"I'm not walking away," I promise. "I'm right here."
"Good," he says. "Because I think I'm falling in love with you."
The words steal my breath.
"You think?" I manage to say.
"I know," he corrects. "I'm falling in love with you, Piper. And it terrifies me. But I would rather be terrified with you than safe without you."
I reach up and cup his face, my thumb brushing across his cheek. "I'm falling in love with you, too."
The smile that spreads across his face is worth every risk I've ever taken.
He leans down and kisses me, slow and deep and full of promise. And for the first time in my life, I understand what it means to feel like I'm home.
Not a place. A person.
And his name is Dylan Hayes.
Chapter 7
Dylan
The bakery closes at six,but I stay behind after the last customer leaves because my hands will not settle. The wildfire alert has been blinking across my phone all afternoon, and even though it's still miles away, the memory of smoke from years ago lingers in my lungs like I never fully breathed it out.
I try to distract myself the only way I know how.
I pull out my mixing bowls and start whipping buttercream with more force than necessary. The rhythmic scrape of the spatula should calm me, but it doesn't. My chest feels tight. My pulse keeps jumping at shadows in the corner of my eye. I pour in vanilla and nearly spill half the bottle.
This is ridiculous.
I survived worse.
But the body remembers what the mind shoves down, and mine is dragging up a night I wish I could forget.
I'm so focused on the frosting that I don't hear the front door open. When a soft voice says my name, I jerk hard enough that the spatula clatters onto the counter.
Piper stands near the prep station with a worried look on her face. Her hair is pulled into a loose ponytail, and the strap ofher camera bag digs into her shoulder. It looks like she sprinted here.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
I grip the counter with both hands and focus on keeping my breathing even. "I'm fine."
She studies the way I stand, the way my fingers dig into the stainless steel, the thick tension in the air. Her expression softens.
"You’re not fine," she says.
A muscle jumps in my jaw, I want to deny it, and I want the conversation to end. I want her to leave so I can deal with this alone, because alone is familiar and predictable and safe.
But she steps closer, and then closer still. When she reaches me, she slides her hand over the counter and places it beside mine, close enough that our fingers almost touch.
"You don't have to pretend," she whispers.
The words settle under my skin like warm light.
I close my eyes for a moment and exhale. "The wildfire alert came through again."
She nods slowly, like she is assembling a puzzle piece by piece. “It brings back bad memories every time you get an alert doesn’t it? Is that why the firefighter told you what was happening in advance, so that you didn’t have a panic attack?”
