I lean against the counter, heart pounding, face flushed. “Idiot,” I whisper—to him, to me, to the universe.
Outside, the lighthouse shadow cuts across the ground like a line I already know I’ll cross.
The door shuts, and the quiet that follows feels personal. The kind of quiet that remembers.
I stand there too long, pulse still thrumming where his thumb brushed my cheek. The smell of cedar and sea air lingers, like he left part of himself behind on purpose. My brain, the traitor, replays the moment on repeat: his eyes locking on mine, the heat there, the restraint. That deliberatenot yet.
I press a hand to my chest. “Nope,” I say out loud to the empty shop. “Absolutely not. We are not doing this again.”
The books, naturally, disagree.
Even the display table looks smug—stacked high with slow-burn romances and second-chance tropes. There’s one on top titledWhen He Came Back. Of course there is.
I grab it, flip it upside down, and mutter, “You hush.”
It’s ridiculous, this whole thing. I’m not fifteen. I have responsibilities, deadlines, invoices, and an aging lighthouse with a leaky roof. I don’t have time for Crew Wright and his stupid kind eyes and his big, apologetic hands.
But as the hours crawl by, I can’t shake it—the way his voice dropped when he said my name. The careful way he stepped back, like he knew exactly how closetoo closereally was.
By late afternoon, the sun paints long gold streaks across the counter. The bell above the door rings occasionally—locals stopping in for used paperbacks and tourists snapping photos of the spiral staircase—but it all feels like static. Every time the door opens, I half expect him to walk back through it.
He doesn’t.
By the time I close up, the shop smells like candle wax and sea salt, and my head is a mess of thoughts I can’t catalog. I sweep the floor twice because sweeping is easier than feeling. When that doesn’t help, I do what I always do when my heart won’t quiet down—I pull a book off the shelf and start reading.
It’s one of the ones I inherited from my grandfather’s attic. The spine is cracked, and the margins are full of notesin his sharp handwriting. He said books teach you what people can’t say out loud.
Tonight, the words don’t comfort me. They feel like accusations.
I set it aside, pour the last of the tea from this morning, and step outside. The wind carries the scent of the bay, sharp and briny. The light above the tower sweeps out over the water, steady as a heartbeat. I lean on the railing, mug warm between my hands, and try to breathe around the knot in my chest.
I should feel proud. The shop’s doing better than ever. The roof’s getting repaired next week. I’ve built something solid out of the wreckage of what used to be heartbreak.
But all I can think about is how solid doesn’t feel the same as alive.
I used to tell myself that what happened with Crew was ancient history. A bad high school chapter I’d long since closed. But then he came back, looking like temptation and redemption in one very inconvenient package, and suddenly, the past doesn’t feel that far away.
And the worst part? I don’t even hate him for it anymore.
I tip my head back, look up at the stars peeking through the cloud cover, and whisper to no one, “You’re going to ruin me again, aren’t you?”
The wind doesn’t answer, but the lighthouse hums softly—a low, steady sound like the sea remembering something it promised to forget.
I take a long sip of tea, the cinnamon faint now but still there, haunting the edges of every thought.
Later, upstairs, the house creaks the way old houses do. I try to distract myself with busywork: folding laundry, organizing receipts, alphabetizing romance novels by author. But my brain won’t stop wandering back to the way his hand felt against my skin.
It wasn’t even a kiss. It was nothing. A touch. A second. A heartbeat.
And somehow it’s everything.
I sink onto the couch, wrap myself in the blanket, and stare at the window. From here, I can just barely see the glow of Otter Creek Farm across the bay. One warm light still burns in the distance.
It feels like he’s looking back.
“Don’t do this,” I whisper. “You know better.”
But my heart doesn’t care about rules. It’s already moving—stupid and soft and hopeful—toward the one man who’s both my biggest mistake and my favorite memory.
