“Good for them,” he rumbled, his voice a balm on my broken heart.
Another raindrop fell from the sky.
“What about you?” I asked. “How have you been?”
“Still running Thompson Land and Timber. Keeps me busy.” He said it simply, the way he’d always talked about his life.
He pointed down the sidewalk. “I was just heading down to see Stone at the hardware store. Need to pick up some parts.”
It started sprinkling in earnest. Welcome to springtime in the Ozarks. It would be raining off and on all month long.
“And I was just coming from Bookish,” I said, gesturing vaguely behind me without offering any further explanation.
If he wondered what I was doing in a small-town bookstore on a Tuesday afternoon with a stack of resumes, he didn’t ask.
I let my gaze drop, just for a second, to his left hand, where it hung relaxed at his side.
No ring.
My pulse kicked up, but I immediately tamped it down. Zane had always been a practical man.
Wearing a wedding band while running a chainsaw and hauling timber would be dangerous, and I bet he didn’t risk it.
But the absence of a ring didn’t mean the absence of awife.
I’d heard about his marriage to Tina shortly after I married Wade.
Even though I’d been committed to another man, it had still stung.
Zane had always been the one who held my heart, even if we’d never been on so much as a single date.
“So you’re not staying long then,” he said, and it wasn’t really a question.
“No, probably not. Just passing through while I figure out the next move. You know me, always on to something.”
Emotion shifted behind his eyes. A flicker of something that looked almost like resignation, and then it was gone, shuttered behind that calm, steady expression he always wore.
“Of course,” he said, and his voice dropped half a register in a way that vibrated through my chest. “Always an adventure withyou. Surprised you don’t get tired of it and set down roots somewhere.”
He looked away and then back. “Maybe someday you will.”
“Maybe.”
Up until three months ago, I’d thought my roots had been solidly planted in Chicago.
How wrong I’d been. Now I was driftless and unmoored, trying to find my new place in the world.
As the sprinkles turned into fatter drops, both of us getting wet now, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “Here, give me your number. Or take mine. In case you need anything while you’re in town.”
I gave him my phone, and when he handed it back, our fingers brushed. His jaw tightened just barely, a small involuntary clench that told me he’d felt it too.
The spark that had always been there between us.
“It was really good to see you, Zane,” I said a little too breathlessly.
“You too, Mallory. Real good.”
We stood there for one more moment, letting the rain fall on us, and then he gave me a solemn smile, one filled with regret, and stepped past me toward the hardware store.
