“No pressure,” Harper said, voice still rough.
“Some pressure,” Bella added, and followed Harper out the door.
The shift continued in fragments. A campground woman bought me a foil-wrapped banana bread and quietly told me, “I heard it. I wanted you to know I appreciate you,” then left. A Gazette reporter called; Elizabeth took the message like my unofficial gatekeeper. Matt texted me.
Matt: Attorney General inquiry is in full gear now. It’s working. You should be proud of yourself. I am.
I read it twice.
My brother—terse by nature, who had said “I’m proud” maybe twice in our lives—had typed it deliberately.
I showed Elizabeth.
She read and set the phone down. “Print it. Frame it. That Matt is a tough nut to crack, and believe me, I’ve been trying.”
Uncle Harold had cared.
Aunt Aggie cared.
Matt cared.
Elizabeth had hugged me like a malfunctioning robot and meant every awkward second of it.
Harper had hugged me like she’d never let go.
Something old and knotted in my chest began to loosen. This time, I let it. I was ready for it to be gone.
At the end of my shift, the door chimed. It was Levi. Jacket on, unhurried, eyes finding me like always across the length of the store, and even after everything—after last night, after this morning, after all of it—the warmth in his face still caught me off guard. Probably always would.
“Hey. How was your shift?”
“A lot,” I said. “Good, I think. Hard to tell yet. People kept mentioning it all day, and I kept not knowing what to do with my face.” I set the apron on the counter and pushed my hair back.
“Matt texted me,” he said, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “He’s proud of you. He said, and I quote, ‘Tell her I meant it and make sure she believes it.’”
I looked down at the counter.
“Becca,” he said, low and patient, in the tone that meant he was not going to let me deflect this.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying to let it in. I really am.”
Elizabeth appeared from the back before I could say anything else, already untying her own apron with the energy of someone wrapping up a successful operation. She looked at Levi, then atme, then back at Levi with the expression of a woman who had opinions and wasn’t keeping them to herself.
“She did good today,” she said to him, like I wasn’t standing right there. “Real good. People were coming in just to talk to her.” Then, to me, pointing two fingers in my direction. “You’re relieved. Aunt Donna’s on her way. Go. Celebrate. And let him take you somewhere nice for once.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Levi said, and the smile he turned on Elizabeth was the easy, unhurried one that did things to my concentration.
“You. Damn, girl.” She pointed at me one more time for emphasis and disappeared into the back.
Outside, the evening air met us clean and cold, carrying the sharp green smell of pine and the faint mineral bite of the river. Levi fell into step beside me, close enough that our arms brushed with every other step.
“I thought we could eat outside,” he said. “There was a fire out in Willowmist Falls this morning, and I’ve had smoke in my lungs all day. I could use the air, and I figured you could too after being inside.”
His hand found mine somewhere along the first block, fingers lacing through without comment, like it was just the obvious thing to do. The last of the daylight was sitting low and gold over the tree line, and by the time the food trucks came into view, their lights were already on, warm and amber against the coming dusk. I waited until we’d joined the short line at the taco truck before I turned to look at him properly.
There was something around his eyes that I’d learned to read—a tiredness that wasn’t quite physical, a day that had asked something of him. I reached up without thinking and cupped his cheek in my palm.
“Tell me about the fire,” I murmured. “Actually, tell me. Not the version where you say it went fine, so I don’t worry about you.”
