“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
My tote strap slipped, and my wallet fell out of my hand and skittered across the floor. Levi crouched, easily grabbed it, and handed it back. His eyes met mine—soft and sympathetic. He knew I was struggling. The whole town did, and it was humiliating.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
I tucked my hair behind my ear, wishing I could vanish into the crowd. Levi lingered, his gaze softer than I remembered, and I realized he hadn’t changed much at all. Something in the way he looked at me made me ache for the comfort of old times, even as I tried to keep my guard up.
“You’re welcome.”
When it was my turn, I ordered a black coffee. Violet rang me up with a too-bright smile, like she wanted to say something but was holding herself back. The card reader spun. And spun. The little screen blinked, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.
I thought I’d had enough money.
I tried again. The same blink. The same nothing. Behind me, I was acutely aware of the line, of the knitters pausing mid-stitch, of the held breath of a room full of people being very polite about looking elsewhere. Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I dug into my bag for my wallet, fingers clumsy, and started counting quarters onto the counter with the focused desperation of someone defusing a bomb. One. Two. The coins felt slippery. My hands weren’t quite steady. I’d have to transfer the last of my savings now for sure. I pressed that thought flat and kept counting.
“It’s on me,” Levi said, voice quiet and steady at my shoulder.
“No,” I said, and it came out sharper than I intended. “I’ve got it.”
He backed off, palms up. Letting me have my way, or letting me pretend I did. I piled the last of the change onto the counter. Violet took it with cheerful grace, and I exhaled slowly through my nose, willing my heartbeat back to something reasonable. Fine. I was fine. I just needed to get my coffee, find a corner, and sit down and breathe for five minutes without anyone looking at me.
I stepped aside, stumbled over my own feet, and poured hot coffee directly down my chest.
For a moment, I just stood there. The heat soaked through my shirt, the cup half-crushed in my hand, and something behind my eyes went dangerously bright and sharp. I was not going to cry in Violet’s Café. I was absolutely not going to cryover spilled coffee in front of half of Sweetbriar with Levi Barrett standing three feet away. I blinked hard. Set my jaw. Breathed.
“Hey.” Levi’s hands were already at my elbows, steadying, sure. “Come on.”
He guided me toward the bathroom, his big hands warm through my sleeves. The café hummed around us, the knitters and the toddlers and the whole cozy impossible morning carrying on without pause, and all I registered was the pull of him beside me and the absolute unfairness of my entire freaking life.
“You’re okay.” His hands were already at my elbows, steadying and sure. He steered me sideways toward the napkin station, grabbed a stack without hesitation, and before I’d fully processed what was happening, he was dabbing carefully at the coffee soaking through my shirt.
For approximately two seconds, I let him. Then I registered where his hands were. And how close he was standing. And the fact that I could feel the warmth of him through the thin, coffee-soaked fabric, and my brain, already frayed at every edge, chose that precise moment to notice all of it at once.
“I’ve got it,” I said, and took the napkins from him perhaps more quickly than was strictly graceful.
He stepped back immediately, and something flickered across his face—sheepish, almost boyish, as if he’d only just caught up to what he’d been doing. He cleared his throat. I pressed the napkins to my shirt and didn’t look at him, and the space between us hummed with so many unsaid words.
“Bathroom,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Good call.”
I walked away with as much dignity as a woman soaked in coffee and unraveling at the seams could reasonably manage, which was not very much.
By the time I returned, damp and blotchy and having given myself a stern talking-to in the mirror, he was waiting by the counter. Something in the set of his shoulders told me he’d been standing exactly like that the whole time—patient, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be.
“I’m getting you another cup,” he said. “It’s on me. No arguing.”
His gaze lingered, searching, moving over my face with a quiet attention that made it hard to breathe. Like he was looking for something he half-expected to find. And suddenly I was thirteen again, under a wide starry Sweetbriar sky, the night air warm and full of crickets, whisperingcross your heart,as we promised to always be best friends. His face tipped up toward mine in the dark, so certain, so easy.
Then high school had started, and my best friend had slowly become somebody else. But so had I, if I were being honest.
“Hey. You don’t have to do this,” I protested. “I can live without caffeine. I mean, probably. In theory.”
“Well, we’re not testing your theory today. Please?”
My other lifelong bestie, Harper, barreled in then, saving me from drowning in my own thoughts. She was breathless, cheeks pink, her daughter Bella trailing behind her, her sparkly unicorn backpack bouncing against her shoulders. They were obviously on the way to school drop-off.
“There you are!” Harper froze when she saw Levi and grinned slowly. “Well, hello, firefighter.”
