Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Brian couldn't stop thinking about what Tessa had told him.
A stalker. Someone who'd followed her, threatened her, made her afraid in her own city. Someone who might still be out there, might have followed her here to this quiet corner of South Carolina, where she'd come to heal.
He lay awake long after they'd said goodnight, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the cottage settling around him.
The motion lights hadn't triggered since they'd gotten home.
No footprints in the morning, no gray caps lurking at the edge of crowds.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe the man at the fair was just a tourist with bad social skills, and the footprints belonged to some kid taking a shortcut through the woods.
But Brian didn't believe in coincidences. And he couldn't shake the image of Tessa's face when she'd told him about the notes on her car, the calls at all hours. The way her voice had gone flat and careful, like she was reciting facts instead of reliving trauma.
She'd learned to protect herself by shutting down. He recognized the strategy. He'd used it himself, back when the weight of the job had started crushing him.
By the time dawn crept through his window, he'd made a decision. He couldn't control whether someone was watching Tessa, but he could make sure she wasn't alone when she left the cottage. He could be there. He could pay attention.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
The farmer's market was in full swing by the time they reached town. Tessa had wanted to go, and Brian had offered to drive her without making it obvious that he didn't want her walking alone. She'd given him a look that said she knew exactly what he was doing, but she hadn't argued.
Small victories.
The market sprawled across the green near the harbor, white tents and folding tables laden with produce, baked goods, handmade soaps, and everything in between.
The smell of fresh peaches hung in the air, sweet and heavy, mixing with coffee from the Harbor Bean cart and something savory from a food truck at the far end.
Brian watched Tessa move through the stalls, her face open and curious in a way it hadn't been when she'd first arrived. She stopped to smell a bundle of lavender, chatted with a woman selling honey, picked up a peach, and held it to her nose with an expression of pure pleasure.
She was beautiful. He'd known it from the first moment she'd walked into his cottage, but it hit him differently now.
Not just the symmetry of her features or the way her blonde curls caught the sunlight.
It was the way she engaged with the world when she let her guard down.
The way she laughed at something the honey vendor said, throwing her head back, her whole face transforming.
He was in trouble. He knew it. He just didn't know what to do about it.
A commotion near the produce stalls pulled his attention. Raised voices, the kind that cut through the pleasant hum of market chatter. He scanned the crowd and found the source: a man in a grease-stained cap, arguing with one of the vendors over something Brian couldn't make out.
The man's voice rose, sharp and aggressive. "You think I'm stupid? You think I don't know when I'm being cheated?"
The vendor, a middle-aged woman with gray-streaked hair, held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Sir, I'm sorry you feel that way, but the prices are clearly marked. If you don't want to pay—"
"Don't tell me what I want!" The man slammed his hand on the table, making the display of tomatoes jump. Several rolled to the ground.
Brian was already moving when he saw Tessa do the same.
She stepped toward the conflict with the kind of calm, purposeful stride he recognized from his own years of responding to emergencies. Her shoulders were set, her chin lifted. She was going to intervene.
He caught up to her in three long strides and put his hand on her elbow. "Not your problem," he said quietly.
She turned, and her eyes were sharp. "Someone needs to de-escalate before it gets worse."
"And that someone has to be you?"
"I'm trained for this. I've handled worse in the ER."
"This isn't the ER." He kept his voice low, aware of people starting to notice them. "You don't know this guy. You don't know what he's capable of."
Her jaw tightened. "You don't get to decide what's my problem, Brian."
The words landed like a slap. He took a breath, forcing himself to stay calm. "You're right. I don't. But I'd rather not watch something happen because I didn't speak up."
Before she could respond, a man in a Copper Moon Police Department polo appeared beside the arguing pair. He spoke quietly to the man in the cap, his posture relaxed but authoritative. After a moment, the agitated customer threw up his hands, muttered something under his breath, and stalked away.
Crisis averted. By someone else.
Tessa's shoulders dropped slightly, the tension bleeding out of her. She looked at Brian, and something complicated moved behind her eyes.
"I'm not used to standing back," she said quietly.
"I know." He let his hand fall from her elbow. "Neither am I."
They stood there for a moment, the market swirling around them, neither quite sure what to say next.
The drive back to the cottage was quiet. Not the comfortable silence they'd been building over the past week, but something heavier. Tessa sat in the passenger seat with a paper bag of peaches in her lap, her gaze fixed on the trees sliding past the window.
Brian pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, but neither of them moved to get out.
"I'm sorry," he said finally. "For grabbing your arm like that. I shouldn't have."
She turned to look at him. "You were trying to protect me."
"That doesn't make it okay."
"No." She was quiet for a moment. "But I understand why you did it. After what I told you last night... you're worried."
"Damn right I'm worried." The words came out rougher than he intended.
"Someone stalked you, Tessa. Someone made you afraid to go home.
And now there's a guy in a gray cap showing up everywhere you go, and footprints on my property, and I don't know what any of it means, but I know I don't like it. "
She set the peaches on the floor of the truck and twisted in her seat to face him fully.
"I've spent the last year being careful.
Being vigilant. Checking over my shoulder every time I left the hospital.
It's exhausting, Brian. And it's part of why I burned out.
" She took a breath. "I came here to stop being afraid.
I can't do that if you're afraid for me. "
The honesty of it hit him in the chest. She wasn't asking him to stop caring. She was asking him to trust her. To let her be strong even when everything in him wanted to wrap her in bubble wrap and hide her from the world.
"I can't just turn it off," he said. "The worry. It's not how I'm built."
"I'm not asking you to turn it off. I'm asking you to trust me to handle myself." She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. "I've been handling myself for a long time. I'm good at it."
He looked at her hand on his arm, at the delicate fingers that had held scalpels and sutured wounds and probably saved more lives than he could count.
She was good at handling herself. He knew that.
He'd known it from the first night, when she'd stood in his living room with tears on her face and steel in her spine, refusing to crumble even when everything was going wrong.
"Okay," he said. "I'll try."
"That's all I'm asking."
"That almost sounded like you care," she said, glancing up at him with a hint of a smile.
"Don't get used to it."
But his voice was softer than the words, and from the way her smile widened, she heard it.
They got out of the truck and headed inside, the tension between them easing with each step.
Tessa put the peaches in a bowl on the counter, arranging them with the same care she brought to everything.
Brian watched her, leaning against the doorframe, trying to reconcile the woman who'd just asked for independence with the woman who'd told him about notes on her windshield and calls in the night.
She was both. Strong and vulnerable. Capable and scared. And somehow, that made him want to protect her even more.
He spent the afternoon on the addition, needing the physical work to clear his head. The framing was almost done now, the skeleton of the guest room taking shape against the side of the cottage. He measured and cut and hammered, letting the rhythm of the work settle him.
Tessa came out around four with two glasses of iced tea. She handed him one and settled into the Adirondack chair on the deck, her book open in her lap.
They existed in parallel for a while, him working and her reading, the afternoon stretching out soft and golden around them.
It was comfortable in a way that surprised him.
He'd lived alone for so long, had gotten used to solitude as his default state.
But having her there, quiet and present, didn't feel like an intrusion anymore.
It felt like something he hadn't known he was missing.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, looking up from her book.
He set down his hammer. "Shoot."
"Last night, when we got back from Hank and Bree's, you said you understood what it was like to need a place to land." She closed the book, keeping her finger between the pages. "What did you mean by that?"
He'd known this was coming. Known it from the moment she'd shared her own story in the front seat of his truck. Fair was fair. She'd shown him her scars; eventually, he'd have to show her his.
He picked up his iced tea and took a long drink, buying himself time. Then he walked over to the deck and lowered himself into the chair beside hers.
"I was an EMT for twelve years," he said. "Missouri, mostly. Small towns, rural areas. The kind of places where you're the only help for miles and you see things no one should have to see."
She nodded, waiting.
"There was a call. About two and a half years ago." He stared out at the water, not seeing it. "Car accident on a back road. Single vehicle, wrapped around a tree. When we got there..."
He stopped. The words were stuck somewhere in his chest, tangled up with images he'd spent months trying to forget.
"It was a family," he said finally. "Mom, dad, two kids in the back seat. The parents were gone before we got there. Nothing we could do. But the little girl... she was still breathing. Barely. I held her hand the whole way to the hospital, talked to her, told her she was going to be okay."
"Brian." Tessa's voice was soft.
"She died in the ambulance. Three minutes from the ER." He forced himself to keep going, to get it all out before he lost his nerve. "I did everything right. Every protocol, every procedure. And it wasn't enough. She was seven years old, and I couldn't save her."
Tessa reached over and took his hand. She didn't say anything, didn't offer platitudes or reassurances. She just held on.
"After that, I couldn't do it anymore," he said. "Every call, I saw her face. Every patient, I was waiting for them to slip away, too. I started making mistakes, small ones at first, then bigger. My supervisor suggested I take some time off. I never went back."
"That's why you came here."
"Hank and Colby dragged me here for the Copper Moon Cup.
I wasn't going to stay. But Hank found the garage building; he and Colby got excited about it and wanted me here.
Then I met the Calloways, and they needed help with their place, and one thing led to another.
.." He shrugged. "Running felt easier than facing what I'd left behind. "
"It's not running if you're moving toward something," Tessa said. "You built a life here. A community. That's not running away. That's starting over."
He looked at her then, at the understanding in her eyes. She knew. She understood the weight he carried in a way most people couldn't, because she carried her own version of it.
"The fire department here has been asking me to volunteer," he said. "I keep saying I'll think about it. But the truth is, I'm scared. Scared that I'll freeze when it matters. Scared that someone will die because I couldn't handle it."
"Fear doesn't make you weak," she said. "It makes you human. The question is whether you let it stop you."
"Is that what you're doing? Not letting it stop you?"
She was quiet for a moment. "I'm trying. Some days are better than others."
"Yeah." He squeezed her hand. "I know what you mean."
They sat there as the sun began its slow descent toward the water, hands intertwined, watching the light turn the bay to copper. The air smelled like salt and pine and the sweet, ripe peaches sitting in a bowl on the kitchen counter.
"Thank you," Tessa said. "For telling me."
"Thank you for listening."
She leaned her head against his shoulder, a small gesture that felt enormous. He let himself breathe, let himself feel the warmth of her beside him, the rightness of it.
Whatever was coming—the man in the gray cap, the uncertain future, the question of what this thing between them was becoming—they'd face it together.
For now, that was enough.