“Not could. He is.”
“Does he…?” I had to swallow again before I could continue, the fear constricting my throat. “Does he know where we are?”
“If he doesn’t yet, he’ll find out soon enough.”
Tears burned in my eyes, but I forced myself to stay calm. I’d wanted Eamon to be upfront with me, and now that he was, I needed to face it like an adult. “So he’s coming here?”
A curt nod, but Eamon’s eyes never left mine. “Do we go somewhere else?”
“It doesn’t get safer than here. It’s remote, and we can see and hear anyone coming. No matter where we go, he’ll find us.”
Well, that was encouraging. Not.
Then something else occurred to me, and I frowned. “How do you know all this?”
“Huh?”
“How do you know about the mole and everything? We don’t have cell signal here.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, as if he couldn’t bear to tell me another lie. “I can’t tell you.”
Honestly, I much preferred that over him trying to spin more lies. “Okay.”
“You… You accept that?”
I shrugged. “I told you I trust you. You’ll tell me when you can.”
He cradled my cheeks in his hands and pressed a soft kiss on my lips. “I’ll keep you safe, Charles. I swear.”
We made dinner together—pasta with a simple sauce made from canned tomatoes and herbs—and ate by candlelightwhen Eamon claimed the overhead bulb was too harsh. The romantic gesture might’ve fooled me if I hadn’t noticed the way the softer lighting made it easier to look out the windows.
“Tell me about your plans for the bakery,” Eamon said. “When we get back to Charming.”
Thewhensounded forced, like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. Still, I appreciated his attempt at normalcy.
“Well,” I said, playing along with the fiction that we had a normal future ahead of us, “I’ve been thinking about adding a café. Nothing fancy, but more warm lunch options, like soup, grilled cheese, warm subs, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds perfect for a place like Charming.”
“It is. If Justin hadn’t swindled me out of all that money, our place would’ve been a success.”
It didn’t hurt as much as it had before. Before I’d met Eamon. Before I’d realized what love was really supposed to feel like.
“You’ll make it successful again.”
“And I thought I could maybe teach some baking classes. Community center stuff, you know? Basic bread making, cookie decorating for kids’ birthday parties.”
Eamon smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’d be good at that. Teaching.”
“Would you…?” I hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Would you want to help sometimes? I mean, I know you have your police work, but if you ever wanted to try something different…”
The fork slipped from Eamon’s fingers, clattering against his plate. He stared at me with such naked longing that it hurt to look at him. “I would love that. More than you could possibly know.”
But again, there was that elegiac quality to his voice, like he was talking about something beautiful that could never be.
After dinner, we cleaned up together and settled by the fire. I curled up on the couch with my book while Eamon sat beside me, supposedly reading his own novel but spending more time watching me than the pages.
“Take a picture,” I teased. “It’ll last longer.”
