Page 13 of Arrested By the Deputy

"Worth the wait?" he asks, voice rough with something like wonder.

"Every bit of it." I tilt my face up to look at him, this man I've wanted since I was a teenager and too scared to say a word to him in a school library. "It was a long time, Cal Sutton."

"Then I guess I better make up for it." He pulls me closer, and I fall asleep to the steady beat of his heart, thinking that whatever the town has to say about us come morning, none of it matters half as much as this.

CHAPTER 8

CAL

The past three weeks have been amazing. That's how long Hazel and I have been officially, no-question-about-it together, and I still catch myself grinning like an idiot every time I think about it, which apparently is often enough that Deacon's started ribbing me about it at the station.

"You've got the look again," he says, sliding into the passenger seat of the cruiser as we head out for shift. We’re riding together today, and I kind of wish I was by myself if he’s going to be an asshole. "The dopey one."

"I don't have a look."

"You absolutely have a look. Marcy in dispatch started a pool on how long it'd take you to propose. I got twenty bucks riding on six months."

"That's insane. We've been together for three weeks."

"Didn't say I was betting on it happening reasonable-like."

I roll my eyes and pull out of the lot, but I can't argue with him too hard, because he's not wrong that something in me has shifted these past few weeks. I sleep better. I show up to work without that low simmering dread that used to sit in my gut, wondering what today's post in Spotted in Whispering Pines was going to say about me. I still see the notifications pop up nowand then, but they don't hit the same. Hazel did that. Somehow, in the middle of everything, she went and fixed something in me I wasn’t sure would ever be fixed.

She’s helped me change how I feel about myself.

Around lunchtime, I swing the cruiser toward Main Street, telling myself it's just because the route takes me past there anyway, though we both know that's not really true. Butter My Biscuit smells like cinnamon and warm bread the second I walk through the door, and Hazel's behind the counter, flour dusted along one forearm, laughing at something Tiffany said. Her whole face lights up when she spots me, same as it does every time, and I don't think that particular feeling is ever going to get old.

Deacon’s over at the gas station, so I take all the time I want.

"Well, if it isn't Officer Sutton," she says, leaning against the counter. "Here to arrest anybody today?"

"Depends. You got any butter you're planning on stealing?"

"Not this week." She grins, and I lean over the counter to kiss her, quick but not so quick that Tiffany doesn't make a small gagging noise behind the register.

"You two are disgusting," Tiffany says, though she's smiling when she says it.

"You're just jealous," Hazel fires back, not even looking away from me.

"Extremely."

I settle onto one of the stools at the counter while Hazel finishes boxing up an order for a woman waiting by the door, and once she's got a minute, she comes back around, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Have you eaten yet?" she asks.

"Was gonna grab something from the gas station before my shift really kicks off."

She makes a face like I've personally offended her. "Absolutely not. Sit there and don't argue with me."

"I wasn't planning to."

She disappears into the kitchen, and I can hear her moving around back there, the soft thud of the cutting board, the fridge door opening and closing. Tiffany rings up another customer, throws me a look like she's sizing me up all over again, same as she probably did that first day I walked in here to apologize.

"You're good for her, you know," she says, once the shop's empty for a second. "She's been happier the last few weeks than I've seen her in a long time."

"She's good for me too." I don't know how else to say it, so I don't try to make it any heavier than that.

Hazel comes back out a few minutes later with a sandwich piled high on thick homemade bread, tomato and turkey and some kind of herb spread that smells incredible, cut diagonal and plated like she'd serve it to a paying customer instead of just the boyfriend loitering at her counter on his lunch break.