“My father left us when I was three,” she says finally. “He and my mother were never married. He said she was flighty and that I was difficult. Left a note on the counter, and that was that.”
“Is that why you kept the Hart name?”
“No,” she says with a frown. “Every Hart woman does. Good thing, too, because my father didn’t have much worth borrowing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” She hesitates. “I am, actually. Just not every minute.” She drags her knuckle over the ribbon until the skin pales. “I feel joy like a fever. Pain in the same register. I catch other people’s moods like colds. It’s ... embarrassing, sometimes.”
I frown. “It’s not embarrassing to be empathetic.”
“I used to think it made me soft. Or gullible. Like if I felt too much, it meant I wasn’t smart enough to separate my feelings from someone else’s.”
“And now?”
“Now, empathy feels like a trick,” she says. “I’m back, and everything wants something from me. The inn wants. The town wants. My own body wants. I don’t know how to give it all and keep myself in the process.”
“It must be difficult,” I say, “to feel everything that deeply and still be expected to carry on.”
She sighs. “Only child problems. No buffer, no backup, just me absorbing the whole room like a sponge with legs.” Her eyesflick toward me, soft and knowing. “We have that in common, don’t we?”
“Sure do.”
She shifts closer without the old flinch. Our shoulders touch, light as breath.
“Do you miss them at all?” she asks. “Your parents?”
“I miss the idea of them, I guess. Sometimes I miss the house we were in when I was little. There was a beam over the kitchen doorway with a dent where someone before us swung a pan too wide. For whatever reason, I liked that dent. The rest I don’t miss much.”
“I imagine you’d rather remember places than people,” she says softly. “Personally, I see my grandmother in everything. I miss her just the same. I don’t know how to fit that fact into any plan.”
We allow a long, lingering glance to settle between us. The lane is nearly empty. The brazier throws a slow heat. My breath fogs, and hers does, too.
If I leaned in, it wouldn’t be a surprise. It’d be the next brick in a line we’ve been laying for days—small touches, quiet confessions, glances that hold too long. Of course, it would end like this. A kiss that might undo us or finally name what we’ve been circling around.
Her pupils are wide as she looks up, like she’s daring me to do it. The ribbon at her wrist trembles once, then goes still. I can feel the exact inch where my restraint begins, and the edge where I’m already thinking of letting it slip.
I wait for her to move first—and she does. Barely. A single, torturous inch.
I’m gonna fucking do it. Kiss her because I want to. Because I’ve wanted to for days. Maybe longer.
“Wells!” Isla yells from down the row.
We both startle. Blink. Lean back at the same time. No lips. No ruin. I guess I’ll have to keep wondering what she would’ve tasted like.
“Do you have the spare matches?” Isla carries on, oblivious. “Jack spilled the cider again and put out half the table!”
Elsie laughs once, startled and bright, then swallows it back.
I scrub a hand over my mouth and stand.
She smiles, trying for casual. “I should—”
“Matches,” I say, patting my coat until I find the tin. “Here. You can be the Old Twelvey savior this year.”
The stricken look on her face would almost be funny if it didn’t ache so much. If it didn’t remind me that she’s still planning to leave. Before the season’s end, she means to walk away and rid herself of this town—of me—forever.
I hand her the tin like it might cool the moment back down. Our fingers brush, soft and tentative, and then don’t.
