Outside, the sun blazes over the valley, but I can’t shake the feeling that the shadows just got darker.
CHAPTER 12
Tristan
I walk straightto the truck, my jaw tight, pulse hammering against my throat. The hardware store door snapping shut behind me, metallic and final, rings too loudly in the quiet morning.
Sheshouldn’t have been there.
I tell myself that as I climb inside, but her scent clings to my hands—warm, clean, and faintly sweet. Like wild honey and rain.
It’s in my lungs, on my clothes, burned into the space between one heartbeat and the next.
I should’ve left the second I saw her.
I was only in town to pick up shipment papers and grab a coffee. But then I remembered we needed a part at the distillery, so I went into the hardware store. A quick errand—nothing more.
Then she turned the corner, her head bent over her phone, and slammed into me like the world was conspiring to remind me how little control I actually have.
Her phone tumbled to the floor, and I grabbed it, handing it to her.
For one second, her fingers brushed mine. Small. Soft.Real.
The sound she made—a startled breath, not even a word—lodged somewhere deep and wrong inside me.
Now every thought feels louder. Every excuse thinner.
I start the engine, letting it idle while I try to breathe through the restlessness.
The town looks the same as always—weathered storefronts, the distillery truck rolling past, a couple of locals pretending not to watch me.
But it feels different. Like she already changed the air.
I press my palms against the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. “Get it together,” I mutter.
It doesn’t work.
Because the truth is, I liked it. The shock of her hitting me, the way her eyes widened—honey-colored, too bright for this place, uncertain and unguarded. The heat that came off her through that thin shirt.
I liked ittoo much.
She has no idea who I am.
No idea that I’ve watched her house from the ridge.
No idea that I came into town just trying to clear my head, to feelnormalagain for five damn minutes—until she was suddenly there.
The thought should make me feel ashamed.
It doesn’t.
It just makes me hungry.
I pull out of the lot, heading nowhere in particular, the road winding toward the edge of town where the valley opens up. The hills are still wet from last night’s fog, sunlight scattering across the vines—hervines.
I picture her returning to the estate and setting those batteries on the counter, maybe humming to herself, still thinking about the stranger she met in town.
Still thinking aboutme.
