“I’ll manage,” he said.
I smiled at the cabinet and reached for the tin. I made us both a strong cup with a little honey and handed his over without ceremony. No negotiation, no complaint about preferring coffee—he just took it, said thank you, and drank it like he’d meant to have tea all along. I found this unreasonably pleasing.
We ended up on the two stools behind the counter, angled toward each other, the shop quiet around us in the mid-morning lull. The light through the front window had gone gold and warm, falling across the display table and the books still waiting to be shelved.
We got back to work after that. Something had softened between us—the air easier, the quiet between tasks more comfortable than it had any right to be. I sat on the floor to sort the last of the paperbacks into genre piles, legs stretched out in front of me, books fanned out in careful rows across the hardwood. It was a task that needed attention but not thought, which was either going to help me or make things worse. Jasper carried the last of the hardcovers to the front display, and when he came back and found me on the floor surrounded by paperbacks, he looked at the situation for a moment, then wandered over to the reading nook and lowered himself onto the arm of the big chair, one foot on the floor, and just watched me.
I let it go for about ninety seconds.
Then I looked up. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m supervising.” He grinned at me without a trace of apology.
“That’s not a job.”
“It is today.” He tilted his head slightly. “You’re better at this than I’d be. Figured I’d stay out of your way.”
“That’s the whole reason?” I arched an eyebrow because something in his expression suggested it wasn’t.
He looked at me for a moment. “I like watching you work,” he said. “This is your shop, your job—but it’s also justyou. The way you move through it, the way you know where everything belongs or where it should be.” He paused. “It feels like I’m getting to know you.”
The heat climbed my neck so fast I didn’t have time to brace for it. I looked back down at the books and made a very deliberate show of examining a paperback that did not require examination. My ears were red. I could feel it.
“Jasper,” I said to the paperback.
“Cara,” he said, from the armchair.
“You can’t just say things like that while I’m trying to work.”
I heard the quiet sound of him trying not to smile, like he was almost laughing but hiding it behind an exhale of breath. “You’re doing a great job,” he said.
I set the book down with great purpose into the correct pile and reached for another one. The silence stretched out, warm and comfortable, and I turned the question I’d been holding over quietly since he walked through the door.
“Do you miss it?” I asked. I kept my eyes on the books, giving him room. “The Marines. Your life before you came home.”
He was quiet for a moment—not avoiding it, just taking it seriously. “Parts of it,” he said. “The structure. Knowing exactly what was expected and being able to deliver it. It’s clarifying, living like that. Everything stripped back to what matters. You don’t have to wonder what you’re supposed to be doing.”
I sorted a paperback into the romance pile. “And the other parts?”
“The other parts I don’t miss.” Simply, without elaborating, and I didn’t push. “Being away got harder as it went on. I didn’t notice it at first—you get used to the rhythm of it, the going and the coming back. But somewhere along the way, the coming back started meaning more than the going.” He shifted on the arm of the chair. “Honeybrook Hollow kept pulling at me. And Willowmist Falls. My family. Everything about being home.” A beat. “Things I’d left unfinished.”
I looked up at that, briefly, and found him already looking at me, and looked back down at the books.
“I think I’d been ready to come home for longer than I admitted to myself,” he said. “The knee just made the decision for me.”
“I’m sorry it happened that way,” I said quietly. “That you didn’t get to choose the timing.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “But I’m here now. So I’m determined to make the best of it.”
I picked up a mystery and turned it over in my hands. “What do your days look like?” I asked. “Now, I mean. When you’re not moving heavy boxes for bookstore owners.”
He laughed, low and genuine, and the sound of it moved through the shop in a way I felt in my chest. “Quiet, mostly. I run in the mornings. Help Paige at the bar in the evenings. I’ve been doing some work on the cabin—it needs it.” He paused. “Reading, when I have the time.”
I smiled at that, still looking at the books. “What are you reading?”
“Something you put in my hands, actually.” There was a warmth in his voice that I felt right down to my fingertips. “I’m about halfway through.”
“And?”
