“I didn’t want this to happen here,” I blurt, wobbling. “This was supposed to be… different. I was supposed to be different.”
His jaw flexes.
His expression shifts.
My phone buzzes again in my pocket, like it wants to remind me that it’s still there, still carrying a thousand eyes and opinions and sharp little knives.
Caleb’s gaze drops to the outline of it against my apron.
“Did someone say something to you?” he asks. “Online?”
I flinch.
He exhales. “Dottie?”
A bitter laugh coughs out of me. “Of course you guessed.”
“Ivy texted Silas,” he admits. “He told me there was a post. I haven’t looked yet.”
Yet.
The word hangs between us like a blade.
He’s going to know. Even if he refuses to read a single comment, he’s going to know the headlines. The version of me the internet built out of pixels and gossip and Marcus’s PR team.
My throat tightens.
“They know,” I whisper. “Everyone knows.”
He doesn’t ask what I mean. Doesn’t make me say it out loud. Somehow, that’s worse and better all at once.
“You’re trending on Coyote Glen Facebook,” I say, trying for humor and failing. “Which I’m pretty sure is the seventh circle of hell.”
His mouth twitches, but his eyes stay fixed on mine.
“Come here,” he says gently.
Before I can protest, he shifts closer, lowering into a full sit on the floor beside me. His back leans against the cabinet, shoulder almost brushing mine, but not quite.
“Caleb—”
“I’m not going to make you talk if you don’t want to,” he says. “I’m just… sitting.”
I stare at him.
At his flannel shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, forearms dusted with hay from somewhere, the ever-present faint smudge of dirt on his jaw like he forgot to finish washing his face. His hair is rumpled, like he’s run his hands through it a hundred times already today.
He is the living embodiment of steady. Of solid. Of safe.
And I feel like a raw nerve sitting next to him.
“What if it’s true?”
The words rip out of me before I can stop them.
He looks at me sharply. “What if what’s true?”
“That I ruined everything,” I choke. “That I… I’m… a bad person.”
