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I ate the caramel in my car. Let myself cry for thirty seconds. Then wiped my face, drove to the festival grounds, and started setting up because that's what Kennedy Brooks does.

The note is in my back pocket now. Folded twice. Worn soft at the edges from how many times I've pulled it out to read those six words.

You deserve the yes.

But deserving it and getting it aren't the same thing. I learned that at seven years old when my daddy drove away from the most deserving family in the world.

So I set up wreaths. Help kids press leaves. Pour hot cider. Answer texts. Smile.

The festival is almost over. Tomorrow the vendors pack up, the string lights come down, Maple Lane goes back to being a quiet street in a quiet town. And the grumpy man at the end of the dead end will go back to his workbench and his silence.

And I'll go back to holding everything together for everyone.

Because that's who I am. Even when I wish somebody would hold something together for me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

RHETT

RHETT

Sunday morning I wake up on the shop couch with a crick in my neck and a clarity that could cut glass.

Drove here last night after leaving the caramel and the note at the shop door. Couldn't go back to the cabin. The sheets still smell like her. The blue mug is washed and sitting on the counter, empty, looking at me with the same disappointment as my reflection.

I slept on the couch that still holds the shape of both of us from Friday night. The leather has a crease where her knee pressed. The blanket smells like cinnamon.

My phone shows no new texts. The last message in our thread is hers from yesterday morning.

Kennedy:

I think we should take a step back. Last night was amazing but I can't keep walking toward someone who won't meet me halfway. I deserve someone who'll walk through a stupid festival with me. I'm worth that.

She's worth that.

The rocking chair sits in the corner of the shop. White oak. Clean lines. Wide arms. Built over four weeks without knowing who it was for.

I knew. Somewhere under the sawdust and the silence and the three years of telling myself I was fine, I knew.

At seven a.m. I call my mom.

She picks up on the second ring because mothers always do. "Baby, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just..." My throat closes. "I met someone."

Silence. Then a sound that might be a coffee mug hitting a counter or might be my mother sitting down hard in her kitchen chair in Phoenix.

"Tell me everything."

I tell her. The donuts. The clipboard. The way Kennedy walks into rooms like she's already running late for the next place she needs to be. The festival. The parking lot. Hank's bar. Friday night. Saturday morning. What I said. What she said. What I should have said.

"Rhett James Gallagher." My mother's voice is made of steel wrapped in velvet. "Are you telling me a woman asked you to walk through a festival and you said no?"

"I said it's not what I do."

"And what exactly do you do? Sit in that shop building beautiful things for other people's lives while yours is empty? Your brother is gone, baby. It's been three years. Liam wouldn't want this. You know he wouldn't."

"Mom."