“Psh. With your twig arms? You’d be lucky to get this up to the front door. I got this one.” Her mom turned and headed inside, moving confidently but with slightly shaky arms.
Kelsi took in her surroundings. The house was amazing, but it wasn’t perfect. She had always dreamed of owning theproperty that was now directly across the creek from hers. From the large loft windows, she had a direct, unobstructed view of it. Over the past few hours of unpacking, she and her mom had observed a few men on the property lugging across some large wooden beams, and she could only imagine the damage they were doing to the beautiful house. Unfortunately, it had not been for sale when she was first looking to move. If it had been, she would have bought it in a heartbeat.
As a girl, she fell in love with the old home and had romantic, childish daydreams about the gazebo on the property’s point. She’d imagined it lit up with fairy lights at night, dancing around them with a man who loved her, like the scene fromThe Sound of Music.
But it hadn’t been her own dream home. No, the dream had been hers andhis, and to live there without him would feel wrong. No matter how their relationship had ended, her dreams for that home had been more for the life with him in it than the house itself.
“Am I the only one doing any work here? Grab another box and keep moving!” her mom called from an upstairs window.
Kelsi chuckled and grabbed a box from the trunk of her car labeledKITCHEN. The gravel and crushed oyster shells that made up the makeshift driveway crunched underneath her sneakers as Kelsi made her way up the short porch stairs to the front door. She took the box into the kitchen, piling it onto the island with the others.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, exhaling a deep breath up at the ceiling.
“Hey, you hungry yet? I was thinking we could call it a night and head into town to grab a burger from that new place.” Hermom’s voice cut through her thoughts. She was leaning through the doorway into the kitchen, waiting for Kelsi’s response.
“Yeah, I could eat. And I could use a break.”
“Perfect! I’m going to wash up quickly, then we can head out.”
Kelsi sighed to herself and walked back out to her car to pick up a final box from the trunk to carry into the house before they left for dinner. She grabbed one labeledBEDROOM 1and marched back into the house, ready for the next chapter of her life. Hopefully this one would have a better ending than the last.
* * *
“Nothing has changed at all,” Kelsi mused quietly as her mom maneuvered her car down Main Street. She looked over the two blocks that made up the central business district of the town. The pastel-painted buildings looked the same as they had the last time she’d been home.
“Not true,” her mom shot back in a defensive tone. “See that building there? Used to be the burger place?”
Kelsi squinted out the window at the baby-blue awning that readCoastal Burger Joint—just as it had the last time she had been there. “Um, yeah? It’s still the burger place, Mom.”
“Yes, but it burned down. And they rebuilt it. So it’s new now.”
Kelsi looked again at the building, trying to find any sign of the fire or something different than what she had remembered it looking like, but she couldn’t find anything. “Mom, they rebuilt it exactly the same. That doesn’t make it new.”
Her mom gave a disbelieving scoff. “It’s totally new. They added a new burger because of it. It’s called the Phoenix.”
Kelsi laughed. “Of course it is. Maybe that’s what I’ll order.”
They parked alongside the building and made their way to the front. Sure enough, when they walked in, Kelsi noticed they had restored the interior so it looked the same as it had before the fire. The hostess led them to a table and left them with their menus, promising that their waiter would be with them soon.
He turned up less than a minute later, all smiles. “What can I get you ladies to drink? The gentleman in the corner offered to pay for them, so may I recommend our margaritas?” He nodded his head toward the back of the bar, where, sure enough, a man was smirking in Kelsi’s direction.
He was handsome, that was for sure. His blond hair caught the low lighting in the restaurant and he casually brushed it off his forehead. When she caught his eye, his grin widened, and he tipped the glass in his hand in her direction.
Her face flushed, and she tore her gaze away from the handsome stranger and back to the waiter, still waiting patiently for her order. “A margarita, please. On the rocks, no salt.” She looked at her mom, who grinned and ordered the same with a wink at her.
Their waiter came back with their drinks not too long after and she looked for the blond stranger again to thank him, but he was gone.
CHAPTER 3
Dylan
Dylan dragged sandpaperacross the wooden planks he had finished laying that afternoon. He’d spent hours carefully filling in the holes in the boards with wood filler, and now that it had dried, he was ridding them of any bumps and other blemishes with fine-grit sandpaper before he got to painting and sealing the front porch he’d built for his new home.
When he’d first offered to purchase the home, he had known it would require a lot of renovations. Dylan had watched it fall into disrepair over the past couple of decades, despite his best efforts to help its elderly owner with its upkeep in his free time.
He still hadn’t known exactly how laborious of a task it would be, and he’d found himself standing slack-jawed in the foyer the first time he’d stepped inside after he returned from overseas. Dylan stared up at the house looming above him now from where he was seated on the porch.It will be worth it, he told himself.
Going back to the repetitive movement of pulling the sandpaper left and right, the warm late-spring sun beat down on Dylan. He’d long since lost his T-shirt and, judging by the sting across his shoulders with each movement, knew that his back was already sunburnt. Shifting a little to reach a new spot,he winced as pain radiated from his left leg. He was careful not to stand for too long nor to sit in a way that inflamed his leg injury, but it was difficult to avoid. The scar tissue was deep and extensive. For the most part it was a dull pain that he could ignore, but when it was inflamed, it hurt like a real bitch.
