“Big plans tonight?” I’m trying to keep my voice light, casual, like my heart isn’t racing.
“Staring at my laptop. Preparing for the conference. Maybe I’ll get wild and reorganize my desktop folders.” He glances up at me through his lashes. “The usual Thursday night excitement.”
“Living the dream,” I say, and he smiles. A real one that transforms his face, and God, he’s unfairly handsome.
The tech guys in the corner call for another round, waving their empty glasses. I grab four pints and move to help them, but I can feel Calvin’s eyes following me. When I come back, he’s still there, still nursing that last inch of beer, and the way he’s looking at me makes my stomach flutter.
“I really should go,” he says finally, pulling out his wallet.
“Yeah,” I agree, even though I want him to stay. Even though watching him leave feels like losing something I never had. “Desktop reorganizing waits for no one.”
He gives a short laugh, sets money on the bar, and stands. For a second he just looks at me, like he wants to say something else. My heart is beating too fast, and I’m glad the bar isbetween us because I don’t trust myself not to do something stupid.
“Night, Maren,” he says finally.
“Night,” I manage.
Then he’s walking out, and I’m left standing there holding the bar cloth, still feeling the weight of his gaze, still wanting things I shouldn’t want.
CHAPTER 12
CALVIN
The bar door closes behind me and I’m walking into the summer night, jealousy burning hot in my chest.
Adrian fucking Lowe. Leaning across the bar at Maren like he had any right to be that close to her. Making her laugh. Watching him check her out every time she turned around made me want to throw him out of the bar.
I head down the path toward the cabins, gravel crunching under my feet. The moon’s bright enough to see by, though the Douglas firs cast shadows across the dirt trail. My hands are clenched into fists at my sides, and I force them to relax.
This is ridiculous. I have no claim on Maren. We’re not together. We’re neighbors. Neighbors who dance around whatever this thing is between us without ever acknowledging it directly.
But walking in and seeing him make her laugh, seeing the way he looked at her lit something possessive in me. Made me want to walk back in there and stake some kind of claim I don’t have.
And the way he brought up Seattle, that knowing look when he mentioned my “professor charm.” Making sure Maren heard it. As if I was even that guy anymore.
By the time I reach my cabin, I strip off my shirt, toss it on a chair, and stand there in the dark for a moment. The image won’t leave me alone—Adrian leaning close, Maren fighting not to laugh. He’s smooth in that academic way, all the right references and the expensive clothes.
I grab my laptop from the table, needing something to do with this restless energy. But instead of the conference presentation, I open a new browser window and type: “Elias Shaw first edition.”
Because she’d stopped in the rain when I mentioned him. Because of how her face lit up when we talked about poetry. Because maybe I need to show her what she means to me since I can’t seem to say it.
Most of the links are to out-of-print listings, astronomical prices for books that probably sit on collectors’ shelves, unread. But there—a small bookstore in Seattle. Red Fern Rare Books. They have a signed first edition of “The Burned Hour,” Shaw’s breakthrough collection. The one that made him famous before he disappeared into obscurity and alcohol.
In-store pickup only. No shipping. They open at nine.
I send a message through the store website and close the laptop, already knowing I’m going to do this. The drive, the expense, all of it. For the chance to see her face when she opens it.
I get ready for bed mechanically. Brush teeth, strip down to boxers, set my alarm even though I know I’ll be awake before dawn anyway. The laptop sits closed on the table with the bookstore’s page still bookmarked.
Once in bed, I lie staring at the ceiling, thinking about tomorrow’s drive. About what I’ll say when I give her the book.About whether she’ll understand what it means. Not just the book itself, but the gesture.
Sleep comes in fragments. I dream of rain and poetry and the way she looked at me across the bar. That expression I couldn’t quite read: guarded and guilty and something else I couldn’t name.
I’m on the road before sunrise, chasing my headlights south toward Seattle. The coffee from the gas station tastes like burnt rubber, but I drink it anyway, needing the caffeine or the punishment. The familiar stretch of I-5 unrolls beneath my tires—dense forest giving way to suburbs, suburbs bleeding into city.
The morning fog sits heavy over the Sound, turning the water into a gray smear. I’ve made this drive hundreds of times, but it feels different now. Like I’m traveling between two versions of myself—the Calvin who belongs in Seattle, with his university office and his book reviews and his carefully constructed life, and the Calvin who fixes things with his hands and can’t stop thinking about Maren Strand.
Traffic is light this early, just truckers and insomniacs and people running from or toward something. I wonder which category I fall into. Both, maybe.
