“I think it’s why I always loved coming here,” she added softly. “But my mom...she couldn’t wait to get out of Sunrise. Left the second she was eighteen.” She paused, twisting a loose thread on her sleeve. “Kind of like I did, I guess.”
“How did you end up back here, then?” Jack asked.
“Every summer Mom would bring me back and drop me off with Lolly like I was a bag of laundry,” Cora continued. “She said she needed time to herself, but honestly? I don’t think she ever wanted to be a mom.”
“What about your dad?”
“He was never in the picture,” Cora replied. “Some guyshe hooked up with and never talked about again. I don’t even know his name.”
Jack’s hand brushed hers. It was a small gesture, but it gave her the courage to keep going.
“When I was ten, we got word she had died in a motorcycle accident. She’d met a guy at a bar in California during one of her summer adventures. They didn’t make it far.” She drew in a breath. “After that, I moved in with Lolly for good. She was the only one who ever gave me a place to belong.”
Jack didn’t say a word; he simply walked beside her, steady and quiet.
“After that, this place became Lolly’s refuge,” she went on. “She’d come out here to think, and sometimes she’d bring me. We’d just sit, listening to the wind through the trees.”
“I’m sorry. That must’ve been rough.”
She nodded, blinking away the sting of tears she hadn’t realized were there. “It was. But Lolly...she made it bearable. She always had this way of making you feel like everything would be okay, even when you couldn’t see how.”
“She was good at that,” Jack said with a soft smile.
Cora smiled back, thinking of Lolly’s unfailing optimism. “She always said nature had a way of knocking sense into people. When life got messy, she’d tell me, ‘There’s nothing like a bit of space to remind you your problems aren’t as big as you think.’”
Jack looked up at the towering trees, thoughtful. “Smart woman.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “She really was.”
As if on cue, they stepped through a thick patch of undergrowth and into a sunlit clearing. Cora heard Jack’s sharp intake of breath and smiled. The entire space was filled with honeysuckle vines, their white and yellow blossoms swaying in the gentle breeze, the air thick with their sweet, nostalgic scent.
“Wow,” Jack breathed. “This is ...”
“Lolly’s secret ingredient,” she finished, reaching out to touch one of the blossoms. “The last big patch of honeysuckle in Sunrise. She used to come out here to gather these flowers, then she’d make a syrup. That’s what she used in her special biscuits.”
Jack’s eyes widened as realization dawned. “That’s the sweetness I could never quite figure out. Honeysuckle syrup.”
Cora nodded, her throat tightening as memories of Lolly filled the clearing. This place, so full of her spirit, felt like sharing a piece of her with Jack.
He stood silently for a moment, taking in the vines, the flowers, and the quiet hum of nature around them. Then he turned to her, his gaze soft but intense. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
She swallowed hard, the emotion threatening to overwhelm her. “Lolly always said good food was meant to be shared. I figure that applies to secrets too.”
For a moment, they stood there, the air between them thick with something unspoken. Jack’s eyes darkened, and Cora felt an unmistakable pull, as if gravity had shifted between them. Jack stepped closer, close enough that she caught the way the light softened the brown in his eyes.
“You’re kind of hard to resist, Cora Lockwood.”
Her breath caught, and her heart pounded in her chest. She tilted up her chin, her eyes locked on his. For once, she wasn’t thinking about loans or spreadsheets or running back to New York. She was just thinking about the man standing in front of her.
“Good,” she whispered.
His hand came up slowly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, his touch warm and lingering. For a heartbeat, the world fell away. The only things that existed were his fingers in her hair, the honeysuckle scent around them, and the quiet connection humming between them. Andthen, his lips brushed hers, soft and lingering, like a promise.
When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling in the quiet.
“Now that,” Jack whispered, his voice low and full of quiet intensity, “was worth waiting for.”
Chapter Twenty-One
