Her eyes dart between us suspiciously.
“Dean, Callum,” she says slowly. “Didn’t expect to see you both. What’s…what’s up?”
Dean, bless him, shifts awkwardly beside me, shoving his hands into his pockets.
I force a small shrug, trying to play it cool even though my heart is hammering hard enough that I can feel it in my ears. “Just braving the storm to check out your shop. Grant said it was something special. He wasn’t wrong.”
Her cheeks flush a faint pink at the compliment, but it doesn’t soften her. If anything, her posture straightens, chin rising as her walls go up higher.
She glances past us toward the front windows, eyes flicking toward the door like she’s mentally mapping out an exit.
Off indeed.
“Thanks. It was a lot of work, but worth it.” Her grip tightens slightly on the box in her hands, and her next words come out quick, practiced. “I’ve got a lot to do today before I can close up before the storm gets too bad, so I really should be getting back to it.”
She’s trying to get rid of us.
I see it clear as day.
She’s concerned we’re going to corner her, and she’s trying to find a way out without making a scene.
Dean doesn’t seem to notice, he’s too busy pretending to admire a nearby display of snow globes, but I see every flicker in Noelle’s expression, every tell.
I’ve spent years reading people and she’s practically vibrating with nerves.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to do this, that she doesn’t have to act like we’re strangers or ghosts from a past better left buried.
I want to tell her that I’m not here to hurt her, that all I’ve wanted since that weekend is to see her again, to know that she’s okay.
But there’s something else burning in me, something I can’t swallow down no matter how hard I try.
That boy.
Eli.
I glance at him again, perched behind the counter as he stares at us with those impossibly bright hazel eyes.
Would she really have kept something like that from us?
Would she really have raised a child—ourchild—without ever saying a word to us about it?
What if we never returned to this state?
Would he have tried to find us after he turned eighteen?
The weight of those questions presses down on me until it’s almost hard to breathe.
I look back at her, and for a second our eyes meet.
I see it then, the panic, the guilt, and something else underneath. Something that looks a lot like fear.
I swallow hard, forcing the words out past the dryness in my throat. “He seems like a great kid.”
Her gaze sharpens instantly. “Yeah. He is.”
My lips part to say something else, but the words die instantly on my tongue. The radio station switches over to another rendition of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Before the silence between us can grow too heavy, Eli leans forward on his stool, palms pressed flat on the counter, grinning from ear to ear.
