He found a small panel that opened to reveal the interior of the furnace, but looking inside required both of us to lean forward into an even smaller space. I ended up practically pressed against Declan’s side, my face inches from his as we both peered into the furnace.
“I don’t see any flame,” I said, though I was having trouble focusing on pilot lights when I was close enough to count Declan’s eyelashes.
“Me neither,” he agreed, and when he turned to look at me, our faces were suddenly close enough that I could see the flecks of silver in his blue eyes.
For a moment, neither of us said anything. The basement was quiet except for the sound of our slightly unsteady breathing. Declan’s gaze dropped to my mouth, and I found myself leaning slightly closer, drawn by the same magnetic pull that had been building between us for days.
“We should probably figure out how to relight it,” I said, though the words came out breathless and unconvincing.
“Probably,” Declan agreed, but he didn’t move away.
I could feel myself being drawn into another almost-kiss moment, the kind that had been happening with increasing frequency despite our commitment to professional boundaries. But this time, instead of getting lost in the moment, Derek’s voice echoed in my head—all the ways he’d made me feel like Iwas too eager, too available, too willing to trust someone who was probably just being polite.
I pulled back abruptly, putting space between us that felt both necessary and disappointing and banged my head on a fucking low-level pipe.
“Ouch,” I groaned, rubbing it, but as Declan reached up, I shook it off. “The pilot light,” I said firmly, focusing determinedly on the furnace interior. “How do we relight a pilot light?”
If Declan was frustrated by my sudden retreat, he didn’t show it. Instead, he consulted his phone again and walked me through the process of relighting the pilot, which turned out to be surprisingly straightforward once we found the right switches and buttons.
The furnace roared to life with a satisfying mechanical sound, and warm air began flowing through the vents almost immediately.
“Crisis solved,” I said with relief, though I was acutely aware that we’d solved one problem while making another one more complicated.
“Crisis solved,” Declan agreed. “Good teamwork.”
As we gathered our things and prepared to leave the basement, I realized I was developing a pattern of almost kissing Declan Hayes in inappropriate locations during festival-related emergencies. Which was probably not the kind of collaboration I should be known for.
“Holly,” Declan said as we reached the basement stairs.
The way he kept saying my name made my insides melt into puddles of warm goo. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay? You seem... I don’t know. Like you’re pulling back.”
The question was gentle, but it hit closer to home than I was comfortable with because I was pulling back, torn betweengenuine attraction to Declan and terror that I was making the same mistakes that had led to financial devastation and emotional betrayal.
“I’m fine,” I said, which was technically true if you ignored the part where I was questioning every feeling I was having and that I had a bump the size of an egg growing on my head. “Just focused on the festival crises.”
“Right,” Declan said, but there was something careful in his voice that suggested he didn’t entirely believe me. “The festival.”
When we emerged from the basement, the community center was already noticeably warmer, and the snow outside had intensified into the kind of picturesque winter storm that looked beautiful from inside a heated building.
“We should probably head home before the roads get too bad,” I said, gathering my planning materials with movements that felt slightly too brisk and organized.
“Holly, wait,” Declan said, and something in his tone made me pause. “If I’ve done something wrong, or if I’m making you uncomfortable?—”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I interrupted, because that was the truth. Declan had been nothing but respectful, helpful, and genuinely kind. The problem wasn’t his behavior—it was my inability to trust my own judgment about his intentions.
“Then what’s going on?” he asked quietly. “Because it feels like every time we have a moment, you immediately put up walls.”
The observation was accurate and uncomfortably perceptive. I was putting up walls, because moments with Declan felt dangerous in ways I wasn’t sure I was ready to handle.
“It’s complicated,” I said finally.
“Complicated how?”
I looked at Declan—gorgeous, kind, unfairly hot Declan, who’d spent his evening crawling around in a basement to solvea heating crisis for a community festival—and tried to find words for the tangle of attraction, fear, and self-doubt that Derek had left me with.
“Complicated because I don’t trust myself right now,” I admitted. “To know the difference between someone being genuinely interested and someone just being nice. To know if what I’m feeling is real or just... gratitude that someone’s treating me like I matter.”
