Chapter 11
Paige
After he went into the back, I took another bite of the pie and paused mid-chew. The taste hit me like a memory: buttery crust, just the right amount of cinnamon, a whisper of lemon. Not too sweet, not too tart—precisely the way his dad used to make it.
My heart thudded once, low and hard.
I hadn’t tasted this pie in years. Not since Mondays after school when his dad used to save two slices for me and Piper to eat. God, I loved his dad. I used to joke that I’d marry the first man who could bake me a pie like this.
And now here he was.
Offering it to me like it wasn’t the most intimate thing anyone had done for me in over a decade. I stared down at the crust, suddenly unsure if I wanted to laugh, cry, or crawl under the bar and scream into a towel.
The jukebox hummed in the background, softly looping through its endless playlist of ‘80s classics. The front of the bar was clean. All I had left to do was my weekly inventory. Everything was still. Quiet.
But inside me, everything was shifting.
He’d baked the pie. His dad’s pie. For me.
He remembered. All of it.
And he didn’t bring it up like it was some clever trick or romantic ploy. He just set it down in front of me like it was obvious. Like feeding me comfort, and history was just what you did when your best friend needed a reminder of who they were.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the bar and took a slow breath. I didn’t know what this thing between us was yet. Not really. But I knew what that pie meant.
It meant he saw me.
It meant he remembered me—not just who I’d become after the divorce or the version of me that yelled at margarita machines and ran on coffee and stress—but the girl I used to be. The one who ate apple pie in his dad’s kitchen and told herself she wasn’t falling for her best friend, even back then.
And maybe that girl never really stopped.
Maybe she kept her feelings shoved into the back of her heart because she wouldn’t dare risk losing her very best friend, not after losing her dad.
Not after losing Eli, then getting him back, then losing him again, then marrying his stupid ass.
And especially, not after losing her belief that she could ever hold onto anything worth having.
I wouldn’t say it out loud. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But as I stood there in my empty bar, heart doing an offbeat drum solo in my chest and the taste of cinnamon still on my tongue, I let myself whisper it just once inside my head:
He brought me his dad’s pie.
That wasn’t nothing, it was everything.
Back to reality. I cleaned up my plate, boxed the pie back up, grabbed my laptop, and got to work.
I used to dread inventory. Not because it was hard, but because it was always done in silence.
Alone. After hours. I’d pace from shelf to shelf, counting liquor bottles and dry goods while trying not to let the empty space feel like a metaphor for my life.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, Hunter was here, sleeves rolled up, kneeling in front of my industrial freezer like some kind of off-duty, blue-collar romance novel cover model.
And I was going from the front of the bar to the back, counting bottles of liquor and pretending I wasn’t distracted by the way his forearms flexed when he used a socket wrench.
Every so often, he’d mutter something under his breath—something about a stripped screw or a faulty something or other—and I’d make a noncommittal sound to disguise the way I was definitely not imagining what it would be like to kiss him while he was covered in grease and nonjudgmental competence.
My head was a battlefield. One half screaming Nope. Too soon. Absolutely not. The other whispering, but what if...
“I’m adding ‘professional freezer whisperer’ to my resume,” Hunter called out.
“You’re gonna need your own section on the town attractions website,” I called back. “Right next to the Honeybrook Inn and Larry the Llama from Lucy’s books.”
“Don’t forget local pie hero. Maybe I should enter the Harvest Festival baking competition.”
I snorted. “Modest, too.”
The door creaked, and I heard him walk into the main bar, wiping his hands on a rag. I didn’t turn around immediately. I crouched to count the backup cases of tonic water and told myself to focus. My pen hovered over the order sheet. “Huh,” I muttered.
“What?” he asked. “Something wrong?”
“We’re missing two bottles of Jameson. Jasper signed for them last week. Or at least that’s what my supplier emailed me.”
“Does the supplier ever mess up?”
“No. Not so far, anyway. I’ll figure it out. Never mind.”
When I stood, Hunter was leaning against the bar, his dark sweatshirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, wiping his hands on a rag.
“Maybe they’re just misplaced,” he suggested.
“Probably.” I tried to sound casual, but I never misplaced shipments. Ever. I jotted a note to check with the distributor in the morning and allowed myself to be distracted.
He looked unfairly good. Like, I was just a tired divorced woman trying to rebuild my life, and he was over there looking like a lumberjack, guardian angel, handyman, kind of good.
“All fixed for now,” he said, like it was no big deal.
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Evaporator fan motor was shot. I patched it for now, but I’ll order the part and come back when I get it. And I tightened those wires too.”
“Thank you.”
He brushed my ponytail over my shoulder, his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. “You’re welcome.”
My heart stuttered. That was the thing about Hunter. He didn’t just do the things—he knew what they meant—being here. Helping. Staying.
I leaned against the bar beside him and sighed. “You always make things feel easier. I know I keep saying it, but it’s true.”
“That’s my goal.”
“I thought your goal was to bring me baked goods and flirt shamelessly.”
He gave me a slow, dangerous smile. “Multi-tasking.”
I reached for my laptop and my list and tried to get my voice under control. “Well. You passed the pie test. It is perfection.”
“Thank god,” he murmured. “I was really hoping to make it through the day without you telling my dad on me.”
I glanced at him sidelong. He was watching me again. Not in a creepy way. In a trying to memorize your face in this moment kind of way.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like you know what I’m thinking. Like you see me.”
“I do see you. I’ve always seen you.”
His voice was low. Quiet. And it knocked the air right out of me.
I turned away, under the guise of tallying how many bottles of tequila we had left on the shelf. “Careful,” I said, forcing my tone to stay light. “You keep this up and I might accidentally agree to have dinner with you.”
He didn’t laugh.
When I looked back, he was still watching me. Thoughtful. Steady.
“Paige,” he said softly. “I didn’t do any of this by accident.”
The room went still.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. Time to change the subject before I combust. What’s next on your fixer-upper list? I have some money saved up to get started.”
He didn’t push for more. Just smiled like he knew the exact page I was on and was happy to wait for me to catch up. “I was thinking about checking that margarita machine again,” he answered, all casual and cool. “You said it made a noise like a dying banshee?”
“Only during full moons and karaoke nights. But seriously, it only seems to do it when I’m the only one around to hear it, usually after I come back from a day off. Weird.”
He chuckled, grabbed his tool bag again, and headed toward the back.
I tried to breathe through the sudden surge of nervous energy.
I was in trouble.
Because if I let myself think too long about how easily he slid into my life—how good it felt to have him here, fixing things, bringing me pie, seeing me when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be seen—I was going to start hoping.
And I didn’t know if my heart was ready for that.
Hope was a dangerous thing.