“Long time no see.” His warm smile softened the sharp edges of my anxiety, but there was a flicker of curiosity in his eyes that made me squirm
“Yeah, hi.” I forced a smile and shoved my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see them tremble. “Uh… is Liam here?”
“Not today.” Ralph shook his head, then added carefully, “He’s over at the new spot. Renovations and all that. You should check it out.”
He reached for a napkin, scrawled an address on it, and slid it across the bar. The ink smudged under my fingers as I picked up the paper-thin cloth.
“Thanks,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
Ralph’s smile softened further and there was what looked like a flicker of relief in his eyes. “Go easy on him,” he said quietly.
Easy on him? I was the one walking toward a guillotine. Liam did what he was supposed to. He made the effort, showed me I was still on his mind, hinted that he was still interested, and I gave him nothing except for a read receipt. I nodded, my throat too tight to speak, then headed out with the napkin clenched tightly in my hand.
This wasn’t a bar.
It was an inn. A rundown, weather-beaten inn that looked as though it had been plucked straight from the eighties and then forgotten about. The building was a two-story structure with pale, sun-bleached pink paint and turquoise shutters. It had a large wooden deck that wrapped around its front, though it had seen better days. A few faded deck chairs sat abandoned on the wraparound porch, their cushions flattened and covered with a fine layer of dust or maybe sand.
I counted six workers bustling about, balancing sheets of plywood on their shoulders or hoisting stacks of materials into their arms. Ladders leaned precariously against the walls, and the rhythmic pounding of hammers echoed in the quiet evening air.
I double-checked the address scrawled on the napkin Ralph had given me, my thumb brushing over the numbers. Was this really the place? Liam’s new venture? I sat there, trying to understand why he’d chosen something so… dilapidated.
The longer I sat in my car, the more I second-guessed everything. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see me. Maybe?—
A sharp knock on my window made me jump.
I turned, startled, to see a man wearing a yellow hard hat with a dust-covered bandana pulled over his mouth. His eyes squinted with curiosity and, after a moment, he tugged the bandana down to reveal a friendly, slightly familiar looking grin.
“Can I help you?” He shouted.
I rolled down the window, heart hammering in my chest. There was no turning back now. Unless this was the wrongaddress, then I’d take the mixup as a sign from fate that Liam and I weren’t meant to be. That Dahlia was wrong and...
And this guy was staring at me, still waiting for my answer.
“Uh… maybe. Is Liam here?”
He raised a brow, clearly amused, before widening his grin. “Yeah. I’ll take you to him.”
My hands shook as I grabbed my keys and climbed out of the car. There really was no turning back now. I followed the guy through a glass-paned door that had seen better days. The white paint had chipped away on nearly half of it and one of the glass panels was cracked.
“Boss! Got a surprise for you!” He shouted once we were deep inside the drywall dust-covered room. I looked around, trying to visualize Liam’s plan. The space had promise. It had been gutted down to the studs—which would need a decorative flair—but overall, it was a large open room. Tables lined the center where it looked like Liam would build a large rectangular bar, and an additional bar was already built into the structure that serviced both the back of the room and the outside patio. Outside, I could see a large wooden deck that overlooked the ocean and a mostly, if not completely, empty pool.
The sound of heavy footsteps carried down a set of stairs and a muttered curse preceded a frustrated sigh. “Cam, I swear, if this is another one of your?—”
Liam came into view, his gray T-shirt streaked with dust and jeans worn and frayed at the knees. His brow furrowed as he wiped a hand down his face, but he froze when his eyes locked on me. “Holly?”
The way he said my name—it wasn’t just a word. It sounded like a prayer. A whispered, desperate hope.
Cam’s grin widened as he turned to leave us alone. “I’ll clear everyone out,” he said right before yelling, “Time to call it a day, boys!”
The clamor of tools and the hum of conversation carried into the room, but I hardly noticed because all I could focus on was the sound of my racing heart and the way Liam was looking at me. He took a step closer, his eyes searching mine, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was standing there.
“I…” A warm, fuzzy vibration stirred inside me. My magic was waking and it was long past March seventeenth, which meant Dahlia was right. There was no doubt that Liam was my soulmate. The pain of longing eased and for the first time in weeks, I felt like I was where I was meant to be. “I came to see you.”
Liam’s lips twitched, almost smiling, but his guard remained up. “It’s been a while.”
“I know,” I whispered, closing the space between us. “And I’m sorry. I was scared. What I feel when I’m with you... it’s overwhelming. I haven’t been in a relationship since high school, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever jump into one again.”
His eyes softened, the tension in his shoulders easing just enough to show the cracks in his armor. He wanted this.Please tell me he still wants this.“And now?”
