She walked out the door, got in her car, and drove toward the terrifying, wonderful possibility of happiness.
The glow didn’t fade the whole way there.
10
GRAND GESTURE. WITCH-STYLE
The Shady Pines Motel sat at the edge of town like an afterthought, sandwiched between a gas station and an abandoned fruit stand.It was the kind of place that had probably been charming in 1972 and had been stubbornly resisting updates ever since, all wood-paneled doors and flickering neon and a parking lot that had more potholes than pavement.
Cassie pulled in next to Margaret’s old truck.
For a moment, she just sat there, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, the glow that had been radiating from her skin for the past twenty minutes pulsing in time with her heartbeat. The motel’s sign buzzed overhead, the Y in SHADY flickering in and out like it was having an existential crisis.
She knew exactly how it felt.
Margaret had been characteristically brisk when Cassie showed up on her doorstep at seven in the morning, wild-eyed and still faintly luminescent.
“Room 12. Second floor, corner unit.” She’d handed Cassie a thermos of tea without being asked. “He’s been there since he left your place. Hasn’t checked out. Hasn’t gone anywhere except the hardware store.”
“The hardware store?”
“Apparently the sink in his room was dripping.” Margaret’s expression had been carefully neutral, but her eyes sparkled. “He fixed it. Also the wobbly railing on the stairs, the squeaky door on room 8, and the ice machine that hadn’t worked in six years.”
Of course he had.
Cassie had laughed—a wet, hiccupping sound that was half sob. “He can’t help himself, can he?”
“No more than you can help glowing like a firefly when you’re emotional.” Margaret had patted her arm. “Go get your handyman, child. Some things don’t need magic to work.”
Now, sitting in the parking lot with the engine cooling and her courage threatening to evaporate, Cassie forced herself to breathe.
You can do this. You came all this way. You finally figured out what you want.
Now you just have to say it out loud.
To hisface.
Without setting anything on fire.
She got out of the car before she could talk herself out of it.
The stairs to the second floor were concrete and creaky, and she noticed as she climbed that the railing was, in fact, rock-solid. No wobble at all. Because Liam had been here for two days with nothing to do but wait and fix things, and god, that was so perfectlyhimthat her chest ached.
Room 12 was at the end of the walkway, its door painted a faded turquoise that had probably been cheerful once. Through the thin walls, she could hear the sound of running water. A radio playing something tinny and old.
She raised her hand to knock.
Paused.
Lowered it.
What if he doesn’t want to hear it? What if he’s done? What if she’d pushed him away one too many times and he’d finally accepted that she was too much work, too much chaos, too much?—
The door opened.
Liam stood there in jeans and a gray t-shirt, a wrench in one hand, looking exactly as grumpy and rumpled and unfairly attractive as he had the day she’d accidentally summoned him into her kitchen. His hair was damp. His jaw was set. His eyes—those storm-gray eyes that had been watching her withvarying degrees of exasperation and something warmer for weeks—went wide.
“Cassie.”
