Chapter 8 #2
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him leaning across the table at Violet’s.
I remembered the exact weight of his gaze when he looked at me like I was the only person in the room.
I remembered how safe it felt to be seen by him—really seen—and how terrifying that safety was now, because letting him in meant letting everything else that came along with him in too.
The fear. The want. The history we’d never quite finished writing.
I opened my laptop again and applied for the job at the Stop & Go.
There. A plan. Or at least the beginning of one.
The relief lasted all of five minutes before the nerves crept back in, restless and insistent, pushing me toward motion instead of stillness.
Feeling dangerously accomplished, I closed my laptop and turned my attention to something small and controllable.
I was halfway through reorganizing the tiny bathroom cabinet—an activity I did only when I was aggressively avoiding my own thoughts—when my phone buzzed with a notification from the podcast platform.
I frowned. I hadn’t gone live. I hadn’t posted anything new. I wiped my hands on a towel and picked it up anyway. New comment.
I opened the app, heart ticking a little faster than it should have.
The comment was not from a username I recognized.
Wild night by the river. Sweetbriar’s getting interesting.
I stared at the screen.
That could mean anything, I told myself. People talked. People speculated. The river was public. Everyone knew about the mayor and his pet projects. It was probably nothing more than someone being clever.
Probably. Right?
But the rational loop kept breaking. What if it wasn’t random? What if they’d been listening that night? What if they knew it was me talking?
I locked my phone and set it face down on the counter, suddenly aware of how quiet the trailer felt. The river murmured on, steady and unconcerned.
I laughed softly to myself. “Get a grip,” I muttered.
I tried to shake it off. But the questions wouldn’t stop circling.
What if the red light hadn’t been a cigarette? What if it were a scope? A camera? What if someone had been watching me watch them? Or just watching them? There was no way to spin that red light into something good.
I had nothing to give. No land. No money. No secrets worth blackmailing. Except I had a voice. A platform. Small, anonymous—but apparently not invisible. Not anymore. If someone wanted to silence questions before they started, or discredit a witness before she even understood what she’d seen…
My pulse kicked up again, fast and shallow.
I paced the narrow length of the trailer—three steps one way, three steps back—like movement could outrun the thought. My reflection caught in the mirror by the door. Wide eyes, pale face, hair falling out of its knot. I looked hunted. I felt hunted.
And underneath it all, Levi’s face kept surfacing, his steady gaze, the way he’d looked at me like he could see every crack I was trying to hide. The way his hand had lingered on my arm just long enough to make me keep feeling it hours later.
I hated how much I wanted to call him. How much I wanted to go to his place, knock on the door, and just stand in his doorway.
Let him see how badly I was fraying. Let him pull me inside and tell me I wasn’t crazy.
I hated it because wanting that felt dangerous.
Like opening a door I’d spent years keeping locked.
I grabbed my bag, telling myself that fresh air and getting out of the house would help. Motion always helped. Being away from my trailer and the phone that had just reminded me I wasn’t as invisible as I wanted to be would definitely help.
I parked near Main and ducked into the hardware store for more duct tape I didn’t urgently need. The place smelled like sawdust and rain-soaked coats, and I was pretending to be deeply invested in which color I should choose when I felt it—that familiar awareness.
Then Levi laughed.
I glanced sideways, and there he was at the register, broad shoulders stretching the fabric of a dark hoodie, one hand braced on the counter as he talked to the clerk.
He looked relaxed in a way that made me want to run to him.
He sounded like familiar comfort, like the solid ground under your feet when everything else felt wobbly.
He turned, caught me staring, and smiled.
My pulse kicked, soft, unsteady, and freaked way the heck out.
Heat crept up my neck. I looked away too fast, pretending to study the duct tape display like it held the secrets of the universe.
“Well,” he said, stepping closer, voice low and warm enough to make my skin prickle gently, “this is either a coincidence or Sweetbriar doing what it does best.”
I glanced around the checkout line, then back at him. It was a mistake. His eyes were on me, soft, searching, like he could already see the storm behind my forced calm. The way he looked at me made something inside me relax just a little.
“Let me guess,” I said, trying for light, “shoving people into each other’s paths until they give up pretending it’s accidental?”
His grin turned soft. “Something like that. How are you?”
There it was again. The question I’d been dodging for so long, I didn’t know if I could answer it honestly, even if I tried.
“I’m fine,” I lied, then winced at how fake it sounded. “Actually—” I stopped, and swallowed hard. “Do you still want to eat? I mean… with me? Like lunch or a snack, or coffee? I don’t know, we can do whatever…”
His brows lifted, surprise flickering across his face before something gentle replaced it. His gaze held mine, steady and kind as always. “Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than before. “I do.”
I hesitated for half a heartbeat, long enough to feel the weight of my own fear, the longing of wanting him closer, then nodded. “Okay. Yes. Please.”
Relief crossed his face so fast it almost hurt to see. His shoulders eased, like he’d been holding his breath for weeks. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said, quieter now. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
He didn’t ask why. Didn’t tease me. Didn’t make it into a thing.
Instead, he stepped closer, enough that I could smell cedar and clean laundry and the faint trace of smoke that always clung to him, and said, simply, “Then you won’t be.
” His voice was low, deep, and soft, comforting in a way that made my stomach settle and my shoulders sag in relief.
“Holloway’s?” he asked. Owned by his aunt and cousins, Holloway’s was a Sweetbriar favorite.
I nodded, already moving toward the door with him and feeling better with each step that I took. “As long as your family promises not to interrogate me.”
He laughed, the sound vibrating through the small space between us. “You know my family. There is no way I can promise you that.”
“Levi,” I said, pointing at him, “your aunt once asked me if I was ‘eating enough’ while handing me a roll and staring directly into my soul.”
His grin widened, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, that checks out.”
“And your cousins still think they can read people by whether they order fries or tots with their burgers.”
“In their defense, they’re usually right,” he said, unapologetic.
I sighed. “Okay. But if someone asks what I’m doing with my life, I’m loudly changing the subject.”
He snorted. “I’ll spill something. On purpose. I’m good for a distraction, I promise.”
The pub was only a few blocks away, tucked into one of the oldest brick buildings on Main.
Holloway’s glowed warm against the gray afternoon, windows fogged, the neon beer signs burning softly against the glass.
I slowed almost imperceptibly as we approached, and I felt rather than saw Levi do the same beside me—just half a step, just a fraction, both of us arriving at the door with the memory of the last time we’d left through it settled somewhere neither of us was acknowledging.
But we didn’t mention it. We were very good at that.
Levi held the door open for me, and I ducked under his arm and stepped inside without meeting his eyes, which was its own kind of acknowledgment.
The smell hit first—malt and fried food and something savory and warm—and then the noise, low conversation, clinking glasses, a burst of laughter from the bar.
The dark wood and black-and-white tile, the brass fixtures, the bar worn smooth by decades of elbows and easy evenings.
The kind of place that was supposed to make you feel safe.
It did, mostly. It also made me think about a parking lot at midnight and a man on one knee and the heartbreakingly beautiful expression on his face that I’d been trying very hard not to think about ever since.
I looked at the bar instead.
This was a terrible idea. A spectacularly bad plan.
Levi settled in beside me like he belonged there, which was the other problem, because he always had.
I had no one to blame but myself. No one had dragged me anywhere. I’d said yes. On purpose. And now I was walking into Holloway’s with Levi Barrett like my brain hadn’t spent years carefully avoiding this exact scenario.
Levi was the kind of man people instinctively made space for without realizing why.
The kind of man who seemed to notice everything.
And I mean, the man had noticed everything as we made our way here.
The crack in the sidewalk I would’ve tripped on if he hadn’t reached out to hold my elbow and keep me steady.
The car that rolled a little too fast through the intersection, earning a subtle shift of his body closer to mine.
The way his hand came to the small of my back as we reached the door, guiding me inside with quiet, unconscious care, like it was simply normal.
My pulse was now completely off the rails. He was gentle. Thoughtful. Like he’d been tracking my comfort level the whole time without me ever asking him to.
And the worst part? I liked it.