She cut herself off, shoulders hitching.
I stepped closer but stayed just out of reach. “You’re not doing this alone.”
Her head turned sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, slow and deliberate, “we’re going to help you rebuild.”
We.
The word came easy, and I hoped she heard the ring of truth.
Her brows rose. “We?”
“Me,” I clarified. “And the guys from the station. A couple of other folks. You’ve seen the fundraiser.”
Color climbed into her cheeks. “Yeah.” She sounded like the word tasted strange. “I’ve seen it.”
I thought of the number I’d seen last night before I forced myself to stop refreshing the page. It had kept climbing anyway.
“People want you back on Main Street. They want Pour Decisions. The fancy drinks. The caffeine. You.”
Her throat worked around a swallow. “They want their sugar and their espresso.”
“I’ve seen the comments,” I said quietly. “It’s more than that.”
She looked away fast, blinking hard.
I gave her a moment to collect herself. “Look, we’ve already started pulling some strings. Meatball can handle rewiring the electrical to code. Tyler’s cousin has a line on secondhand restaurant gear. Chief okayed using us all as a workforce under the ‘community outreach’ umbrella. Basically, all that’s missing is you and a plan.”
She stared into the hollow truck. For a few seconds, all I heard was the wind and the distant lowing of one of Cartwright’s cows.
“This is… insane,” she said finally. “You realize that, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “But you make really good coffee. Seems worth a little insanity.”
That earned me a sideways look, the ghost of a glare. It didn’t quite land; her eyes were too shiny.
“What if I say no?” she asked. “What if I tell you this is too much, and I can’t pay you, and I can’t deal with having… people in my space, and I’m just done?”
My chest clenched. “Then we unhook it and haul it to the yard, and it rusts there like every other wreck that never made it back on the road.” I let the picture hang between us for a beat. “Is that what you want?”
She didn’t answer.
“What I want,” she said eventually, voice low, “is my truck exactly like it was, parked in its usual spot, with a line of people waiting and my staff bitching because the milk fridge is freezing things in the back again.”
“I can’t give you exactly like it was,” I said. “But we can get you close. Maybe better.”
She made a disbelieving noise. “Better.”
“More efficient layout,” I said. “Updated wiring. New equipment that doesn’t threaten to die every time you pull a double shot. Heat that doesn’t require a portable space heater.”
That got a tiny huff out of her. “That heater was perfectly fine.”
“It was a fire hazard.”
“It was not.” She sniffed. “It was… cozy.”
“Jess.” Somehow her name came out softer than I meant. “You don’t have to decide everything right now. Just… step inside. Check out what we’re working with.”
