“Okay…”
By the time we looped back toward Pine & Pages, the walk had turned into a slow-moving procession. People stopped to chat, laugh at the pugs, and comment on the tracksuit. Grandma moved through it all like she was born for it—waving, calling out greetings, asking after grandkids, reminding someone about lunch.
“Mabel!” “Looking fabulous!” “Tell that husband of yours I said hi!”
She waved back at everyone like a queen on parade. Grandma Mabel knew everyone in Honeybrook Hollow—and if they were new to town, she would know them by the end of the week.
When we finally reached the shop, she squeezed my arm gently. “Your grandpa is going to love Mystery Night,” she said, softer now. “He’ll pretend he’s calm about it, but he’s already bragging to anyone who’ll listen.”
That thought settled somewhere deep in my chest and stayed there.
Grandma Mabel finally headed off down the sidewalk, pugs in tow and still waving at passersby. I watched until she disappeared around the corner, then turned back to Pine & Pages, feeling lighter than I had all morning.
Inside, I hung my jacket on the hook and went behind the counter. It was nearly time to open. There were things to do. I walked the floor once more, gave the clue envelopes one final check, and let myself feel something closer to ready.
I got down to business as the first customer of the day stepped inside. I straightened, smiled, and went to meet them.
By late morning, the shop had gone quiet. The early crowd had drifted elsewhere, off to cafés and errands andconversations that didn’t involve books. Pine & Pages settled into the soft lull I knew well, the one where time stretched, and the space settled into the quiet magic I loved.
I restocked a display, wiped down the counter, and paused at the front window.
That was when I saw him.
Jasper jogged past the shop, headphones in, dark hair damp with sweat. His t-shirt clung to him in a way that made my breath catch before I could stop it, outlining broad shoulders and arms built in a way that felt earned. A slim brace wrapped his knee, visible where his shorts rode up as he moved—a detail that complicated the moment even as it registered in my brain. Heat moved through me, quick and unwelcome, settling low in my stomach before I could talk myself out of it.
He glanced up—just a flick of attention—and our eyes met through the glass. He lifted a hand. I smiled back before I could think better of it, my pulse kicking up hard and fast.
He kept running, disappearing down the block as if the moment had been nothing at all.
For me, it hadn’t been nothing.
I stayed by the window a little too long, my reflection faint in the glass. Jasper Dean was history. The complicated kind, the kind I had once convinced myself meant more than it actually did, only to slowly talk myself out of that version of events over the years. What I’d thought I saw between us in high school had probably never been real.
Back then, I’d been sure of it. The way he lingered after tutoring sessions, the way conversations sometimes stretched past the hour, the way he looked at me like he was actually listening. I had filled in the gaps with meaning that wasn’t really there, the way you do when you’re fifteen and don’t yet know the difference between someone being present and someone actually feeling something.
When he left for the Marines, there hadn’t been anything that followed to prove me right. Just distance, and eventually a letter I kept longer than I should have, not because it confirmed anything romantic, but because I needed closure.
Eventually, I told myself the simplest version of it. I had misread him. It had been one-sided, just like a lot of teenage things are.
That was the version I lived with now. The one that made it possible to see him around Honeybrook Hollow without feeling like everything in me had toppled off balance.
I offered polite nods, brief smiles, and distance that matched the story I told myself, that it had only ever been me who felt anything at all.
Until he smiled at me like that again, and my body reacted before I could remind myself there had never actually been anything there to begin with.
I had a shop to run and a Mystery Night to pull off and a life that didn’t need an old crush stirred back to life just because someone looked good jogging past my window.
But the warmth followed me back to the counter anyway, quiet and persistent, like a question I didn’t have an answer for yet—and I wasn’t sure I was ready to find one.
Chapter 6
Jasper
Islowed as the gravel crunched under my shoes, the cabin coming into view through the trees. My lungs burned pleasantly, sweat cooling along my spine as I reached the door and bent forward, hands braced on my knees, letting my breath settle.
I’d felt it before I’d fully processed it—the weight of being watched by someone whom I’d been keeping in the back of my mind for years. When I’d looked up and found her there, something had kicked over in my chest, the recognition of feelings I’d been telling myself couldn’t possibly be real. She’d smiled before she caught herself, and that half-second—the smile before the self-correction—had stayed with me the entire last mile back.
That was the part I kept returning to as I straightened up and pushed through the cabin door. Not that she’d been watching, but that she’d smiled without meaning to. That it existed—beautiful and open—before she’d had a chance to decide whether to show it to me. I knew the difference between a polite smile and one that got away from a person, and Cara Darlington’s had gotten away from her.
