Page 76 of What Remains of Grace

Travis studied him for another long moment, then nodded once. “All right,” he said. “Dropping.” He clapped Cole on the shoulder, not gently. “For the record, though? If you ever stop pretending you don’t care about her, the world will not, in fact, end.”

He walked away before Cole could respond, beelining back toward the cookie tray and leaving Cole alone with the echo of the words.

“If you ever stop pretending you don’t care about her.”

The problem wasn’t that he didn’t care. The problem was that he cared too much, and he couldn’t risk upsetting the balance they’d built. The one where his presence felt natural, expected, part of the routine, so she had nothing to run from.

He was here out of necessity, which meant every detour they took together, a paddleboard lap around the bayou, a bike ride at dusk, ice cream melting in the heat, or listening to a man play piano while the sun had gone down, could all be brushed off as convenience. Easy.

Harmless. Not a choice. Not him wanting her.

But in two days, she wouldn’t need him anymore. The necessity would evaporate.

The convenience would vanish. And then what?

Where was he supposed to steal moments with Jenna Hart once this project stopped giving him excuses? He couldn’t just show up at her door over and over again like a man with no self-control, and he sure as hell couldn’t tell her what sat lodged in his chest.

Because he knew, down to his bones, that the second he opened the floodgates of how deeply he felt for her, she would retreat. Not because she didn’t care, but because he would become one more complicated thing in a life that already had too much weight to carry.

He pushed off the doorjamb and moved through the space with his clipboard, using motion, any motion, to drown out the noise in his head.

Front windows: clean. Case lighting: functioning. Exit signs: checked. Fire extinguisher: mounted. Exterior step: level.

He eventually found himself at the front door, hand resting on the new handle. Outside, the late afternoon light slanted across the street, turning everything the same honeyed color as the oak tree in Jenna’s yard.

Behind him, he heard her voice, low and focused, as she talked Emmie through the training guide one more time. He didn’t catch the words, just the cadence, patient, firm, gently insistent. The way someone sounded when they believed the person they were teaching was capable of everything in front of them.

He turned just enough to see them reflected in the glass. Two silhouettes bent over a binder, heads tipped together, shoulders almost touching. A family recalibrating itself in real time.

His chest ached with something that felt like wanting and gratitude all tangled up. “Final touches, boss?” Dani asked, coming up beside him with a small box of hardware.

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll do the final walkthrough with the client tomorrow. Then it’s inspection day.”

“Big finish line,” she said.

He nodded. “Big finish line.”

He let his gaze drift across the bakery one more time, the polished counter, the menu boards with Emmie and Grace’s careful lettering, the display cases waiting to be filled with recipes carrying an entire family’s history.

And Jenna, in the middle of it all, was trying not to look at him.

He couldn’t blame her.

He also didn’t know how he was supposed to walk in here tomorrow, stand beside her, pretend nothing had shifted between them, and hand over a project that had gradually become the center of his days.

But he would, because that was the job.

And because whatever was happening between him and Jenna Hart, whatever had almost sparked to life and then collapsed on her porch in the middle of the night, was too important to push when she already had so much on her shoulders.

“Need me here tomorrow?” Dani asked.

He shook his head. “No. It’ll just be me.”

“Got it,” she said, heading back toward the hallway.

Cole stood there for another long moment, letting the quiet settle around him, then flipped off the track lighting along the wall. The front windows still glowed, but the rest of the bakery dimmed into subtle evening shadows.

Tomorrow, he would walk through this place one last time, and Monday, the inspector would sign off.