Page 90 of When Love Takes Root

Later that evening

I pulled up to Celestial Crowns later than I’d planned.

The streetlights had started blinking awake along DePriest, one by one, throwing gold across the damp pavement. The shop’s front windows reflected passing headlights and the neon sign from the nail salon next door. Inside, the front lights glowed warm, but the back half still held the evidence of repair. Drop cloths. Labeled wires. Open wall. My crew had left earlier after finishing what they could, and I’d come back to check the panel, review the circuit separation, and make sure nothing had shifted before inspection.

That was what I told myself.

It was true.

It just wasn’t the whole truth.

I wanted to see her.

I walked in with my tool bag in one hand and my restraint in the other.

Celeste stood near the front desk, sorting appointment cards into a small acrylic holder. She had changed since Rosehaven. Black jumpsuit now. Gold hoops still there. Locs half pinned, half spilling over one shoulder. She looked good enough to make a man forget every safety protocol he’d ever learned, but her face gave me pause before attraction could get comfortable.

Something was off.

She looked up when the bell chimed, and the smile she gave me was there, but it didn’t reach all the places it had reached last night. Her eyes were careful. Her shoulders held tension. Her fingers kept touching the same stack of cards like she needed something to do.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

I stepped in and let the door close behind me. The shop smelled like holding spray, citrus cleaner, and the faint sweetness of whatever oil she used in her locs. Music played low from a speaker near the front, an old R&B song almost swallowed by the hum of the refrigerator in the break room.

“I’m sorry I’m later than I said,” I told her. “I was with my granddaddy at Rosehaven longer than I planned.”

“I saw.”

“I saw you too.” That put color in her face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. I set my tool bag down near the counter. “I didn’t want to interrupt what you were doing.”

“You wouldn’t have been interrupting.”

“Yes, I would’ve.” Her fingers stilled. I held her gaze. “What you were doing mattered. I wasn’t going to make it about me.”

For a second, she looked like she wanted to receive that. Her lips parted, then closed. Her hand went to the appointment cards again.

There it was.

A wall coming down halfway, then stopping because fear had stuck its foot in the door.

I walked closer but left enough space between us for her to breathe. “Did I do something wrong?”

Her head came up fast. “No.”

“Celeste.”

“No,” she said again, softer. “You didn’t.”

“Then talk to me.”

She looked away, and that told me more than her denial had. The woman who had looked me in the eye over margaritas and grief was standing in front of me now with her heart somewhere behind her ribs, trying to decide if honesty would make a mess she couldn’t clean before morning.

I reached for a crooked appointment card on the counter, straightened it with the others, and gave my hands a harmless job so they wouldn’t try to reach for her too soon. “I can fix a lot of things in this building, but I can’t repair something I don’t know I damaged.”

Her eyes came back to mine.