Her phone buzzed on the table.
It was Luke.Tonight?
Grace’s heart jumped, hopeful and foolish and alive.
His job was so public. Of course he wouldn’t want to deal with gossip until they were both sure it was serious.
But by now they'd been together for months. Thatwasserious.
“What if he’s waiting for me to make the next move.”
She could see it so clearly now—the two of them walking down Main Street together. His hand in hers. No more secrets. No more invisibility.
Hannah studied her for a long moment. "And if you ask him for more? What do you think he'll say?"
Grace thought of Main Street. Of his blank look. And of the way he’d held her the night before, like there was nowhere else he wanted to be.
"I don’t know, but I have to try,” Grace said. "I need to ask for what I want. I think…” she said slowly, testing the words, “I think one of us just has to be brave enough to change things.”
Grace smiled, small but determined. Luke had been brave first. Months ago—one reckless kiss, pressed into her doorway, all heat and want.
She looked up. “It’s my turn.”
CHAPTER 4
Luke
Luke killedthe engine and sat for a second, fingers tapping the steering wheel, he’d parked one block over so no one would clock his cruiser when he visited Grace.
Just like always. Just like he knew was smart.
He could’ve pulled into her driveway. Walked up her front steps. Knocked like a man visiting someone he was… involved with.
But Crystal Lake wasn’t that kind of town.
Porch lights flicked on. Curtains shifted. And Luke Bennett walking openly into a Hart’s house? Yeah—that’d hit the gossip mill before sunrise.
He pushed out a breath.
It wasn’t that Grace had done anything wrong. It wasn’t her fault her family had a rap sheet longer than Main Street.
But names stuck in Crystal Lake. They clung like burrs. Luke’s name meant something clean, steady, respectable.
Luke Bennett: solid cop. Good judgment. Future town councilman.
Not Luke Bennett: sneaking into Grace Hart’s bedroom.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
Grace wasn’t the problem. Grace was… easy. Warm. Good and kind. She laughed softly, listened deeply, touched him like she meant it.
She was on half the committees in town—festival planning, library board. Grace Hart gave more to Crystal Lake than most.
But the Hart name came with baggage. Even she understood that.
Luke had filed the name Hart under known quantity years ago and left it there. It had seemed efficient at the time. The family had cost the town enough—grief, money, police hours, patience. It wasn't prejudice. It was pattern recognition.
The reputation had calcified before Grace was old enough to do anything about it. By the time she was organizing the library drive and keeping half the town's kids out of trouble, Crystal Lake had already decided what a Hart was. The evidence of who she actually was barely registered against thirty years of what her family had been.
