The door opened and let in a ribbon of cooler air, along with Cara Darlington, Paige’s younger sister.
And without thinking, my mouth curved into a slow, small smile I didn’t bother trying to hide. Why should I hide it anymore, now that I’m sticking around?
I’d known her since she was fifteen years old and serious about books in a way that made you feel like you were missing something if you weren’t. I’d sat across from her a few times a week in the school library, and she’d been patient with me in a way most people weren’t. She’d tutored me in English—dragged me through Shakespeare and Brontë and essay structure and close reading with a quiet, steady persistence that I hadn’t deserved and hadn’t known how to thank her for. The honest truth was that I wouldn’t have graduated without her.
I’d never said that out loud to anyone, but I’d thought it more than once in the years since—usually somewhere far from Honeybrook Hollow, in the middle of something dangerous, something that required me to think clearly and follow through—and the quiet recognition would surface that she’d had more to do with that than my diploma would ever indicate.
Back then, I hadn’t known what to do with that—with her, with the way she made the hours in that library feel different from every other hour in my day. I hadn’t let myself look at it too closely. I was seventeen, I knew I was leaving after graduation, and there were things a man should not get started when he already knew how the story would end.
Then I’d come back the first time, between deployments, already planning to ship out again. I’d seen her around town, and something had moved in my chest that I’d shut down fast and clean, how they train you in the Corps. It wasn’t the right time. It was never the right time. So I’d filed it away with everything else I wasn’t ready to acknowledge and gotten back on the plane.
Now I wasn’t getting back on any plane. And that changed things in ways I was still working out.
She paused just inside the door, like she was letting the space settle around her before stepping fully into it. Tall, softly curved beneath a cardigan she wore like a second skin. Her golden-brown hair was pulled back loosely, a few strands already slipping free. Beautiful in a soft, familiar way—the kind that didn’t ask for attention, but held it once you gave it.
I didn’t move. Didn’t say anything to her. I never did, aside from asking her what she wanted to drink. We’d developed an unspoken agreement over the months since I’d come back—careful distance, polite nods, the practiced ease of two people treating the past like it was just the past, and that was fine. I’d held up my end of it. Tonight I was done holding it.
I watched as she crossed the room and took a seat at the bar—one stool down from where Paige leaned, her attention already sliding toward her sister. Paige smiled at Cara and said something I couldn’t hear over the hum of the room. Cara answered, her shoulders lifting in a small, familiar shrug—the one that meantI’m fineanddon’t look too closelyin the same breath. I recognized it. I’d seen it enough.
Paige’s gaze flicked once in my direction, sharp and assessing, before returning to Cara with a look that saidI see it. Whatever it was.
I looked away first, suddenly aware of how closely I’d been watching, and refocused on the customer I was serving until the heat in my chest settled.
Cara laughed quietly at something Paige said, then wrapped both hands around the glass in front of her. She looked down at it for a second longer than necessary, like she was buying herself time. I went back to work, but my attention kept drifting. The way she held herself—attentive, contained. The way she pushed her glasses higher on her nose when Paige leaned closer. The way her smile slipped when the noise rose around her, like she was listening past it instead of to it.
She didn’t look at me. Not once.
And somehow the absence of it carried more weight than if she had—like being deliberately overlooked said more than any glance ever could. She knew I was here. She always knew. That was the thing about Cara Darlington, she noticed everything and gave nothing away unless she decided to, and tonight she’d decided not to.
Paige said something else, low enough that Cara’s expression shifted—surprise, then something more thoughtful. Paige followed it with a squeeze to Cara’s arm before moving away to help another customer.
I watched Cara mull over whatever Paige had said, her hands still wrapped around her glass, her eyes still down. She had the look of someone working very hard at appearing unbothered.
I understood it. I’d been doing the same thing for months. The difference now was that I’d finally stopped pretending. I didn’t have a reason to.
Cara stayed at the bar, shoulders drawn in slightly, gaze fixed on her drink. She didn’t look up. Didn’t scan the room. Just sat there like she was waiting for the noise to fade.
I kept my head down and worked, hands moving on instinct. The activity of the bar carried on without me needing to think about it, and that was a relief. A reminder that some things were routine now, even if others weren’t.
When I glanced up again, Cara was standing. She slipped her bag over her shoulder and leaned toward Paige for a quick word, her expression softening briefly before she straightened. She didn’t look my way as she crossed the room. The door opened, then closed behind her, and the night folded back in on itself as if nothing had changed.
I wiped down the counter and stood there for a moment, something restless moving through my chest—not the dull weight from earlier, not the grief of the doctor’s office, but something sharper. Something I hadn’t expected to feel tonight.
I wasn’t counting the hours until I left anymore. I wasn’t thinking about what came next. But I was, without quite meaning to, thinking about her.
Chapter 3
Cara
Iwrapped both hands around my glass and kept my eyes down, studying the condensation gathering at the base like it was something worth reading.
I was early for sister night, and Jasper was behind the bar.
I’d told myself, when I first sat down, that I wouldn’t look at him. That lasted about four minutes. He had his back to me now, reaching up to replace a bottle on the high shelf, and I let myself take him in the way I couldn’t when he was facing me—the width of his shoulders under a plain grey shirt, the controlled economy of how he moved. Efficient and unhurried like someone who’d had years of training in how to carry himself in a body that could do damage if it needed to. The Marines had taken whatever quiet, contained quality he’d had at seventeen and sharpened it down to the bone.
His forearms were something I’d been carefully not thinking about all evening. Corded, tanned, his shirt sleeves pushed to the elbow in a way that shouldn’t have been as distracting as it was. I looked away before he turned back around.
He worked the bar the way he did everything else, present but contained. A woman three stools down said something that made her friend laugh, angling herself slightly in his direction,and Jasper smiled at her—quick, charming, something that reached his mouth and stopped there. He refilled her glass without leaning in. No lingering. No reciprocation of whatever she was offering. Just that pleasant, distant grin, and then he moved on, because the grin was clearly a courtesy, not an invitation.
