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Wintry eyes.

The heat of his hand sliding over my waist.

Honey whispered across my ear.

Barely four seconds passed while we gawked at each other, but it may as well have been an eternity. He pulled himself together with miraculous speed, eyes shuttering while emotion flaked away behind them. His voice was terse as he greeted me as he always had. “Honeycutt.”

I steadied myself and returned the favor. “Shepherd.”

With a single eye twitch, his silent gaze moved to Ivy.

Ivy raised both hands. “This is the right way, Cam.”

He glanced at me, a quick perusal of my eyes, nose, mouth, neck, before returning his full attention to Ivy. “Can I speak with you in private?”

Four

Camden Shepherd didn’t want me here. That was obvious. The question that lingered in my mind as the door snapped shut behind Ivy went something like…

But why?

We weren’t on bad terms. The last time I saw him was the summer before I moved for college. The massive Fourth of July parade was a tradition in Sugar Springs, and Ravi, Maribel, and I attended like everyone else. Around my ponytail I wore a blue scarf with white stars, and a red sundress hugged my torso. At some point, the scarf had loosened and fallen to the ground. As I stood in the crowd watching the parade, the soft brush of fingers against my bare shoulder jolted sparks through every nerve ending, as if my body knew him by touch alone. I turned and met silver-blue. Without breaking eye contact, without uttering a single word, he offered my scarf.

As always, the rhythms of my body synced with him. His closeness woke a sensation of eternity, similar to the awe that sweeps the mind when staring at a vast sky of endless stars. Was it the same for him? Why did he always look at me like that? Unblinking and intense enough to raise the hairs on my body.

I moved to grasp the scarf. Our fingers entangled for a moment, the first time we’d touched since the cotillion ball two months ago—the night he’d called me trailer trash. His grip tightened infinitesimally on mine before I drew away, slow and steady, drawing out the contact since I knew it might be the last time I ever touched him.

His eyes remained on mine, an unspoken something deepening the color, sparking memories despite my attempt to stifle them.

Disheveled in the library.

Staring at me across a classroom.

Holding me too close while we danced.

His touch.

His lips against my ear. Honey.

As the parade marched behind me, his shoulders straightened, a new fervor waking in him. “Shay⁠—”

“Camden,” barked a voice behind him. His father emerged from the crowd, eyeing Cam with a stern expression.

Cam jerked his hand away, and the moment evaporated like a fever dream. With a last shuttered glance and a murmured “goodbye,” he turned and left.

I didn’t see him again until he walked into this office. Staring at Ivy’s closed office door, I frowned at the window tape obscuring my view of the workplace beyond. What could they possibly have needed to discuss for this long? If he didn’t want me here, why didn’t he just say so?

Instead of dwelling on it, I studied the knickknacks in Ivy’s office. Some pictures on the wall showed her with friends and family, several with Cam and another dark-haired man. One photo in a heart frame displayed Ivy in the arms of an older woman with the same eyes and mouth—her mother. The etching at the bottom of the frame read, “The Original Love of My Life.”

Seemed me and Ivy Hayes had something in common.

I jumped when the door opened again. Ivy stood in the doorway. “He wants to talk to you.”

“I can tell her myself, Ivy,” Cam said behind her.

Ignoring him, Ivy threw an arm out to block him from entering, but continued to address me, “This is good. Y’all are old friends, right? Ain’t nothing but a thing. Hammer out the details, and I’ll be back.”

Camden gripped Ivy’s wrist and gently, but forcibly, removed it from the door jamb. “I can take it from here.”