Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
JACE
Wet leaves stick to the soles of my shoes as I walk down the sidewalk with a drink carrier in one hand and a bag of pastries in the other.
It started raining earlier this morning and has faded into just a mist now, but the cool, damp air slides in through the opening of my jacket.
As I get closer to the maple shop, I can see the lights shining through the glass store front.
Tucking the bag beneath my arm, I reach for the door handle and give it a gentle tug. There’s no resistance as I pull against the weight of it, slipping through the crack and out of the cold and into the semi-warm room.
I’ve been leaving Dr. Grey at home with her sister since she’s not the best with staying away from painting supplies.
Pausing just inside, I shrug off my coat and kick off my shoes, not wanting to dirty the floors that Willow cleaned a few days ago. Drop cloths cover parts of the wood floors and the material is a nice barrier between the cold surface and my sock clad feet.
I survey the space, looking for Willow as my eyebrows cinch closer. The lights are on, and the door is unlocked, yet I don’t see her anywhere.
She’s not on this side of the checkout counter, but as I reach it, I see a mess of blonde hair sticking up from the other side.
My footsteps are light and I walk around it to find Willow sitting crosslegged on the floor.
She’s wearing a pair of old, baggy sweatpants with a tear in the left knee and an oversized T-shirt that has seen better days.
She lifts her gaze from the paper on the floor in front of her, bloodshot eyes squinting against the harsh light from above as she meets my gaze. I bite back a grin as I take in her appearance, knowing damn well she’s feeling the effects of the alcohol she drank last night.
After I carried her to my truck, she passed out by the time we made it out of the parking lot.
She didn’t wake when I lifted her out of the backseat and carried her into her bedroom and tucked her into her bed.
She was too peaceful to disturb, so I had simply brushed her golden hair away from her face before I left her for the night.
And now, here we are, almost in the middle of the morning with her eyes tired and her face pale.
“Hey,” I say as I lower myself to sit down on the floor in front of her. I set down the bag and the drink carrier before lifting one of the hot coffees to hand to her. “Here, drink this.”
It’s just a simple hot vanilla latte, but there’s two extra pumps of vanilla in it. Just the way she used to like her drinks: extra sweet.
She takes it from me without any objection. “Ooh, how did you know I needed caffeine?” she asks, wincing as she takes a sip of the burning liquid. “Be careful, Miller. You’re speaking my love language now.” She takes another sip. “This is perfection.”
“It was a lucky guess after how much you drank last night.” I pause and push the brown paper bag across the floor to her. “There’s a danish in there for you too.”
She sets her drink down, immediately opening the bag to peer inside. “Is this cheese and raspberry?” She pulls it out, a content smile tugging on her lips as her eyes flick to mine. “They’re my favorite.”
I know.
Willow’s eyes linger on mine for a second as she lifts the pastry to her lips. They slowly part and she sinks her teeth into the dough, her eyelids fluttering shut as she tears a bite. Her body sags, a soft moan humming in her throat as she chews it. “Oh my goodness, this is amazing.”
My eyes are fixated on her mouth as she chews. Her tongue darts out, catching a small crumb on her bottom lip as her eyelids flitter open. My heart pounds inside my chest and blood rushes past my ears.
“Do you want some of it?” she asks, holding the pastry up for me.
Her question snaps me out of my fixation and my breath catches in my throat. “Huh?”
“You’re watching me eat like you’re going to come steal it from me.”
A quiet laugh rumbles in my chest as I lean forward, pulling the bag back to me. “I got my own,” I say, pushing my hand into the bag to grab my own pastry. “So you’re safe. For today, at least.”
She lets out a breath, pressing her palm to her chest over her heart. “Oh, thank god.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Honestly,” she starts, but pauses to take another sip. “Like shit.” The corners of her eyes crinkle as she laughs and it’s the cutest thing. “But this is helping.”
Shaking my head, I let out my own string of laughter. “You take it easy then, and I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, blowing a breath through her nose. She reaches for the bag behind her, and grabs a bottle of headache reliever, then shakes two into her hand. “You’re supposed to be helping, not doing all the work.”
I tilt my head to the side as she swallows back the pills. “Aren’t we a team on this project?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she says with a shrug as she swaps her water bottle for the coffee.
“Then we work as a team. If you can’t give 100% at the moment, I’ll cover for you and vice versa.” A piece of paper with something sketched on it in front of her catches my eye. “Are those your plans?”
“Yeah,” she says, her hands sliding beneath the paper to lift it up. “I’m not sure I love it.”
“May I?”
Willow hesitates, her hand lingering on the paper as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. She does that a lot when she’s nervous or unsure. She scans the paper and slowly exhales as she hands it to me. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Taking the paper from her, I hold it in front of me and stare down at her handdrawn design.
It’s completely different from how the store was before.
As you walk in the doors, the checkout counter has moved from the back of the store to the right.
It doesn’t appear to be in the way of the door, and the design of it is more of an L shape than the rectangle that it currently is.
To the left are two rows of standing shelves, some more shelving along the wall and then the back where the checkout counter used to be is just empty space.
“What are you thinking of putting back here?” I lower the paper, flipping it for her to see it as I point at the blank space.
Willow rolls her lips between her teeth, biting down for a moment as she stares at the paper. Some pink has started to return to her cheeks, making her appear a touch more alive than she did when I first walked in. “I don’t know.”
“What are you planning for the shelving units you have drawn here?”
She scoots closer across the floor and I’m acutely aware of how her knee presses into mine. The faint smell of jasmine and vanilla drifts across the small gap separating us and I straighten my spine as my stomach flutters. It just smells like… her.
“I plan on this entire wall being maple syrups. I told you I want to do some infused ones, so the various shelves will have different infusions, different sizes, and obviously, they’ll all be original.
” She points to the freestanding shelves.
“These will have some of the smaller products, like candies and those kinds of things.”
“What else do you plan on having other than candies?”
She catches the loose strands of hair floating by her face and tucks them behind her ears. “Well, you said something about talking to Miss Maggie about making some cookies, so I think I’m going to do that.”
My eyebrows lift as my eyes find hers. “Really?”
“Yes,” she says with a sigh, rolling her eyes. “Don’t go engaging that god complex because of it. It was a good suggestion.”
A smirk tugs on my lips. “So, you admit I have good ideas then.”
Willow purses her lips. “You had one. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, buddy.”
“What about the coffee I brought you? And the Danish?”
She snorts, shaking her head. “Okay, correction. You had three good ideas.”
“I have more than that, if you want to hear them.”
Willow cocks an eyebrow. “This feels like a test.”
“I promise it’s not,” I say with a chuckle. “I think you should do merchandise. Shirts, mugs—people love mugs. Little trinkets. Christmas ornaments. Do you know how many people buy them when they go places?”
Willow’s silent for a moment, her eyes slowly searching my face before her gaze locks onto mine again. “How much thought have you put into this?”
She has a small freckle in her left eye, just to the right of her iris. I don’t know how I never noticed it before.
Heat races up my neck and floods my body. I clear my throat and break our eye contact. “Not much.”
“Do you really think people would want merchandise for the store?”
“Absolutely,” I say, giving her a nod of assurance. “People eat that shit up.”
She shifts her body and her thigh presses against mine as she flattens the paper down on the floor.
She leans away to reach into her bag for a pen.
A sliver of skin on her torso appears as her sweatshirt rides up.
As quick as I notice it, I drop my gaze back down to the plans, and she sits back upright.
“Here,” she says, handing the pen to me. “Add your ideas.”
She wants me to draw on her plans? I’m a little shocked she trusts me this much. I study her eyes, looking for any sign that she’s not serious. “Yeah?”
“Yeah! Your ideas are good.” She presses the pen into my hand. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Her fingers brush against the inside of my palm and my heart stutters. I curl my fingers, wrapping them around the writing utensil. “We are.” My voice catches in my throat—low and gravelly—when I say this next part. “I always wanted you on my team when we were younger.”
Her mouth twitches with a hint of a smile and her eyes glimmer in the fluorescent lights. “I thought it was just because you felt bad that no one else wanted me on theirs.”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not. I would have picked you over everyone then, and I still would.” I pause, realizing what I just said and how she might take it. Shit, why did I say that?
“I wanted to ask you—what happened the other day? I told you I talked to Harrison and your whole demeanor changed.”
She ducks her head, shaking it as she lets out a soft laugh. “Oh yeah, it was nothing.”
“No, tell me.”
She lifts her head up and I catch a little bit of sadness in her eyes. “It was so childish, but it felt like when I mentioned the rink, you seemed dismissive but then talking to him changed your mind.”
I stop. My heart hammers harder. “You wanted to be the one to change my mind?”
She shrugs and a pink tint creeps across her cheeks. “I told you it was childish.”
“You were the one who changed my mind,” I admit, my voice quiet. “You always believe in me, Willow. You always have. You suggested buying it like it was so simple because you always have this faith in me that I can do anything.”
“Because you can.”
A smile lifts the corners of my lips. “That’s what changed my mind. Not Harrison. Not anyone else.”
Her lips twitch with a small smile. “Good,” she says softly and something unreadable shimmers in her eyes. She taps the paper with her finger. “Get to it, Miller. We’re running out of time.”
I chuckle as I click the end of the pen and start jotting down my ideas. Here she is thinking we’re running out of time, but maybe we aren’t. Maybe this is just the beginning.
Maybe we have nothing but time…