Chapter 8 #2
The work feels automatic, but the air is anything but. Every movement I make feels amplified, brushing up against something unspoken that hovers on the edges of the space between us—and every time I look up, I swear I catch his eyes before they can drift away.
“Your cottage is walking distance, right?”
The question drops casually into the space. But its effect is anything but casual. I falter for just a moment, the rag pausing midair as his words land sharper than they should. “How do you know I have a cottage?”
“Ruth mentioned it.” He leans back, his sweater shifting against his broad shoulders. “Something about a colorful door you painted yourself.”
“Of course she did.” I force my hands to move again, dragging the cloth in slow circles over the table to center myself. “It’s just a few blocks. Small. Sufficient.” My tone is flat, clipped, but my mind races with the possibilities behind his question.
“Better than The Aspen Cabin,” he says, his casual tone wrapping around something unspoken. “Great view, but a longer walk.”
He rises as he speaks, slowly stretching his arms over his head. My heart trips over the sight of his sweater lifting, exposing a strip of skin, sharp hip bones carved against the waistband of his jeans. Heat flushes under my skin before I can stop it.
“The property manager keeps pushing guest mixers,” he continues, letting his arms drop as he adjusts the weight of his bag on his shoulder. “Apparently, I’m antisocial.”
I snort weakly, still stuck in the vision of him. “Imagine that.”
He chuckles low, the sound rippling under my ribs, deeper inside me. I force myself to turn, to refill a carafe, break the magnetism still simmering between us. It’s ridiculous. I’ve spent hours with him this week, but for some reason, tonight feels different.
I turn to the bar and start a fresh pot—piloncillo crumbling in my palm, cinnamon stick cracking, orange peel expressing a bright ribbon over the steam.
I cross to his table with a small clay mug. “Café de olla. Spiced. Comfort in a cup.” I set it down; his fingers wrap the heat, our hands a breath apart.
He inhales. The guarded line at the corner of his eyes eases. One sip, then another—longer—the kind of appreciation that feels like a thank-you without words, but that’s not Max’s style. “Thank you,” he adds, fingers tightening around the mug. “For this.”
“It’s what I do.” The cloth finds one last circle on the nearest table.
He rises, slings the bag over a shoulder. “And you do it extraordinarily well.” Closer now by the door, the small space pulling heat between us. “Goodnight, Lily.”
The way he says my name skims along skin. I hold his gaze a beat too long and pretend it’s the deadbolt I’m reaching for and not air.
He doesn’t offer to walk me home.
By the time the lock clicks shut behind him, I’m left in the heavy quiet of my empty shop, wiping the same counter space clean while my mind spins with the questions he never asked.
Because if he’d offered—if he’d said, Let me walk you home, Lily, in that deliberately low voice of his—I might’ve said yes. Hell, no—I’d have probably asked him inside. Just to see what he’d do.
And what I might let him do to me.
I’m almost done with closing when Darlene knocks at the back, rings of keys chiming against the glass. I let her in, one brow up.
"You're missing the party," she announces, removing her coat. "The PickAxe is packed for Doc Blake's band, and I thought you might reconsider."
"I've got inventory to finish."
"Inventory can wait. Life can't." She studies me for a moment. "Your tech boy hasn’t shown up either."
I busy myself counting coffee bags. "Not surprised. He just left the shop."
"Oh, honey." Darlene's laugh is soft. "You should’ve asked him to join you at the PickAce."
"Why would I do that?"
"You're not fooling anyone but yourself."
"Is there a point to this visit, or are you just here to offer unwanted observations about my personal life?"
"Both." She hops onto the counter, swinging her legs. "Ruth sent me to tell you that your boy genius asked some very specific questions about you the other night."
"Me?" My hands still. "What kind of questions?"
"How long you've been in Angel's Peak. Where you came from before. If you've always been in the coffee business." Darlene watches my reaction carefully. "Ruth didn't tell him anything specific, just that you showed up two years ago and opened the best damn coffee shop Angel's Peak has ever seen."
Relief and anxiety war in my chest. "Good."
"He seemed pretty interested for 'just a customer,'" Darlene adds, air quotes punctuating her words.
"Drop it, Darlene."
"Fine, fine." She slides off the counter. "But for what it's worth, Ruth thinks he seemed genuinely interested, not creepy-stalker interested. And Ruth's creep radar is never wrong."
After she leaves, I finish closing, my mind churning. Max asking questions about me isn't necessarily sinister, but it awakens the caution I've lived with for two years. Getting too close, letting anyone dig too deep, could unravel everything I've built here.
Yet as I walk home in the cool mountain evening, the shop safely locked behind me, I can't help replaying our interactions—the careful way he studies me when he thinks I'm not looking, the moments of genuine connection breaking through our respective guards.
I tell myself it's nothing. A temporary diversion in the quiet routine of my life. In three weeks, Max Lawson will return to his world of tech innovations and corporate success, and I’ll continue in mine, one of coffee and careful anonymity.
But as I unlock the door to my cottage, the emptiness inside feels more pronounced than usual, as if the space itself recognizes what I refuse to admit—that for the first time in two years, I've met someone who makes me question whether hiding is really living.