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He was quiet.
With a deep breath, I turned toward him. We were standing close. The closest we’d been since the bathroom incident.
His eyes were steady on mine.
The conversation felt fragile, but the further we went into this, the more wrong it felt that the house wouldn’t be loved in the way it deserved.
What I didn’t want to voice, even in the back of my mind, was that I was slowly imagining Burke loving it. Filling the space. Spending his days within those walls that he was bringing back to life.
But I had to say something, even if it caused a fracture in this peace we’d found.
“That’s what the Campbell House should be again. Somewhere magical. Not just a place that generates income or sits empty like amodel home.” I swallowed around a hot ball of emotion. He stayed quiet, dropping his chin to his chest while he listened. “Hot chocolate at Christmastime and Easter egg hunts in the spring. Popsicles and water balloon fights on the lawn during the summer. Maybe ... a wedding on the water someday,” I whispered.
Burke’s eyes never wavered; I wasn’t even sure he blinked.
“I know it’s a lot. And it will cost a lot. But”—I shrugged helplessly—“I think it would make Amie and Chris happy. Knowing that this place he loved would bring joy to the people who live there. The way it did for me and my mom, when nothing in our lives made us very happy.”
The words hung in the air between us—things soft and vulnerable that I wanted to take back. But for some reason, despite all the ways we got under each other’s skin, I knew I could trust him with that one little piece of me.
He didn’t respond, his face serious.
The longer the silence stretched, though, the more I felt like I’d revealed something I shouldn’t have.
These were pieces of me—the foundational ones—that I’d never shared with any man.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, well ... I think we can go place the order for these.”
Burke’s eyes never left my face, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say something, but instead he nodded.
He stayed fairly quiet as I spoke with the sales associate, and when they slid the purchase order toward him over the counter, he hardly spared a glance at the number on the bottom.
The woman looked between us with a twinkle in her eye, and I was pretty sure Burke didn’t notice.
Inoticed.
What, exactly, was she staring at? We weren’t groping each other. We weren’t exchanging lingering touches or making out in between tile displays. In fact, we hardly touched at all.
You couldn’t have told that to my raging hormones, though. Her knowing look probably only triggered me so badly because I was caught in my own struggle to make peace with all these feelings that he brought out in me.
In the car, he slid his sunglasses over his face, since we were driving back into town with the setting sun aimed straight at us. I did the same because they felt like a necessary sort of armor.
I hated that word, though.
Armor.
I’d never associated myself with a hard word. With such a hard thing. And maybe I only was now because his was so thick.
Somehow it felt like I needed to meet him there, with some level of protection around our interactions. Like we were both holding our hands out to create some level of distance.
From what, though?
I didn’t need constant access to Burke’s heart, to all his secret thoughts and wishes. But my curiosity about him felt soft and fragile, like something he could easily crush if he wanted to.
“Should we pick up dinner for the crew?” he asked.
I glanced at him. “Yeah, we should.”
“What do you want to get?”
