“Hell, no.” I shake my head. “I love my brother, but I don’t need him up my ass on the daily.”
By this point, the first rays of morning light are starting to creep through the window, turning the sky from gray to shades of deep purple and pink.
“I’ll rent a house,” I continue. “One for me and Ellie, one for Tyler. We’ll find a gym to use.”
“Felix.” Her smile is sweet, almost hesitant, and my heart starts to gallop in response. “My mom’s house—my house,” she corrects herself, “has three bedrooms. You’ve been there when it was Sadie’s. It’s not fancy or full of expensive gym equipment, but being together in one place would make the logistics one less thing either of us has to deal with.”
“Now who’s taking care of who?” I ask, but there’s no heat in it.
The space between us is suddenly charged with all the things we have to figure out—together and on our own.
Then we both blurt: “We can’t have sex again.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“Too complicated,” she agrees.
I reach across the island to shake on it. Our palms press together, and I can’t help but think about pulling her closer. Except, nope.Waytoo complicated. I force myself to release herand pretend to adjust the towel covering the proofing bowl. “You just want me for my bread.”
She rolls her eyes but laughs at the joke. “You might be right.”
I’ll fucking bake like it’s my full-time job if that’s what she needs.
“I should start packing,” she says as she stands. “I need to head down this morning to make the meeting.”
“Sure.” I grab her empty plate and juice glass. “Ellie and I will follow.”
What I want to say is, now that our baby’s involved, I’ll follow her anywhere. Skylark. Vail. Timbuktu. Doesn’t matter, as long as we’re together.
But that sounds stalkerish and desperate. And I learned my lesson—three times over—about being too needy.
She starts to leave, then turns back. “For what it’s worth, I think your face looks better with a little character.”
I press two fingers to the impressive bruise Ian left on my jaw. “Thanks, Hart.”
“Anytime, Barlowe.”
I watch her head upstairs and wonder if just maybe we’re going to figure this out after all. Or if we’re just going to keep finding new and creative ways to make this harder than it needs to be.
With Piper and me, it could go either way.
I fill the dishwasher, then start a pot of coffee, the scent of the roasted beans oddly comforting. The dough sits in its bowl, slowly rising in the warmth of the kitchen as dawn breaks through the cabin’s windows. The beans and the bread aren’t stressed about what comes next. They’re just waiting for time to do its work so they can become something better than they started out as.
Maybe there’s a lesson in that for me.
16
PIPER
I’ve been sittingin my Jeep in the parking lot behind Cover to Cover Bookstore for twenty minutes, trying to psych myself up to go in and face my friends.
Well, really, they’re Sadie’s friends. Although the longer I’m back in Skylark, the more this group—the five other women who make up the book club, along with Sadie—feel like my friends, too. There’s Iris Dixon, who, after a short-lived stint as Skylark’s mayor, began working for her fiancé’s family foundation; local librarian Taylor Maxwell; sassy and brassy marketing expert Avah Harris; single mom and flower farmer Molly McAllister; and Sloane Winslow, Cover to Cover’s owner and the one who brought the book club members together in the first place.
Out of all the women, I feel closest to Molly. She’s close to my age and also had a habit of letting people take care of her and not making her own decisions. Until recently, when she agreed to volunteer for Sloane’s bucket list challenge.
I’m not sure how Sloane knew this group of women would click when she invited them to join the Cool Girls Book Club. But shortly after they started meeting last spring, she was diagnosed with cancer—acute lymphocytic leukemia. She still doesn’t like totalk much about it. And although she seems to be doing well now, her prognosis last spring was questionable.
She got the idea for the bucket list challenge after the group read a part self-improvement, part-memoir book calledThe Year of Losing It. Sloane is determined to have the author visit the group as a guest, but Kristen Quinn hasn’t responded to any of the messages members of the group have sent her. And since I started following her online, I’ve noticed that her more recent feed seems to be recycled posts or faceless quotes.
