“He said it would hold about three hundred,” she murmured. “But I didn’t…” She laughed softly. “I didn’t understand what that meant.” Her voice echoed faintly in the open bowl.
Slater watched her take it in—the way her eyes tracked the arc of the rows, the way she tipped her head back to study the metal framing above the stage.
“It’s going to be incredible at sunset,” she said. “The sound will bounce perfectly off the seating.”
He blinked. “That’s… actually the idea.”
She shot him a look. “I listen when Milo talks.”
“I know you do,” he said automatically.
That wasn’t what surprised him. It was the way she wasn’t just seeing a construction site. She was seeing the finished version. The potential. The future.
She climbed down toward the stage, sneakers crunching over gravel and sawdust. “He was worried about drainage along the back wall,” she added, gesturing toward the slope. “But if they extend the trench another foot and redirect the runoff…”
“They already did,” Slater said, stunned. “Last week.”
She stopped mid-sentence. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
She grinned like she’d just won something. “See? I’m good at this.”
God.
He shouldn’t find that attractive. He definitely shouldn’t find the way her hair caught the light attractive. Or the way she moved—confident, purposeful, with no trace of the hesitation she sometimes carried socially.
She stepped onto the unfinished stage without asking permission.
“Evie,” he called, half warning, half exasperated.
“What?” she asked, turning, arms spread slightly for balance. “It’s stable.”
He followed her up despite himself.
The lake stretched behind the stage, the water reflecting streaks of late-afternoon gold. From here, the curved rows of seating felt grand and theatrical.
She turned in a slow circle, as if imagining it full. “You can feel it,” she said quietly. “Even unfinished.”
Slater could.
The acoustics were already shifting the air, her voice carrying, soft but clear.
He stepped closer than he meant to. “Yeah,” he said. “You can.”
She glanced at him, and there it was again—that spark, that aliveness he kept trying not to see. He’d brought her here to distract himself, to fill the afternoon with a neutral, harmless activity. Bikes. Construction. Milo’s project. Safe topics. Instead, she’d somehow made even this magnetic.
“You’re proud of him,” she said softly.
He gave a quiet laugh. “Yeah.”
“You should be.” She said, and he knew how she meant it. No jealousy. No edge. Just steady admiration.
The wind shifted, cool off the lake, lifting a strand of her hair across her cheek. Without thinking, he reached up and tucked it back.
The contact was brief. Too brief. But they both stilled.
There was sawdust under their shoes, the sharp scent of fresh lumber, the echo of distant voices coming from guests somewhere beyond the construction site, and the unbearable awareness of how close they were standing on a stage meant for performances neither of them was ready to give.
