Page 183 of Rising Heat

“Do you actually want more pancakes?” I ask as I hit send.

Bex snorts.

“Is that a real question? No wonder you caved. The man cooks like it’s foreplay.”

I roll my eyes so hard it almost hurts and hit send anyway.

Darcy

Miss you guys.

The message sits there for half a second after it sends, warmth curling low in my stomach before I shove my phone back into my coat pocket and look out at the water instead.

The wind pushes hard enough to sting my ears a little, and behind us somebody’s dog is losing its mind over a seagull.

My phone buzzes a few minutes later.

I leave it there for at least thirty seconds because I have dignity. Barely.

Tyler

Miss you too. Tell Bex she’s welcome for breakfast any time.

“I can literally see your face changing,” Bex says beside me.

“Into what?” I raise a brow.

“You like them. A lot.”

The thing is, I do. Enough that trying to play it cool about it mostly just feels embarrassing now.

Bex hooks her arm through mine while we start walking again, swaying sideways a little as we cut back toward the street.

“I can see why you stayed,” she says after a minute.

“The city?”

“That too.”

I glance over at her.

She’s looking straight ahead while we walk, hair blowing across her Velvet Teddy lipstick every five seconds while she keeps talking through it anyway.

“You feel different here,” she says. “Lighter.”

I think about the coffee shop I disappear to when I need to get out of the apartment for a while, the Pilates studio where they know me by name now, Thursday nights at the Bell, and the two people downstairs who somehow figured out what I needed before I ever did.

Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling temporary.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I think I am.”

Bex squeezes my arm once and leaves it there.

We spend the rest of the morning wandering without much of a plan, following whatever catches our attention first. Every few blocks, Bex stops to photograph another cobblestone street because, according to her, it has “the kind of charm Hallmark location scouts live for.”

Somewhere along the way we duck into a little café because we’re both windswept, and neither of us feels like pretending brunch wasn’t the destination all along.

The place is already buzzing when we step inside, conversations overlapping beneath the hiss of the espresso machine while maple syrup and something savory drift out from the kitchen. My stomach immediately reminds me that we skipped breakfast.