Eventually the line at the drive-up thinned and the morning light changed from pale to something warmer, the sun finally deciding to commit. My cup had gone cold without me noticing. I set it down. “I really should go,” I said.
Lucy looked at me. “It’s Saturday.”
“I know.”
“The shop doesn’t open for another hour.”
“I know that too.” I slid off the stool and reached for my jacket, shaking the last of the morning stiffness from my shoulders. “I want to get everything sorted before it gets busy.And I still have boxes to go through and unpack from the delivery the other day. The heavy boxes, I’ve been dreading dealing with.”
“You have a list,” Paige said. “You always have a list.”
“I have several lists,” I said. “That’s not the point.”
Piper smiled and pulled her cup closer. “Let her go,” she said to Lucy, without looking up. “She’s happiest when she has something to do.”
“That’s not—” I stopped. “That’s fair,” I admitted.
Lucy shook her head but reached out and squeezed my hand once before I could step away, quick and firm. “You did something great last night,” she said. “We’re proud of you. I want you to know we mean that.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly. “Thank you,” I said.
She released my hand and waved me off with the easy authority of someone who knew when a moment had landed and didn’t need to press it further. “Go organize something.”
I laughed—a real one, short and surprised—and leaned in to press a quick kiss to her cheek, then Piper’s and Paige’s. Eliza caught my eye from behind the counter as I turned to go, and gave me a wave.
I lifted my hand to her and headed back across the lot. My boots crunched against the gravel as I reached the car, and I stood there for a second with my hand on the door, looking back at the Coffee Cabin—my sisters still at the counter, Lucy already saying something that made Piper laugh, Eliza visible through the window, moving through the familiar rhythm of her morning.
I got in, started the engine, and pulled out onto the road.
The drive back to Pine & Pages took four minutes. I parked in the small lot behind the shop, gathered my bag, and unlocked the back door.
The shop was quiet, cool, and still smelled faintly of lavender. I stood in the doorway for a moment and breathed it in. Then I hung up my jacket, turned on the lights, and got to work.
Chapter 14
Cara
I’d been at it since just after opening—books spread across the counter, preorders and inventory sheets in neat stacks. Everything was good. I just hadn’t quite come down from last night yet, still running a little too warm, too aware of every sound from the street, every creak of the floorboards. I looked up when a throat cleared. Jasper stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.
My heart did something immediate and inconvenient.
I hadn’t expected him. I’d spent the morning moving through the familiar rhythms of a delivery day, boxes and inventory and the box cutter and the satisfying click of things being sorted, and I’d been doing a reasonable job of keeping last night in its own separate compartment where I could examine it later at a safe distance. And then he walked through my door, and the compartment opened, and everything I’d been carefully not thinking about was suddenly right there in the room with me. The conversation in the reading nook. The letter.It was real.Words I’d apparently been waiting twelve years to hear, and now he was standing in my doorway with his hands in his pockets, looking at me like he was checking something he’d been thinking about since he left, and I had absolutely no idea what any of itmeant in practical terms. Whether last night had been two old friends finally clearing the air, or whether it was something else entirely.
I didn’t know. And not knowing was doing things to my nervous system that I wasn’t prepared for.
He held the door a second longer than necessary, then let it swing shut behind him. “I wanted to check on you,” he said.
I set the box cutter down. My hands were not entirely steady, and I was glad to have somewhere to put them. Something about the plain way he spoke—no excuse layered on top, no,I was in the neighborhood—caught me somewhere I hadn’t been braced for. He’d woken up this morning and thought about whether I was okay, and then came to find out. That was the whole story. I was aware, not for the first time and with no sign of it getting easier, of how different it felt to be on the receiving end of attention that didn’t require anything back.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Really.”
He nodded and didn’t push. Most people nodded and then asked the follow-up anyway, the one that meant they hadn’t believed the first answer. He just took in what I said and believed me, and I stood there behind my counter, aware of my own heartbeat in a way that was not useful.
His gaze moved over the counter, the boxes stacked along the wall, the general organized chaos of a delivery morning. “Looks like you’ve got a project.”
“I’m still working on my last shipment,” I said. “I got through most of it, but there are a few boxes in the back I didn’t finish. Some of them are heavier than I wanted to deal with.” I paused, which was its own admission. “I was going to get to them this morning.”
He looked at the door to the back hallway, noticing the big boxes to the side. “I can help with those.”
