Page 33 of Wild Thorns

"Lila—"

"I've said too much already." She turned back to her screen, and her voice shifted back to professional. "The Henderson logo needs another revision. The kerning in the tagline is still off."

The conversation was over. But I caught her watching me later, when she thought I wasn't looking, with an expression I couldn't quite read.

Curiosity, maybe. Or concern. Or something else entirely.

That evening, I was working on my porch when I felt it.

The pull, stronger than usual. That awareness that meant one of them was nearby, except this time it felt like a tuning fork being struck, a note resonating through my whole body.

I looked up to find Eli at the bottom of my stairs.

He was wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the fabric slightly wrinkled in a way that suggested he'd been too absorbed in his work to notice. His glasses caught the evening light, turning them briefly opaque. There was a book tucked under his arm, there was always a book, and his expression was thoughtful, uncertain in a way I hadn't seen before.

Behind him, the magnolia tree was doing its evening thing, the white blooms glowing pink-gold in the sunset. The preserve beyond had gone shadowy, that purple-blue of Louisiana dusk, and somewhere in its depths I could hear the first crickets starting their nightly chorus.

"May I?" he asked.

"Sure."

He climbed up and sat beside me, leaving a careful distance between us. But even so, I could feel the warmth of him, the quiet hum of his presence. The air between us felt charged, electric, like the moment before a storm breaks.

"Working late?" he asked, nodding at my laptop.

"Client project. Logo redesign for a restaurant in Baton Rouge." I closed the laptop, giving him my full attention. The screen had been open to the same file for twenty minutes anyway; I hadn't been able to focus since I felt him approaching. "But I suspect you didn't come up here to discuss my freelance work."

"No." A small smile, barely there but genuine. "Though I'm sure your freelance work is fascinating."

"It's really not."

"I doubt that's true." He shifted, angling his body toward me. In the fading light, his eyes looked silver, that particular shade I'd noticed before when the light hit them just right. "Everything you do is deliberate. Considered. I imagine your designs reflect that."

I felt seen in a way that was almost uncomfortable. Like he'd looked past the surface and found something underneath that I wasn't sure I wanted exposed.

"You've been paying attention."

"I have." No apology, no excuse. Just the simple truth, offered without embellishment. "You're worth paying attention to."

My breath caught. It wasn't a line. Eli didn't deal in lines. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the same calm precision he brought to everything.

"I wanted to ask you something," he said.

"Go ahead."

He was quiet for a moment, choosing his words with the care I was beginning to recognize as fundamental to who he was. The way he weighed each word before speaking, tested it for accuracy, considered how it would land. When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost hesitant.

"How are you sleeping?"

The question caught me off guard. I'd expected something about the family, or the town, or any of the mysteries I hadn't solved yet. Not this. Not something so personal, so gentle.

"Why do you ask?"

"Jasper mentioned that something happened. A few days ago." His eyes searched my face, cataloguing details the way I catalogued design elements. "He didn't give specifics. He said that was your story to tell. But he was worried. And when Jasper's worried, it's usually for good reason."

I looked out at the preserve. The trees had gone dark, silhouettes against the deepening blue of the sky. Spanish moss hung motionless in the still air, gray-green curtains that seemed to absorb sound. The cicadas were singing now, that particular Louisiana evening chorus that I was learning to recognize, to find comfort in.

I could tell him to mind his own business. I could deflect, change the subject, retreat behind the walls I'd spent years building.