At the front door, I hesitated. “Okay, I’m going to head out.”
She nodded. “Thanks for the ride. Sorry if she got ice cream all over your new car.”
I turned the knob, but stopped.
Selene hadn’t moved. She was still standing there in the glow of the hall light, arms folded like she was holding herself together.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I knew one thing for sure:
This—her, Winnie, the routine of this life—it was starting to feel like something I didn’t want to give up. Even if I wasn’t supposed to want it.
“Night,” I said.
“Good night,” she echoed.
I stepped onto the porch, into the hush of early autumn air and crickets, and didn’t look back.
TWELVE
AUSTIN
At the construction site,the midday sun was already hot as fuck, but I didn’t mind the heat. It soaked into my skin, loosening the knots in my back and slicking sweat down my spine. It was the kind of heat that made the air shimmer off a tin roof and left the wood smelling like sap and sunburn. The Midwest always did that—made you think summer was over, then blasted you with an unexpected heat wave. It was one of the things I missed most when I had moved away—familiar Michigan mornings that started breezy and cool, then transitioned to a warmth that left your muscles languid.
The construction crew was busy framing the inside of what once was a barn at Star Harbor Farms. Elodie Darling had somehow befriended the local Amish community and wrangled a deal that resulted in an incredible barn raising. Wes’s construction company was now tasked with framing the inside to be transformed into a farm-to-table restaurant that Cal would run.
I looked around at the stacks of wood and the beams already going up, and I could see it. As a kid, I had always wanted to go to Star Harbor Farms to pick a pumpkin or go on a hayride, but my mother wouldn’t have been caught dead in Dad’s town.As was typical, I had been relegated to the outskirts, an outsider always looking in, and I’d never gotten to experience the charm of a family pumpkin patch. I remembered driving through Star Harbor, sitting in the car with the windows cracked, watching other kids carry pumpkins too big for their arms. Once, I’d begged. My mom had only lit a cigarette and told me to stop acting poor.
Elodie Darling had taken over the farm with the goal of bringing it back to its former glory, and I couldn’t help but smile. I could already see how Winnie would tear through the corn maze or consume countless cider doughnuts without a second thought. I chuckled to myself.
“What’s got you grinning like a fool? Hot date last night or just thinking about your babysitting duties?” Scott, a guy in his forties and known to stir the pot, grinned.
I looked at him but didn’t engage.
“Leave Mary Poppins alone.” Jackson snorted. “He’s the hottest manny in Michigan. We should all be so lucky.”
Scott whistled. “Hell, I’d be a manny, too, if it meant spending all my free time with Selene Darling. That woman’s a whole meal.”
That did it.
My jaw flexed. I wasn’t blind—Selene was beautiful, but there was something about hearing it from Scott’s mouth that made it sound wrong.
Like they didn’t see the woman she was.
But was I really any better? My words still echoed, cocky and low:You can think about me later. When you touch yourself.
Where the hell did I get the balls to say that? The audacity to think that a woman like Selene should be spoken to that way.
As I berated myself, the image of her smile and flushed cheeks flashed in my mind. A part of me hoped she not onlydidn’t hate it, but also liked it a little bit. At least it didn’t seem like she was holding it against me.
“Will you buffoons get to work? Otherwise I’m calling Wes, and trust me, he is in no mood to put up with any of your bullshit.” Cal’s stern voice echoed through the empty barn. “He also said if one more board goes up crooked, he’s lighting this place on fire ... again.”
The crew chuckled at the crass joke—the barnhadbeen on fire only a few months ago—but we softened at the mention of our absent boss’s name.
The joke landed, but no one laughed long. Not when the weight of Wes’s absence still hung over the jobsite like dust in the rafters.
Scott looked up. “Hey, I’ll take the heat if that gets him out of that fucking house.”
Murmurs and agreements and head nods rippled through the crew. Wes’s accident had taken more than just his leg. It had taken its toll on his mental health, too, and we all could sense it. He’d been holed up in his house for weeks, only opening the door for a select few.
