Page 1 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

Prologue

Matt

The thing about weddings is that nobody watches the exits.

I did. Habit. I stood at the edge of the Barretts’ deck with a beer I’d been holding for an hour, and I knew the gate latch on the side yard stuck, which tables had candles burning closest to the paper decorations, and that the kid in the navy vest had taken exactly four cookies off the dessert table when his mother wasn’t looking and was working up the courage for a fifth. Enough years on the job did that to a man. You stopped seeing parties. You saw floor plans with people in them.

The pool glowed turquoise in the dark, string lights doubled on its surface in long wavering rows, little broken pieces of them scattering whenever the breeze touched the water. Somebody had strung those lights over the whole of the Barretts’ backyard—deck to fence line, looped through the big maples—and below them a rented dance floor sat on the lawn, full of people. Three hours ago and a few miles upriver, under a wildflower arch at the campground, I’d put my sister’s hand into Levi Barrett’s and stepped back.

Stepped back.

I’d been ready for the walk down the aisle. I’d been ready for the vows, mostly, although I’d had to study the tree line over Levi’s shoulder for a stretch of them like the Douglas firs needed law enforcement supervision to keep from crying. What I had not been ready for was the part that came after. The part where it was done. Where Becca was married, and safe, and laughing on the dance floor with her husband’s enormous family, in the backyard of the house they’d all grown up in, surrounded on every side by people who loved her back, and there was not one single thing left in the world that she needed from me.

Years of checking the locks twice, walking her to her car, and keeping a folder in my head labeled Becca that never closed. Through our parents being a polite voicemail recording of two people who really didn’t care. Through her shitty ex, Travis. Through everything this past year that I still woke up some nights thinking about, my hand already reaching for the phone before I remembered it was over, we’d won, she was fine.

She was fine.

The case was closed, and I was standing at the edge of the party, realizing I had nothing in the world to do because her new husband would protect her with his life.

I drank some of the beer. It had gone warm. Of course.

Across the floor, Becca caught my eye over Levi’s shoulder and gave me a look I knew—you’re worrying about me—and I raised the beer at her in a way I hoped read as I am a man enjoying a party and not I have memorized the exits. She narrowed her eyes. I’d never gotten anything past her in my life. Then Levi spun her, and she laughed, and forgot all about me, which was exactly the way it was supposed to be, but it sat in my chest like a stone anyway.

“Okay, this is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, and I once watched a man drop a fully loaded breakfast burrito in my parking lot.”

I knew the voice before I turned. Everyone in Sweetbriar knew the voice. It was usually heard at the Stop & Go, the convenience store in town with the coffee that kept me alert for most of my shifts. The place with a running commentary that management—meaning her—had never once been able to suppress.

Elizabeth Starling stood beside me in a dark green dress, holding two glasses of something sparkling. She was a small woman with a presence that had never once gotten the memo, because her personality was larger than life. I’d seen her a thousand times. Across a counter, in the flannel work shirts she rolled to the elbow, dark auburn hair pulled up into its work knot with a pen through it. Across a parking lot, green eyes narrowed at some regular trying to argue the price of gas. Once across a stack of security footage that helped me protect my sister, which I had not forgotten and didn’t plan to. I knew her face the way you know a face you’ve watched for years—the freckles, the quick brows, the green eyes that never missed a thing and always looked half-ready to laugh at you. I’d always thought she was beautiful. That wasn’t new.

What was new was this. Her hair was out of its knot, loose and doing something I’d never watched it do, catching the string lights in shades of red and deep brown. The dress. The bare shoulders. Those same green eyes, going soft on me in the dark. I’d seen her a thousand times, but tonight, for the first time, I couldn’t make myself look at anything else.

“Elizabeth.”

“Officer Hartford.” She handed me one of the glasses without asking and took my warm beer hostage in exchange, setting it on the table behind us like she was confiscating evidence. “I have a few questions about your current activity.”

“I’m watching the party.”

“You’re guarding the party.” She turned, put her back to the lights, and studied me the way she studied a register tape that wouldn’t balance. “There’s a difference. One of them involves having fun. Want to guess which?”

“I’m having fun.”

“You’re standing at parade rest holding a beverage you’re not drinking, equidistant from both exits.”

I looked at her. She looked back, entirely too pleased with herself.

“It’s one exit,” I said. “The side gate sticks.”

“Oh my God,” she said, delighted. “You did check.”

The band slid into something slow. Out on the floor, couples folded together. My sister had her face against her husband’s chest, her eyes closed, wearing the kind of happiness I’d spent years trying to build a fence around to protect her, and it turned out all she’d ever needed me to do was open the gate and let her out. Damn.

“Dance with me,” Elizabeth said.

I looked over at her. “What?”

“It’s a wedding. There’s music. You have functioning legs—I’ve seen them chase a shoplifter across my parking lot; it was honestly very cinematic. Dance with me, Matt.”

I considered saying no. I had a position to maintain. I had exits to watch. I had a warm beer, a glass of something sparkly, and a long-standing policy about parties, which was that I attended them the way I attended traffic court.