Then her smile fades.
Her eyes darken, and she shakes her head like she’s shutting something down. A wall slides into place, quick and practiced. The warmth drains from the space between us, like she locked the sun away and swallowed the key.
She remembers the library too. Just not the part I wish she would.
“Shall we?” she says, already standing.
She walks off without looking back.
I push myself up and follow, the distance between us growing with every step.
FIVE
SIMMER
VAL
Shaunand I stand shoulder to shoulder at the barn entrance, staring at the space that’s supposed to become cozy and welcoming for kids. Neither of us moves. Not for a solid minute.
“Fred really needs a new F word to describe this farm,” Shaun mutters.
I snort. He’s not wrong. It looks like Fred swept every vaguely useful thing in here and decided that was good enough. Tables sit overturned and sticky. Boxes overflow with dried-out paint and bent pipe cleaners. Burnt glue hangs thick in the air, tangled with the sweet rot of pumpkin guts. Hay coats the floor in uneven drifts, and spider webs stretch overhead like decorations no one asked for.
“Festering?” I offer. “Foul? Fake?”
Shaun chuckles, low and easy, and I feel it more than I hear it. The sound travels through the small space between us, warm and distracting. My shoulder brushes his when he shifts. The contact is brief, accidental, but my skin registers it like a live wire.
I know he’s looking at me.
My pulse ticks up. Annoying. Unhelpful.
Don’t look.
Do not look at his stupid, unfairly perfect face.
My eyes snag on the way his shoulders stretch his worn T-shirt.
“I always liked this side of you,” he says, stepping into the mess and kicking a rough path through the hay toward a table.
That snaps me out of my ogle session.
“What side?”
He flips the table upright with a grunt and finally looks back at me, a lock of his loose brown waves dipping into his eyeline. I’m still by the door, rooted to the spot. Getting closer feels dangerous. I already slipped once over that smile earlier. Rookie mistake.
He tilts his head, eyes bright, and his gaze drags over me slow enough to make my skin heat. It lingers. Everywhere. Then it locks with mine.
“The side that wasn’t afraid to be honest,” he says. “Even when it was directed at me.”
He winks and grabs a push broom like he didn’t just knock the air out of my lungs.
I force my legs to move and head for the boxes, shoving them aside harder than necessary. “Only certain company brings it out,” I say, keeping my back to him.
The broom stops mid-sweep. For one long second, the barn holds its breath.
Then Shaun murmurs, “Fair enough,” and the broom starts moving again.
We fall into silence. Real silence. The kind that presses in on your ears. We work opposite sides of the barn, careful not to brush against each other. Hay scrapes along the floor as it getsshoved toward the walls. Dust floats in the sunbeams cutting through the rafters. Time stretches.
