The music box changed everything.
It was a small thing—a broken heirloom she’d mentioned in passing, something her grandmother had given her, something her ex-husband had knocked off a shelf and never botheredto fix. She’d found it while sorting through old boxes, and the look on her face when she held the pieces had been so raw, so unguarded, that Liam had felt it through the binding like a punch to the chest.
He’d fixed things his whole life. It was what he did—broken pipes, broken fences, broken houses. He was good at seeing how pieces fit together, at making things work again.
He wasn’t supposed to fixher.
But he took the music box anyway. Spent an evening at the table with tiny gears and delicate springs, working by the light of the emotional walls that kept shifting from anxious yellow to curious amber. The toaster offered commentary in French. The cat watched from the counter with an expression of feline judgment.
And when he handed it back to her, when she wound the key and the melody played for the first time in years?—
She smiled.
Not the tight, apologetic smile she used when she was trying to take up less space. Not the nervous smile she deployed when she thought she’d done something wrong. This was something else entirely: surprised, delighted,radiant.
Something cracked open in his chest.
He’d been closed off for so long. Since Fiona. Since the divorce. Since he’d realized he couldn’t trust his own feelings and had decided it was safernot to have any. He’d built walls around himself as solid as any he’d ever constructed professionally, and he’d been perfectly content behind them.
Cassie Morgan and her broken music box had just put a fissure in the foundation.
Well, he thought, watching her cradle the music box like it was precious.That’s inconvenient.
He leftbecause she asked him to.
Not because the binding broke—though it did, finally, severed by her desperate midnight spell and the letter from her great-aunt that had given her permission to want things. Not because he wanted to go.
But because she’d spent so long being told she was too much that she couldn’t believe anyone would choose to stay. And he couldn’tmakeher believe it. That was the one thing he’d learned from Fiona: you couldn’t force someone to feel something they weren’t ready to feel. Even with magic. Even with good intentions.
So he went to the motel on Route 9.
And he stayed.
Close enough to come back. Close enough for her to find him. Close enough that if she figured it out—if she finally understood that he wasn’t leaving, that he’dneverbeen planning to leave, that thebinding had been an inconvenience but not the reason he was there—she would know where to look.
The motel was terrible. The faucet dripped. The railing wobbled. The ice machine hadn’t worked in years.
He fixed all of it, because he didn’t know how to sit still, and because fixing things was easier than thinking about the woman twenty minutes away who didn’t believe she deserved to be chosen.
Two days.
That’s how long it took.
He was under the bathroom sink when he felt it—a shift in the air, a warmth that had nothing to do with the climate. The binding was gone, but something else had taken its place. Something that felt likeher, like Cassie, like the way she glowed when she wasn’t trying to hide.
He stood up. Opened the door.
And there she was.
Standing in the motel parking lot, shimmering with soft golden light, looking at him like she’d finally figured out the answer to a question she’d been afraid to ask.
There she is, he thought.Finally.
“The bathroom faucet?” she asked, because she was ridiculous and he loved her for it.
“Dripping,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
She laughed—nervous and wet and perfect—and started talking. Apologizing. Explaining. Getting everything wrong and right at the same time, words tumbling over each other like she was afraid he’d disappear if she stopped.
