Chapter 1 #3
He backed off, palms up. Letting me have my way, or letting me pretend I did.
I piled the last of the change onto the counter.
Violet took it with cheerful grace, and I exhaled slowly through my nose, willing my heartbeat back to something reasonable.
Fine. I was fine. I just needed to get my coffee, find a corner, and sit down and breathe for five minutes without anyone looking at me.
I stepped aside, stumbled over my own feet, and poured hot coffee directly down my chest.
For a moment, I just stood there. The heat soaked through my shirt, the cup half-crushed in my hand, and something behind my eyes went dangerously bright and sharp.
I was not going to cry in Violet’s Café.
I was absolutely not going to cry over spilled coffee in front of half of Sweetbriar with Levi Barrett standing three feet away. I blinked hard. Set my jaw. Breathed.
“Hey.” Levi’s hands were already at my elbows, steadying, sure. “Come on.”
He guided me toward the bathroom, his big hands warm through my sleeves.
The café hummed around us, the knitters and the toddlers and the whole cozy impossible morning carrying on without pause, and all I registered was the pull of him beside me and the absolute unfairness of my entire freaking life.
“You’re okay.” His hands were already at my elbows, steadying and sure. He steered me sideways toward the napkin station, grabbed a stack without hesitation, and before I’d fully processed what was happening, he was dabbing carefully at the coffee soaking through my shirt.
For approximately two seconds, I let him.
Then I registered where his hands were. And how close he was standing.
And the fact that I could feel the warmth of him through the thin, coffee-soaked fabric, and my brain, already frayed at every edge, chose that precise moment to notice all of it at once.
“I’ve got it,” I said, and took the napkins from him perhaps more quickly than was strictly graceful.
He stepped back immediately, and something flickered across his face—sheepish, almost boyish, as if he’d only just caught up to what he’d been doing. He cleared his throat. I pressed the napkins to my shirt and didn’t look at him, and the space between us hummed with so many unsaid words.
“Bathroom,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Good call.”
I walked away with as much dignity as a woman soaked in coffee and unraveling at the seams could reasonably manage, which was not very much.
By the time I returned, damp and blotchy and having given myself a stern talking-to in the mirror, he was waiting by the counter. Something in the set of his shoulders told me he’d been standing exactly like that the whole time—patient, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be.
“I’m getting you another cup,” he said. “It’s on me. No arguing.”
His gaze lingered, searching, moving over my face with a quiet attention that made it hard to breathe.
Like he was looking for something he half-expected to find.
And suddenly I was thirteen again, under a wide starry Sweetbriar sky, the night air warm and full of crickets, whispering cross your heart, as we promised to always be best friends.
His face tipped up toward mine in the dark, so certain, so easy.
Then high school had started, and my best friend had slowly become somebody else. But so had I, if I were being honest.
“Hey. You don’t have to do this,” I protested. “I can live without caffeine. I mean, probably. In theory.”
“Well, we’re not testing your theory today. Please?”
My other lifelong bestie, Harper, barreled in then, saving me from drowning in my own thoughts. She was breathless, cheeks pink, her daughter Bella trailing behind her, her sparkly unicorn backpack bouncing against her shoulders. They were obviously on the way to school drop-off.
“There you are!” Harper froze when she saw Levi and grinned slowly. “Well, hello, firefighter.”
She glanced at my wet shirt, winced sympathetically, then back to Levi. “Rescuing damsels or just their caffeine?”
“Mostly her caffeine,” he said with a crooked smile. “The damsel is still as stubborn as ever.” He took the cup Violet slid across the counter and handed it to me with a look that said I’d better take it or he’d put up a fight.
I took it. I didn’t have to test the theory. I knew I needed it. “Thank you,” I murmured.
Harper waggled her brows. “Still on for knit night? Auntie Eileen started a potholder for you to practice on.”
Levi bit back a smile. “You still pretending it’s about yarn and not gossip?”
“It’s community service,” Harper said solemnly. “We keep the town informed.”
I couldn’t take any more. “Don’t you have a fire to put out?”
His radio crackled before he could answer. Structure fire. Pine and Fourth. His posture shifted instantly to focused.
He paused at the door, glanced back.
“Be careful,” I said. The words slipped out before my pride could stop them.
He nodded, lips tilting. “Always.”
The bell chimed behind him.
Harper pulled me to a table. “You okay?”
“Totally,” I lied, and swallowed a sip of coffee.
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Becca, come on.”
“What?”
“The menu board. The cinnamon rolls? Cross your freaking heart?” Her voice was gentle, teasing, and not. “You’re fine? Did you talk to him about—?” She knew everything, as a best friend should. Also, because she was there and saw the whole thing.
“No,” I shushed her, waving my hand around maniacally. “I can’t.”
Her eyes went wide. “You still haven’t?”
“Still haven’t what?” Bella piped up, plopping her backpack onto the chair beside me.
“Nothing,” I muttered, mortified.
Harper leaned in. “Two months ago. Holloway’s parking lot. He was drunk, looked at you like you were the only person in the world, dropped to one knee—”
“Stop,” I groaned, face in hands. “You just said it. He was drunk. He didn’t mean it. He doesn’t even remember.”
Harper shook her head. “You’re the only one pretending that. Bella and I saw his face. He remembers, Becca. Every word he said that night. I know it.”
“It was gross,” Bella confirmed. “But also nice, like in Cinderella. You should just say yes already.”
My head snapped up. “Why?”
“He’s nicer than Travis. And I want to be a flower girl. Can I?”
Heat flooded my cheeks all over again, and Harper bit back a laugh. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she said.
“Whenever I get married,” I told Bella, “not soon, and not to Levi, then yes, you may be my flower girl. Obviously.” I hugged my coffee like it held the last shred of dignity I had left, because I was beginning to think that it did.