Mrs. Winthrop:Blue sweater. Rug seating. Also a dab of vanilla behind the knees. It’s science.
Me:ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Mrs. Winthrop:Your loss.
I laugh alone in the middle of my shop and don’t feel alone at all.
At seven, I boil water and set out cups and cookies and the hardcover stack he paid for like a ridiculous, perfect man. At seven fifteen, I check the lantern ropes even though they’re fine. At seven twenty-eight, I stand with my hand on the light switch and breathe like I am not about to invite history up a narrow staircase.
At seven thirty on the dot, the bell rings.
I open the door. He stands there, wind-tousled, jacket unzipped, hair damp at the edges. He lifts a thermos like an offering.
“I know this night comes with tea. But I brought a peace offering,” he says. “Again.”
“What’s in it?”
“Cinnamon tea,” he says, and smiles like a man about to tell the truth.
I step back, let him in, and close the door behind him. The lighthouse settles around us, patient and old and extremely nosy.
“Books first,” I say, because control is a warm blanket, and I like being warm. “Tea second. Then cookies. Then—”
“Questions,” he says, and I blink.
“Science,” I mutter.
He grins. “Lead the way, Book Girl.”
I pick up the gloves and the thermos. He takes the books. We climb—step, breath, hand to rail—and at the top, in the lantern room, the glass holds steady, the rope hums, and the air goes sweet with cinnamon and the hope of something like repair.
Not a date, I tell myself one last time, purely for tradition.
Then I sit on the rug beside him, set the cups between us, and admit, quietly, when the room is listening and nobody else is, “I’m nervous.”
“Me, too,” he says, and says it like an invitation instead of a warning.
We don’t kiss. We don’t touch. Not yet. We drink tea, we eat cookies, and we read a page aloud from a book about second chances because I am who I am and he is who he has decided to be.
We ask each other questions we should have asked a decade ago.
And when the hour we auctioned finally runs out, neither of us moves to stand. Until, with the strength of one thousand men, I walk Crew to the door and bid him good night. Even though I want to do anything but.
Chapter Six – Crew
The morning after tastes like dry cinnamon and a decision I didn’t let myself make.
Sun slams through the east windows as if it owns the place while the kettle screams like it’s filing a complaint with management. The old farmhouse floors carry every sound the way Coral Bell Cove carries a rumor—straight through the bones.
I stand at the sink in yesterday’s T-shirt, pour coffee that could file a restraining order against water, and try not to run last night on a loop. It runs anyway. Her laugh tripping over steam. The softclickof porcelain on old wood. The way our knees touched and pretended not to. The lantern room catching our breath and keeping it.
I take a swallow too big, burn my tongue, and mutter at the mug like it started this. The air smells like butter, salt, and the faint iron of rain that might or might not happen. Every wire inside me hums like the lighthouse lamp before it flares. This is ridiculous. I’m a grown man. I’ve broken ribs, separated shoulders, stood in front of eighty thousand people, and told a defense to come and get me. Yet one woman in a blue sweater sayshonest questions, and I’m a live wire with legs.
Move. That’s the rule. When thinking gets loud, you move.
I grab a sweatshirt, and head out to the porch where the morning is trying like hell to be charming. Early fall at Otter Creek tastes like apples and diesel. Pecan trees stand black and confident against a sky that’s already forgetting summer. Cows move in the lower pasture. Somewhere, a tractor coughs awake like an old man with opinions. I breathe it in and pretend thereisn’t a lighthouse-shaped outline stamped against the inside of my eyelids.
Marcus shows up at eight with resistance bands and that smug monk patience that makes me want to be better and punch him, in that order. “Morning, prodigal shoulder,” he says, stepping into the barn gym like a man entering church with snacks. The barn’s cool and smells like hay and lemon disinfectant. Dust floats in the light slats, polite as parishioners.
