Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Daisy
I take another bite, because apparently this is who I am now. A woman eating a sandwich in front of a Wolfcraft while pretending eye contact isn’t a gateway drug.
Forrest watches me for half a second too long.
“What?” I ask around the bite, which is unfortunate for my dignity and, frankly, for everyone’s relationship with turkey.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me. You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“You have a commentary face.”
His gaze drops to the sandwich, then back to me. “You’re getting crumbs on Puck.”
I look down.
Puck is, in fact, sitting beneath me with the solemn focus of a monk receiving communion.
“He volunteered as tribute.”
“He has no standards.”
“Take that back,” I say, mostly because if I don’t start bickering again, I might do something catastrophic like feel grateful.
Forrest turns one page without looking sorry. “No.”
“This is why your reading life is in such a devastating condition.”
“My reading life is private.”
“Your reading life is a cry for help. Last week you read a coaching manual with no cover appeal and no emotional arc.”
“It had diagrams.”
“Of drills.”
“Useful diagrams.”
“Emotionally bankrupt diagrams.”
His eyes lift to mine again. “You got a recommendation, Thorn?”
I should hate the way he says my last name, but the truth is, Forrest makes it sound less like a family legacy and more like a challenge he hasn’t decided whether to accept.
“As a matter of fact,” I say, turning toward the counter, “I do.”
I move behind it, reach beneath the register, and pull out the stack I set aside yesterday. Three books. Carefully chosen.
Not that I spent my lunch break thinking about him.
I did not.
I multitasked.
Women can be productive while making poor emotional decisions.
Forrest’s eyes narrow the moment he sees me return with them. “Absolutely not.”
“You haven’t even heard the options.”
“You’re holding them like weapons.”
“Books are weapons. Against ignorance. Bad taste. Men who think character development is optional.”
“I have character.”
“You have posture and a dog.”
“More than most men.”
Unfortunately, he is not wrong.
I set the books on the table between us. “Option one, literary fiction with emotional repression, family dysfunction, and a man who doesn’t know how to apologize. You’ll relate.”
“No.”
“Option two, a mystery set in a small town where everyone has secrets and half the suspects are overly involved in local committees.”
His jaw shifts. “Mom keeps me updated on what’s happening in Winterberry Cove.” He shivers. “Too realistic.”
“Option three,” I say, sliding the last book forward, “a romance.”
“No.”
“You said no too fast.”
“I said it at the correct speed.”
“It has a meddling family.”
He points at the book. “It has a shirtless man on the cover with fake abs.”
I narrow my gaze. “You don’t know they’re fake.”
“Trust me.”
That should not do anything to me.
It does.
The words are dry. Almost bored. Still, for one awful second, my eyes betray democracy and drop to his chest. Not low enough to be indecent.
Just enough to notice the breadth of him under his black sweater, the easy strength in his arms, the way he looks too large for this little café and somehow perfectly placed inside it.
I look back up fast.
Tragically, not fast enough.
Forrest catches it.
Of course he does.
His expression barely changes, but the air between us gains teeth.
“Oh, I trust you,” I say, too brightly. “You seem like a man with extensive experience in abs. Professionally. Platonically. In a hockey way.”
“In a hockey way,” he repeats.
Puck presses his big head against my thigh with a sigh of theatrical devotion.
Forrest looks down at him. “Traitor.”
I rub behind Puck’s ear again. “He understands literary growth.”
“He understands you drop crumbs.”
“Love has many languages.”
Forrest’s gaze stays on me.
There is something in it I don’t know what to do with. Something quieter than flirting and more dangerous than kindness. It makes me want to keep talking until I outrun it. It makes me want to stop talking and see what happens.
Both options feel medically inadvisable.
He taps the romance with one finger.
“I’ll take that one.”
I blink. “You’ll take the shirtless fake-abs romance?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“I’m sorry, I just need a moment. This is historic. Bea, do we have a bell? A ceremonial gong? A witness with notary powers?”
“Daisy,” Forrest says.
“What?”
His eyes drop to the sandwich in my hand.
Then back to my mouth.
“Eat.”
It should annoy me.
It does annoy me.
It also does something warm and foolish inside me, which I plan to report to no one, including myself.
So I take another bite, because apparently this is who I am now.
A Thorn woman accepting sandwiches from a Wolfcraft.
A woman recommending romance novels to a man built like a locked door.
A woman pretending none of this feels like the beginning of something.
Which is probably how people end up making the exact mistakes they later describe as “complicated” over brunch.
Then my phone buzzes in my apron pocket.
Reality, as usual, has the timing of a drunk marching band.
I pull it out and glance down.
Carla Alden: Hi Daisy! So sorry for the late note. Liam’s mom mentioned you might be able to help with the welcome dinner flow. We’re so lucky to have you involved. I know this must be a little strange, but I truly appreciate how gracious you’ve been.
Gracious.
I stare at the word until the rest of the text softens at the edges.
There it is. The prize women receive when they don’t set anything on fire.
Gracious.
I can be gracious. I can be helpful. I can organize welcome dinner flow for the woman who fucked my fiancé while knowing exactly who he belonged to.
And no, I’m not blaming this only her. Liam carries most of it. He made the promise. He broke it. He knew where to put his hands, his lies, and his future.
Still.
Carla does not get to hand me gracious like a ribbon for standing still while she steps over the life I thought was mine.
“Daisy.”
Forrest’s voice cuts through the café noise.
I look up too quickly. “What?”
He is watching me from his table now. Puck remains pressed against my leg, warm and trusting and terribly inconvenient.
“Are you doing that thing again?”
I tuck my phone away. “You’ll have to be more specific. I do many things, beautifully. Badly, sometimes, but with excellent punctuation.”
“The smile.”
My mouth closes.
“What smile?”
“The fake one.”
“I don’t fake smile.”
He arches an eyebrow. “You just did.”
“That was my customer service face.” I pull back a chair and sit in it with more temper than necessary. “There’s a difference.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“We’re done here.”
“No, we’re not.”
My eyes cut to his. “Excuse me?”
He leans back. Not relaxed. Forrest never looks relaxed. He looks like a man who could sit through a house fire and complain about the chair. “Is it wedding related shit?”
I should tell him no.
I should tell him it’s none of his business.
I should remind him we are not friends, despite what his dog and Bea seem to believe.
“Mom keeps me updated on Winterberry Cove gossip,” he says. “I know about the wedding.”
“It’s not gossip,” I say, too fast. “It’s more like a community-wide hostage situation with hors d’oeuvres.”
His mouth moves.
Barely.
Still, I see it.
“Stop being impossible,” he says.
“I am not impossible.”
He gives me a look.
“Fine,” I say. “I am possible with notice. And snacks. And ideally a written agenda so I can prepare my denial in advance.”
His mouth does the almost-smile thing again, and this time I hate how badly I want the full version.
I want it like a ridiculous person. Like someone with no sense of self-preservation.
Like a woman who has been living on stress, coffee, and other people’s expectations for so long that one half of a sandwich and this man asking about the wedding I’m dreading feels dangerously close to care.
“This doesn’t mean we’re having a moment.”
He nods. “Good. I hate moments.”
“It doesn’t mean we’re friends either.”
“Finally. I thought you were going to drag me onto your friend list. Sounds exhausting.”
“You’d never survive. There are emotional check-ins.”
“Cruel.”
“And birthdays.”
“Brutal.”
“And sometimes people hug.”
He looks genuinely offended. “Threatening a man in public now?”
“You walked into that one.”
Forrest opens the novel with the grim focus of a man defusing a bomb. Puck collapses at my feet with a huff, pinning me there like he has decided I belong to this table now.
Across the café, Bea watches us with a knowing expression I choose to ignore for everyone’s safety.
My phone buzzes again.
I don’t look.
Forrest notices.
His eyes lift from the page. “You can answer it.”
“I know.”
“You’re not.”
“Look at you. Detective skills already improving.”
“Daisy.”
My name in his mouth is different when he isn’t bickering with me.
Too quiet.
Too careful.
It makes the back of my eyes sting, which is unacceptable. I am a professional woman with administrative skills and a complicated toner situation. I cannot fall apart because a grumpy former hockey player said my name like he noticed the bruise beneath the joke.
“It’s Carla,” I say, staring at the sandwich instead of him. “Or my mother. Or Liam’s mother. Someone’s mother, probably. There are so many mothers involved in this wedding, Forrest. It’s like a maternal crime syndicate with napkin samples.”
His fingers tighten around the book by a fraction.
That’s all.
A fraction.
His jaw works once. “I can’t believe you have to deal with the woman your ex cheated on you with.”
The words do not shout. They do not need to.
They sit there between us, plain and ugly and honest.
I glance toward the window. Rain beads against the glass and turns the passing headlights blurry.
“Technically, yes.”
“There’s no technically.”
I look back at him.
His face is hard to read until it isn’t. Until I see the anger there, controlled and quiet, not for himself. For me. That is worse than pity. Pity makes me want to perform. This makes me want to rest my forehead on the table, and tell him I am tired in places sleep can’t reach.
So naturally, I make a joke.
“I appreciate your legal clarity.”
“Daisy.”
“I know.” My voice lowers before I can polish it.
“I know what she did. I know what he did. I know I should be over it because it has been long enough, and I live in another city, and I have a job, technically two jobs, and a dentist I can’t afford but deeply respect. I know all the correct things.”
Forrest says nothing.
That, somehow, lets me continue.
“I just hate that everyone keeps acting like the worst part is that he’s marrying someone else.” I press my thumb into a crumb until it breaks. “That isn’t the worst part.”
“What is?”
I almost don’t answer.
The café feels too warm. Too close. There is coffee grinding behind the counter, a burst of laughter near the front, Bea moving cups in soft clinks. Ordinary sounds. Safe sounds. My life has been built out of ordinary sounds lately. I cling to them when the bigger things want in.
“The worst part is that I’m useful to it,” I say. “To their wedding. To my mother. To the vineyard. To the story where everyone gets to move on if I keep being easy to work with.”
Forrest’s gaze holds mine.
I want him to look away.
He doesn’t.
“I don’t feel gracious,” I admit.
His voice is rougher when he answers. “Good.”
A laugh slips out of me, surprised and too close to pain. “That’s your comfort?”
“Yes.”
“You’re terrible at this.”
“No.” He leans forward slightly, forearms on the table, book forgotten between us. “I’m saying you don’t owe them pretty feelings.”
My breath catches, but I make myself smile because smiling is easier than letting that hit where it wants to.
“Pretty feelings,” I repeat. “Look at you, poet.”
“Don’t start.”
“Too late. I’ll put you on the Thursday stage. You can read dramatic thoughts about hockey tape and emotional repression.”
“I’ll leave.”
“You won’t.”
His eyes stay on mine. “No.”
One word.
Still, it moves through me.
Because he means tonight. This table. The sandwich. The ugly little truth I let fall between us. He means he won’t leave me sitting in it alone, and he says it like it costs him something.
My phone buzzes again.
This time, I turn it over without looking.
Forrest watches the movement, then looks back at his book as if he has not just done something quietly devastating to my nervous system.
“Eat,” he mutters.
I take another bite because there is nothing else to do with my hands.
For the next five minutes, the wedding can wait. Liam can wait. Carla’s graciousness, my mother’s aisle runner, the vineyard, Winterberry Cove, all of it can stand outside in the rain with its consequences, and its extremely aggressive opinions about linen.
For five minutes, I sit in a bookstore café in Boston finishing my sandwich next to a borrowed dog and a grumpy man reading a romance novel because I told him to.
It isn’t happiness.
But it is something close enough to make me suspicious.
Maybe Mira and Bea are right.
I need a life.
Unfortunately, this might be how one starts.