Page 63 of Stuck with the Hero Next Door

“I should probably head home,” I said around nine-thirty, though every instinct I had was screaming at me to stay. To find excuses to linger, to stretch these moments into hours, to fall asleep on her couch and wake up to more of this domestic paradise.

“Probably.” But she didn’t move to see me out. Instead, she set down her pen and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For dinner, for the company, for...all of it. I know I keep saying that, but I mean it. Having you here, having this...” She gestured between us, searching for words. “It makes everything easier.”

I wanted to tell her that she made everything better. That coming into town to the possibility of seeing her had transformed my entire relationship with Everwood, with my own life. That the thought of her smile got me through busy days or restless nights when sleep wouldn’t come.

Instead, I said, “Anytime, Cassie. You know that.”

She walked me to the door, and we had that awkward moment where neither of us was quite sure how to say goodbye. A hug felt too casual for what we were, but a kiss felt too presumptuous for what we weren’t. Yet. We ended up in some middle ground—her hand on my arm, my hand briefly covering hers, a moment of contact that felt both insufficient and charged with possibility.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely.”

I drove home through the quiet streets, my truck’s headlights cutting through the falling snow. The town was peaceful, most windows glowing with warm light, smoke rising from chimneys into the flake-filled sky. It was a Norman Rockwell moment—made you believe in the possibility of contentment, of simple happiness built from ordinary moments.

But I wasn’t content. Not entirely.

I wanted more of Cassie than shared dinners and stolen kisses on her couch. I wanted to wake up next to her and fall asleep holding her hand. I wanted to be the person she called when she was excited about something, the one she turned to when she needed comfort. I wanted to stop wondering if each kiss meant as much to her as it did to me.

Most of all, I wanted to tell her that I was in love with her. That I’d been in love with her since she’d stepped out of Tim’s tow truck looking fierce and fragile and determined not to need help. That every day since then had just been different variations on the theme of falling deeper.

But I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Whether the kisses were just affection or something more. Whether she was ready for forever or still figuring out what she wanted.

So, I waited.

Even if it was slowly killing me with its sweetness.

The drive out to my ranch took me past the turn-off to where her cottage sat, still damaged from the storm. I could see the blue tarp in the streetlight, covering the broken roof, a reminder of the night everything changed between us.

Back at my place, I stood at the kitchen window that looked toward the distant glow of Everwood’s lights. Her house was too far away for me to see, but knowing she was there, probably grading papers with that little crease between her eyebrows when she concentrated, was enough.

For now, it had to be enough.

Chapter 17

Invitations and Interference

Cassie

Ishould have known something was up when Janet knocked on my door at seven o’clock on Friday morning with a garment bag.

“What’s that?” I asked, squinting at her through the haze of pre-coffee consciousness.

“Your dress for tonight,” she said, sweeping past me into the apartment like she owned the place. Which, technically, she sort of did through her long acquaintance with Mrs. Walton.

“What’s tonight?”

Janet hung the garment bag on my bedroom door with care, usually reserved for museum pieces. “The Winter Social, of course. Mom and I have been planning it for weeks.”

I blinked at her, my brain struggling to process this information without the aid of caffeine. “I don’t remember hearing about a Winter Social.”

“Didn’t we mention it?” Janet’s expression was the picture of innocent surprise, but there was something distinctly mischievous in her eyes. “Oh my, how silly of us. Well, it’s tonight at the town hall. Dinner, dancing, the whole works. Community building, you know.”

“Janet,” I said slowly, “I don’t dance.”