She studied my face for a long moment. Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it, because something in her expression shifted—not a smile, but the tension around her eyes eased just slightly.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m buying my own breakfast.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
She started walking toward The Pines, and I fell into step beside her. I didn’t put my hand on her back. I didn’t touch her at all. But I shortened my stride to match hers, and when she glanced up at me with a look that was half suspicion and half something warmer, I held her gaze and didn’t look away.
She looked away first.
That was fine. I wasn’t in a hurry.
3
BRENNA
Bev Holloway had the kind of face that made you want to sit down and stay awhile. Warm smile lines, short curly hair, a coffee cup in her hand that I was starting to suspect was permanently attached.
She’d given me her spare room without hesitation—made up the bed, left a towel on the pillow, set a glass of water on the nightstand, and closed the door without a single question. I’d lain there in the dark, in a stranger’s guest room, wearing borrowed pajamas, and cried so quietly I was sure she hadn’t heard me. But the breakfast she’d set out the next morning—eggs, toast, coffee, and a small jar of homemade jam with a note that said “eat”—made me wonder if she had.
Now she took one look at me walking in with Gabriel and seated us in a booth by the window without a word. The look she gave him over my head said plenty.
I didn’t know what, specifically, that it said. I barely knew these people. That was the thing about Whispering Pines—everyone knew everyone, and I’d been here a year and still felt like I was on the outside of a conversation that had starteddecades before I arrived. Although Bev was making that harder to believe.
“The usual?” Bev asked Gabriel, already writing something on her pad.
“Yeah. And whatever she wants.”
Bev turned to me. “What can I get you, honey?”
I looked at the menu tucked behind the napkin dispenser but didn’t pick it up. My stomach was tight. I hadn’t been hungry since yesterday morning, and the smell of smoke was still living in my hair, my clothes, and the inside of my nose.
But Gabriel had walked me down here like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Besides, something about the way Bev was looking at me—patient, unhurried, like she’d wait all day if she had to—made me not want to disappoint either of them.
“Scrambled eggs,” I said. “And toast. And coffee. A lot of coffee.”
Bev nodded like I’d made exactly the right decision and disappeared behind the counter.
Gabriel sat across from me, his forearms on the table, hands loosely clasped. He took up a lot of space in the booth—not because he was trying to, but because he was built like someone who couldn’t help it. Broad shoulders, thick arms, and the kind of frame that made a standard restaurant booth look undersized.
He’d changed since yesterday. Clean shirt, no turnout gear, no soot. But the faint burn scar on his left forearm was visible below the pushed-up sleeve, and my eyes lingered on it a beat too long before I looked away.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked. “The firefighter thing.”
“Fourteen years. Captain for the last eight.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Depends on what you’re comparing it to.”
I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. Gabriel Hall was not a man who filled silence for the sake of filling it. I was learning that about him as I sat there.
“I’ve had my bakery for one year,” I said. “That doesn’t feel like a long time. It feels like I just figured out where everything goes and now half of it’s gone.”
He held my gaze. “The front of the shop is intact. Display case, tables, counter—all of that’s salvageable. The kitchen is the rebuild.”
“The kitchen is the bakery.”
He nodded. He didn’t argue, didn’t try to spin it. I appreciated that more than he probably knew. Everyone else would tell me it could be worse, it could be rebuilt, I should be grateful I was alive. All of which was true. None of which helped.
