Page 8 of Arrested By the Deputy

"Yes sir, Mr. Ellison. Good to see you."

"Small world," Mr. Ellison says, smiling between the two of us like he's already picked out names for our children. I wonder if he’s going to report back to social media. I saw him liking the posts about us. "Y'all make a good pair."

Cal thanks him, polite as ever, and the conversation drifts back to us, back to high school, to the library where we used to cross paths and never say more than a few words to each other.

"I used to hope you'd sit down," I admit, stirring my straw around my glass. "At lunch. I always left a seat open near me, like an idiot."

"I noticed," he says, quiet.

"You did?"

"I noticed everything about you back then. Didn't think I had any business sitting down, is all."

Before I can respond to that, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Two women near the counter have theirphones up, angled toward our booth, not even trying to be subtle about it. My stomach twists.

"Cal," I whisper, tilting my head slightly.

He follows my gaze and his jaw tightens, just barely. "Ignore them."

I try. I really do. We finish lunch, and he walks me to my door again, and he kisses me again, softer this time, less rushed, and it's just as good as the night before. But that evening, scrolling through my phone before bed, I see it. A video, ten seconds long, of us in the diner booth, leaning close together, laughing.

It's already been shared into the Facebook group.

Marjorie Teal: Look at these two!! I always said Cal was too hard on himself because of the things we say about him in this group, glad he's finally loosening up. Good thing he apologized, cause Lord knows he never should've arrested her in the first place.

Dozens of comments follow. Most of them are kind. Some of them are not so kind, dissecting my hair, my outfit, whether I've always had a thing for cops. A few debating whether Cal's only being nice to me because his boss told him to, whether this whole thing is even real.

I set my phone face down on the counter and press the heels of my hands against my eyes.

It isn't that people are talking. People always talk in a town this size, I've lived with that my whole life. It's that our first date, our first kiss, our first quiet lunch where we finally said the things we should've said in high school, all of it happened with somebody's phone pointed at us the entire time. None of it was ours. It was the town's, the second it happened.

I think about the years I’ve spent building Butter My Biscuit into something that is mine, something I didn't have to share with anybody's opinion until I chose to. And I think about howfast this thing with Cal has already stopped feeling like it belongs to just the two of us.

When he texts me a little after nine, something easy, something about Biscuit knocking over the trash can again, I read it twice, and then I don't answer.

I tell myself I need space to think, that's all. But some part of me already knows I'm pulling away, and I don't know yet how to stop.

CHAPTER 6

CAL

Aweek.

That's how long it's been since Hazel's answered anything more than a one-word text. I get "busy with the shop!" and "sorry, slammed today" and once, three days ago, just a thumbs up emoji that made me want to throw my phone across the fucking room. I've tried calling twice. Both times it went to voicemail after two rings, like she saw my name and hit decline on purpose.

I tell myself she's genuinely busy. She runs a bakery by herself with Tiffany's help, and I know good and well what her hours look like. I've been slammed too, I’m back on the overnight shift and it’s picked back up after my few nights off, plus a rash of break-ins out on Route 9 that's had me running on fumes and bad gas station coffee. It would be easy to believe we're just two people whose schedules don't line up right now.

Except that's not what this feels like, and I know it.

I'm sitting in the break room at the station, choking down a protein bar before my shift starts, when my friend and sometimes ride along partner, Deacon, slides into the chair across from me, phone already in his hand. Deacon's been on the force two years longer than me, and he's got about as much tactas a bull in a china shop, which is exactly why he doesn't hesitate before turning the screen toward my face.

"You seen this?"

I already know before I look. It’s fucking Spotted in Whispering Pines. Of course.

Brenda Yancey:Anybody know what happened with Cal Sutton and Hazel Monroe? They were all over each other a week ago and now nothing. Did he mess it up already?

Allison McGregor:I hope not!! They were so cute together.