I lifted the envelopes. My hands were steady, which surprised me. “Final round,” I said again, stepping forward, and the room came back into focus around me—the candles, the faces, the warm layered smell of lavender and tea and old paper. Jasper stayed where he was as I moved away. I didn’t look back, but I felt him watching until I was safely across the room.
I distributed the last clues and let the game pull everything back into place, table by table. The final round hit differently than the others—people were invested now, leaning over the pages with real urgency, piecing together everything they’d gathered through the evening into something that finally had a shape. I moved between the tables and gave them time with it, watching the pieces fall into place for people in real time, watching the moment it clicked land on their faces.
I stepped to the front of the room. “And that,” I said, setting the final page down on the nearest table with a small, deliberate gesture, “is how it happened.”
A beat of silence.
Then the room came apart.
Gasps. Groans. A burst of laughter that started at Nancy’s table and spread. Someone said “no” with genuine feeling. Someone else said “obviously” in a tone that suggested it had been anything but.
Nancy pointed across the table at Hannah. “I told you it wasn’t the sister.”
“You absolutely did not,” Hannah said.
“I implied it strongly.”
“You argued for the sister for like, fifteen minutes.”
“I was keeping you off the trail.” Nancy straightened with dignity. “It was a strategy.”
“It was not a strategy,” Jasper said and slid back into his seat with a laugh.
The room dissolved. People pushed back from their tables and turned to each other, comparing notes, laughing over what they’d missed. I moved between them, answering the questions that had been building all evening, watching the shop do exactly what I’d wanted it to do—hold people, keep them there, give them something to stay for.
I drifted back toward the counter eventually, the adrenaline of the evening beginning to settle into something I didn’t have words for yet. I ran water over the first stack of glasses, the warmth welcomed against my hands.
Lucy appeared at my elbow a few minutes later, sliding in close while Jasper was still across the room with Nancy and Hannah, who were apparently still debating the outcome at volume.
“So,” Lucy said, her voice low, “we’re going to talk about this.”
“Later,” I said, not looking up from the glasses.
“About him specifically.” She leaned her hip against the counter and studied the side of my face with the focused patience of someone who had all the time in the world. “Jasper didn’t hesitate, Cara. Not for a second. He’d been watching the whole time—I saw him. Every time Eric got near you, Jasper was tracking it. That’s why I didn’t step in. He had it handled before I even moved.”
I rinsed another glass and set it aside. “I noticed.”
“I thought you might have.” She was quiet for a moment, and I could feel her deciding something. “I like him. I’m just going to say that clearly, for the record, so you can’t claim later that I never said it.”
“I heard you.”
“Good.” She made a small sound and looked back across the room, and I kept my eyes on the glasses and tried not to think too hard about the fact that she was right.
Jasper came back a few minutes later, moving around the small cluster of people near the display and stopping at the end of the counter. He looked at the stack of glasses, then at me. “I can help with that.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“I know.” He was already reaching for a stack of used cups from the nearest table, setting them carefully beside the sink. “I want to.”
Lucy’s brows lifted approximately one centimeter. She said nothing, which, for her, was its own form of commentary.
Jasper didn’t make a thing of it. He just settled in beside me behind the counter, moving with the easy practicality of someone who had decided to be useful and wasn’t interested in credit for it. He gently stacked the teacups, wiped down the stretch of counter where someone had spilled, and straightened the empty trays. The candles were still lit along the shelves, and in their light the shop looked the way I’d imagined it would at the end of an evening like this—warm and a little worn and full of the quiet afterglow of people who’d been happy in it. I’d built this place into something, and standing here in it with the night winding down and Jasper beside me felt like more than I knew what to do with.
Lucy watched him for a long moment. Then she looked at me with an expression so loaded with unspoken things that I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck and had to look very deliberately at the glass in my hands.
“Well,” she said lightly, pushing off the counter, “I should probably?—”
“Stay,” I said, immediately and without meaning to.
