when he saw one—a person kind of shyly interested and curious about the Lord.
