She flinched. Just a little. Then she exhaled. “Yeah. I was.”
The room felt smaller after that.
I stepped closer and looked at her laptop. “Aunt Ophelia is going to hate that her name is not everywhere on the site.”
“She can have her own section,” Emily said. “With photos. People love legacy. They just do not want it to feel haunted.”
I chuckled. “She will haunt us anyway.”
Emily looked at her screen. “Okay. I just sent the menu mockup to the printer so you can see it and touch it.”
The printer groaned and came to life, coughing out the first page of her outline like it resented the effort. I watched it slide into the tray.
Emily grabbed the printout from the tray and held it between us.
“This stays,” she said, tapping the lighthouse logo. “This changes. Slightly.”
I leaned in to read. Closer than I needed to be.
“You really thought this through,” I said.
“I’m good at fixing things that already work,” she said. “I’m bad at starting from scratch.”
“That tracks.”
I smiled. The real one. The one I did not hand out for free.
“I have not let anyone touch this place in a long time,” I said.
She looked up at me. “I am not trying to take it from you.”
“I know.”
The office still around us.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For caring,” I said. “And for not treating it like a problem.”
She lifted one shoulder. “It’s a good diner.”
I held her gaze. I did not look away.
“That is not what I meant,” I said.
Something old cracked open between us. Something I had kept boarded up on purpose. I raised my hand and brushed her cheek, testing memory against reality.
She should have stepped back.
She did not.
I kissed her. Not for show. Not to practice. The kiss took its time. It felt like a choice.
Her hands curled into my shirt. My hand settled at her waist, steady and sure, asking nothing.
The kiss deepened. Warm. Familiar. Ruinous in the quiet way that lasts.
