Page 13 of Reluctant Bride

I don’t step back. There’s maybe eighteen inches of hallway between us and a stack of high chairs behind him and I could put distance there if I wanted it, and I don’t reach for it, and neither of us pretends I don’t see that.

“They think you did it,” I say. “Half of them. The other half think Robbie was into something and it caught up with him.”

“What do you think?”

“I think somebody stole two minutes of your life and used it like a key, and now you’re the one everyone assumes walked through the door with it.” My voice comes out steadier than the pulse under it. “I think you should be furious, and instead you walked in here and ordered coffee like the room owed you nothing.”

“The room doesn’t owe me anything. Rimrock’s been rehearsing my villain origin story since I was nineteen. I stopped auditioning for the sequel.”

“That’s either very healthy or deeply unhinged.”

“Ask me again in a week.”

Nell comes around the corner with a bus tray, takes one look at the eighteen inches of hallway between us and everything neither of us is doing with it, and doesn’t say a word. She angles the tray, edges past, and disappears into the kitchen. Thirty seconds later I hear the scrape of chalk against the board out front.

I don’t go look. I don’t need to. I already know the line’s been rewritten again.

“She’s changing the pool,” I say.

“She’s been running that pool since we were teenagers.” His voice goes easy, the deliberate kind of easy a man uses when he’s decided a subject is closed. “Rivalry stuff. Whose contract falls apart first. Whose parents end up shouting at which fundraiser.”

He doesn’t push it past that, and I don’t offer more than that, and the not-offering sits between us long enough to be something.

“What’s it say now?”

“I’d guess it says what everyone in this diner just watched happen and doesn’t have the vocabulary for yet.” His voice drops, quiet enough that it doesn’t carry past the four feet of hallway that belong to us right now. “You want to know what I think, Blackwater?”

“Not really.”

“I think you’d have defended me even if it lost you the whole room. Even if Ashley started a rumor by lunch that you’re colluding. You didn’t check who was listening before you stood up. You just stood up.” His gaze drops to my mouth again, then back up, slower this time, like he’s memorizing the route. “That’s either very brave or you’ve completely lost your mind.”

“Ask me again after the wedding.”

A rough huff of air escapes him, half breath, half something he clearly wasn’t planning to let out, and it does more to the temperature in that hallway than the diner’s overworked air conditioner has managed all July.

Maren finds us both before it turns into anything either of us has a name for yet, which is either excellent timing or a Sullivan family talent for interrupting things at the exact moment they get interesting.

“Ashley’s at the counter.” Low, urgent, the voice of a woman who spent thirty years reading rooms before she married into one that never stops arguing. “She wants a photo op. County solidarity, Rimrock stands with the Sullivans, that kind of thing.”

Something in Dawson goes tight at that, shoulders squaring, the same readiness I watched him wear walking through the door a half hour ago. He doesn’t argue. He just looks like a man bracing for a room before he’s even in it.

“Of course she does.” I press two fingers to my temple. “She probably brought her own lighting.”

Ashley’s waiting at the register with a clipboard and a smile that’s never once had to survive an actual consequence. She reaches for both my hands before I can decide whether to let her.

“Sage. I just want you to know the county stands behind this family. Both families.” Her thumb strokes once across my knuckles, proprietary, the kind of touch that isn’t affection so much as a claim. “If there’s anything I can do.”

“Thank you, Ashley,” I say, and my voice does the thing it did in front of the county commission fourteen months ago, pleasant, precise, armored down to the studs.

“You always did know what to say.” Ashley’s smile doesn’t move, but something behind it does, quick and gone, there and not there. “Some things never change.”

She squeezes my hands once more and glides toward the door, already composing whatever version of this morning she’ll bring to the fundraiser committee. I watch her go and tuck away the strange, small weight of some things never change somewhere I’ll come back to later.

The photo happens on the sidewalk out front, Ashley arranging us like place settings, half of Nell’s breakfast crowd spilling out the door behind us to watch. Dawson stands close enough to be believable and not one inch closer, jaw set into the same practiced calm he wore walking in a while ago. Ashley gets three shots, declares the light perfect, and releases us back into the diner like she’s done us a favor.

Dawson steers us both back through the door with a hand that doesn’t quite touch my back, close enough that I feel the warmth of it anyway, and we end up tucked by the entrance, half hidden behind the rack of Nell’s tourist mugs nobody’s ever bought one of.

Dawson’s still watching me like he was before Ashley pulled us outside, weighing the exact voice I used in the diner like a man tests a blade before he decides whether it’s sharp enough to trust.