Amos gave me the most bittersweet smile. “I guess I forgot that part.”
I couldn’t tell anymore where the fake dating ended and the real Amos began.
And that would have been fine…
if this wasn’t all scheduled to end in a matter of days.
Our thirty days would run out soon.
And I had no idea what would happen to us when it did.
Chapter 8
Amos
The Cozy Bean was quiet on a Friday night in a way the Bear Den never was.
Low lighting warmed the brick walls and mismatched chairs crowded around small wooden tables.
Holt was on the small corner stage playing acoustic guitar while Sara, a woman from Deer Springs, sang a folk song, her voice low and unhurried. Something about a mountain and a man who’d stolen her heart.
“So this is what a quiet Friday looks like,” I said, wrapping both hands around my coffee mug that Aster had just delivered to our table.
Shelly smiled at me, her eyes lighting up. “This is what it looks like, yeah.”
I’d never been anywhere near the Cozy Bean on a Friday night in my life. The vibe was mellow instead of raucous. And I actually didn’t mind it.
“You look very civilized right now,” Shelly said, her eyes dancing as she leaned forward across the table toward me, her elbows propped on the edge, her chin in her hands.
“Iamcivilized. I’m practically a gentleman.”
“You’re practically something,” she agreed.
I reached across the table and took her hand where it rested near her mug, lacing my fingers through hers the way she’d shown me, easy and unhurried.
She looked down at our joined hands for a second, then back up at me, and her eyes softened.
“That,” she said quietly, “is what I mean. Small touches. That’s what makes a woman feel like she matters.”
“You do matter,” I rumbled, and I wasn’t pretending anything when I said it.
She went very still.
Like she didn’t know what to do with that.
Like she didn’t quite believe me.
And I didn’t know how to prove it yet.
Her cheeks went pink, and she looked down at her coffee. We sat like that for a while, listening to Sara ease into a slower song.
The coffee shop held a quiet flow of conversation from the other tables, and something about the atmosphere felt intimate.
It was the most settled I’d felt in longer than I could remember.
“Can I ask you something?” Shelly asked.
“Always.”
