And I found it refreshing, really,reallyrefreshing.
Maybe I’d been burned out for a while now, but there was something about sitting down and helping with a basic task like working on signs for a Christmas concert that was refilling my well in ways that I couldn’t quite explain.
It didn’t hurt that it gave me close proximity to Skye, even though she still largely avoided conversation with me.Still, every once in a while, I’d catch her looking at me, her eyes unreadable, and she’d quickly look away.
My first love.
It was hard not to beat myself up for past choices when I was back seeing her every day. What if… there were so manywhat ifsrunning through my head.
I’d been young and stupid. I’d let my pride get in the way of our love, focusing on the record contract instead of building together with Skye. She’d been right. Even then. Our music was good enough that it wouldn’t have been our only chance for success.
When I’d learned she’d married a few years after our breakup, I’d hit the bottle pretty hard, and my angstiest album ever had been born. My heartbreak had earned me a lot of money, and later, when I’d heard about her divorce, my most fun and lighthearted album had followed. Whether I liked it or not, Skye had been a part of my music since day one. She was the pillar holding up my career, and even though I’d been the one to take an axe to it, I couldn’t help but hold some hope that one day she’d let me back in.
Even if just as a friend—though every ounce of me wanted more. I hadn’t known that before coming here, and yet, admitting that thought to myself made me realize I’d known it all along. It was ridiculous, sometimes, the games we played with ourselves. Maybe it was too much to hope that Skye would let me back into her life again, but we were both here, now, in this moment together.
So all I could do was try.
Five
SKYE
There are few betrayals more personal than a shower that lies to you.
I turned the hot tap and waited. The pipes coughed. The boiler whirred. I stuck a hopeful hand under the spray and was rewarded with a blast of Arctic punishment that made my soul leave my body and hover near the ceiling, filing a complaint.
“Traitor,” I told the shower. It hissed in what I took as agreement.
Lovely. Now I needed to fix this before the guests started complaining. Dreading having to call the annoying plumber, I wrapped myself in my robe, shoved my feet into slipper-socks with pom-poms that had seen better days, and went downstairs. I’d barely hit the last step when I heard the metallic clank of tools, a muffled curse, and the suspiciouslyalive rattle of my ancient hot-water heater.
I rounded the corner to the utility cupboard, ready to tell off a burglar with hopefully excellent DIY skills, and stopped so hard my slippers squeaked.
Noah was kneeling on the floor with the cupboard door open and his shoulders inside like he intended to climb into Narnia via the boiler. His jacket was on the floor, sleeves were shoved up, and his forearms flexed around a tool I did not know the name of, which felt like a personal failing and kind of annoyed me. There were two safety manuals open on the floor, neither of which he seemed to be reading, and the muscles in his arms flexed.
It would be rude of me to ogle him while he was working, but apparently it was too early in the morning for me to remember my manners, and I took a moment to appreciate his very fine backside. I used to wrap my hands around his waist and dig my palms into the back seat of his jeans, loving how he felt beneath my hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked, which came out more sharply than I intended because I was cold and the morning had already betrayed me and also it hurt to think of sexy moments from the past with him.
He startled, bumped his head, and swore in a tone that even would have made the Book Bitches scold him.
“Good morning,” he said, backing out of the cupboard, big and awkward and annoyingly handsome, into my hallway. “I’m negotiating with your hot-water heater.”
“Oh good,” I said. “Because it’s been very stubborn lately and has refused all my reasonable offers. Have you tried threatening it with a sledgehammer?”
“Step one on my list,” he said, wiping his hand on hisshirt. “Step two is asking it nicely with a spanner. Step three is calling Gregory. He seems to know all the right people to fix things in town.”
“You can’t just … fix things,” I said, flailing my hands. “That’s not … that’s not how we do this.”
“We?” He tilted his head and I flushed.
“I mean. Here. At the inn,” I said, waving at the cupboard. “I have a system.”
“It appears your system is failing,” he said mildly, and the worst thing was he wasn’t wrong. It was embarrassing to have him see the worn edges of my struggling business.
“Why are you in my cupboard, Noah?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Your pipes sounded like a rave in a tin can. There’s a leak right there.” He pointed, and I had to edge closer to see, which meant I had to smell him. Coffee and soap and a hint of cocoa. The nerve. “It’s dripping onto the pilot, which means it’s struggling to stay lit.”
He touched something with the spanner, the boiler sighed, then caught, then purred in a way I haven’t heard in months.
