“How about this: you’re going to help me, okay?”
Hand in his, he led me to the doorway, where he had me stand where it was dry and hold his tools. Focused on my job of taking care of his things and watching him work, I didn’t notice the pounding rain or the flashes of lightning.
“Thank you,” he said once he’d fixed the final board to the outside of Marigold’s. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
My eyes sparkled when I looked up at him. From the door, I watched as my grandmother greeted him beneath her bright orange umbrella, motioning to the windows and leaning down to gather him in her arms. She always said that the shop might’vebeen totally destroyed if it hadn’t been for our young guardian angel.
Margot’s voice broke my reverie. “Earth to Georgie. Where did you go?”
I blinked, and it was fifteen years later. He watched me from that same door, head cocked to the side and a tiny smile playing on his lips.
My grandmother’s words in her letter came rushing back:
I can’t tell you what your dreams are. Only you can decide that. Maybe they’re tucked in the Cove, maybe they’re out in the wide world. Maybe they’re in the arms of someone I wish I could’ve met. Wherever those dreams are, don’t be afraid of them.
And it felt like my heart tore open from the inside. Shehadmet him—I just didn’t know it until now.
“Are you okay?” Rhett asked, eyebrows drawn together.
My entire world had been flipped upside down. Yet, nothing had really changed. It was just something else that made my reality all the more crushing.
I shrugged. “You just reminded me of something. That’s all.”
Outside, the sky had darkened another shade, wind tossing branches against the shop windows that weren’t yet covered. Main Street was alive with activity—people carrying supplies home, hammering boards, and calling across the street to one another. A current pulsed in the air, equal parts fear and excitement.
It reminded me of festival mornings, except instead of the sweet smell of pie, there was the hum of impending thunder.
???
By noon, the rain had picked up, and with it, the town’s energy. Rhett drove us in his truck down to a bigger hardware store outside the Cove, where we loaded sandbags for more shop owners. Margot forced me to sit in the middle, where my thigh brushed against his at every bump. I shoved my hands between my knees to keep our fingers from accidentally touching.
Back in town, we distributed the bags to everyone who needed it and helped the more elderly shop owners position them outside. My arms screamed in protest, but each drop and each heft felt like a contribution to whatreallymattered.
If I was going to make speeches about how special the community was, then I wouldn’t back down now.
“I forgot how fast we pull together in an emergency,” I said, brushing wet hair from my face.
Rhett, lifting another bag onto his shoulder, smiled faintly. “Always has.”
My chest ached as he lugged two bags to the Market, where Mr. Henderson waited by his boarded up window. Did he know? Had he remembered that entire time that we’d already met? I shook my thoughts away and reached for another sandbag.
???
Dusk fell and the sky turned the color of old bruises. The first real crack of thunder rolled across the water, shaking the ground beneath our feet.
Rhett dropped me at home just as the rain began to come down in sheets, slamming against the shuttered windows with a force that made my stomach twist. I could hear Easton howling from the street.
Rhett helped me to the sidewalk. “You’ll be safe here,” he said, voice steady even as the wind howled and whipped around us.
I wanted to believe him—to hold onto the warmth of his presence, and the way that everyone in Bluebell Cove felt like a human safety net.
We walked up the steps of my porch. A lock of Rhett’s hair hung in front of his eyes and dripped down his chin. He gave up on a jacket hours ago, so his t-shirt was completely soaked with sweat, rain, and patches of sand here and there.
Eerily similar to the Rhett that arrived on Marigold’s doorstep fifteen years ago.
Rhett’s jaw tensed, and when he stepped closer to me, I didn’t move away. The hope that shone in his eyes made my chest tight. “Will you be okay here alone?”
Alone. I could practically feel a piece of my heart chip off already.
