I drove home slowly,my hands locked on the wheel and Nate’s words circling in my head like they were stuck on a loop.
Stop thinking. Just be yourself.
Easy for him to say. Nate walked through the world in that effortlessly grounded way that made people feel steadier just by standing near him. Meanwhile, if I didn’t rehearse a conversation beforehand, half my brain shut down. The other half went into diagnostics mode.
I pulled into my driveway and let my SUV idle for a moment before turning off the engine. The house was lit up with lanterns glowing on the porch. It looked warm and inviting, which was ironic considering I’d turned it into a fortress.
A safe one. A quiet one. Everything I needed.
Everything except someone to share it with.
That thought hit hard and wouldn’t leave. I’d optimized this house for solitude, and for the first time, that felt like a miscalculation.
I shook my head, annoyed at myself for being maudlin, and grabbed the bottle of Chianti from the back seat Rosa had insisted I bring home as I’d left the restaurant.
The moment the door closed behind me, silence descended. Heavy and weighted. Typically, I basked in the absence of noise. A relief after spending all day navigating people and their unpredictable rhythms and whims. Tonight, though, the quiet pressed in on me.
I detoured to the kitchen, grabbed a corkscrew and a glass, and headed straight for my office. If I stopped moving, I’d talk myself out of it. Because what I was about to do crossed about fifteen different ethical lines, and violated every principle I claimed to have about user data and consent. Even understanding what a violation this was—how I’d probably hate myself for it later—my feet kept moving.
My fingers flicked on the lamp on the table just inside the door, casting warm light over a space.
I lowered into my chair and opened the backend to the app I’d built.
Staring at the cascading code was like looking into the bones of my life. I’d written the first version during a caffeine-fueled sprint at Stanford because Marcus had bet me I couldn’t build an app that matched people better than his floundering one did. Not only had it performed better—it had blown his idea out of the water and gotten me a check with more zeroes than my twenty-year-old brain could process.
The irony, of course, was that I—the creator of the most accurate compatibility matchmaking system in the country—had never successfully dated anyone.
I’d built an empire on helping people find love, and I couldn’t even get through a first date without catastrophic awkwardness. This app had made millions of people ridiculously happy. It had created families. It had been featured in wedding speeches and credited in birth announcements.
And I’d spent every year since its launch more isolated than the one before.
The success had been suffocating. Suddenly, everyone wanted something from me—interviews, appearances, partnerships, money. Women who’d never looked at me twice were suddenly interested, but not in me. In what I represented. The success story. The bank account. The access.
I’d moved to Mistletoe Bay to escape it all. To become anonymous.
And then I’d taken one look at Holly Bascombe, and I’d realized anonymity wasn’t what I wanted.
I desperately wanted to be known.
I uncorked the Chianti, my hands unsteady enough that the bottle neck clinked against the rim of the glass as I poured. I took a long sip, felt the wine burn warm down my throat, and exhaled slowly.
One more chance to back out. To close my laptop and go to bed like a rational human being.
Instead, I pulled up Holly’s social media, and every public-facing breadcrumb she’d ever left for prospective customers or bored relatives or anyone who wanted to see pretty flowers. All technically public. All easy to justify as “research” if anyone ever asked—which no one ever would, because I’d rather die than tell another living soul.
I typed in the basic demographic data, starting with Holly’s birthday, which I’d gleaned from posts on her Facebook page. March 15—Pisces sun, Virgo moon, Cancer rising.
When I first started developing the app, astrology had seemed too “woo-woo” for a serious algorithm. But the barista at the coffee shop where I worked was really into that stuff and had convinced me it was worth including. “It gives you the full picture,” she’d argued passionately. “Who they are inside, how they feel, how they act.”
I still didn’t put much stock in it personally, but I couldn’t deny the data supported her claim. The app’s accuracy had jumped eleven percent after I added astrological profiling.
Her interests were easy to fill out: floral design, architecture, romantic comedies, mystery novels, baking (poorly, according to her own captions), crocheting, and long walks on the beach. She’d posted that last one with a laughing emoji, self-aware about the cliché, but she’d meant it.
Her values were another easy input: community, creativity, loyalty, honesty, and mutual support.
Her goals, though? I had to think about that one. I sat back, thumb brushing absently over the mouse.
Holly didn’t want a knight in shining armor. She didn’t want a tech bro with a fat wallet. She wanted someone steady. Someone who showed up when they said they would. Someone who’d put her first.
