Page 66 of Piece By Piece

She was afraid that if she looked at him, the moment would shatter, that she had imagined it all and that he would retreat back behind his wall.

But she didn’t let him.

She reached down and found his hand between them on the step and laced her fingers through his.

He held on.

They sat there until the lights on the last house on the square went dark.

There was no kiss.

There was no need.

Some moments are complete just as they are.

Two people on a porch step with their fingers intertwined, the whole island asleep around them.

When she finally stood up to go inside, she squeezed his hand once before letting go.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a great day,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it is.”

Liza went upstairs, but Grant stayed on the top step for a while longer, looking at the lights.

He held the ghost of her hand in his and thought about what Dawson had said about living safe versus living small.

His phone was in his pocket.

The publisher’s deadline was thirteen days away.

The woman upstairs had just leaned into him like they belonged together, and he had said something out loud that he’d only ever thought about in the dark.

And the world hadn’t ended because he said it.

He thought about the crossword he’d been building, the one with the hidden message, the one he’d been working on at his kitchen table in the wee hours of the morning while the island slept and his guard was down.

It was almost finished.

The theme answers were in place, and the connecting words were clean.

He had crafted the clues with such care that it went beyond craft.

Tomorrow at the festival, he was going to give it to her.

And the message encoded in the grid would say what he wasn’t sure he could say out loud.

Not yet.

Not with the publisher’s deadline hanging over him.

But tonight on the porch, he had said the one true thing.

And she had taken his hand.

And the world hadn’t ended.

Thirteen days.