Chapter Seven
Evan
Firebrook Valley
Present Day
By the time I made it back to Mabel’s, the caffeine in my system had done absolutely nothing to improve my mood.
If anything, I was more irritated than when I’d left.
I was annoyed at myself, mostly. Annoyed at my father.
And I was definitely annoyed at Firebrook Valley for being so stubbornly unchanged that it could make me feel like a petulant fourteen-year-old and a weary twenty-seven-year-old at the exact same time.
And, if I was being honest, I was more than a little annoyed at Tim for noticing way too much.
Mabel looked up the second I stepped through the door. Her eyes flicked over me, narrowing in that specific way that meant she’d already assigned me a job I hadn’t agreed to yet.
“No,” I said, before she could draw breath.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask, Evan Holliston.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re here. You’re strong. And you’re currently wasting one of my good stools to brood.”
“I’m not brooding.”
Kai, sitting at the counter with a bottle of water and enough sawdust on his shirt to suggest he’d been rolling in it, snorted into his drink.
Mabel pointed at me with a wooden spoon. “The storm took part of Mr. Torres’s barn roof last night. Half the town is over there trying to shore it up before the weather turns again. Since you’re here and pretending to be useful, you can go help.”
I looked toward the window, eyeing the perfectly visible road that could have led me literally anywhere else. Then I looked back at Mabel. “You weaponize guilt.”
“I prefer to think of it as motivating through love.”
Kai slid off his stool, grinning. “Come on, Evan. You can carry lumber and maybe build some real muscles.”
“You’re an asshole, Kai.” I looked his mammoth body over. I worked out, but he was bodybuilder size. “And a showoff. No one wants to see that much muscle.”
He laughed. “I’d say that’s not what your mother said last night, but Mabel would ban me for a week.”
“I absolutely would,” Mabel said without pausing from wrapping cookies in wax paper with practiced efficiency. “Take these to Mr. Torres and on the way you can punch Kai for what he said, Evan, but not while he’s driving.”
“Hey!” Kai said in protest.
“Oh, I will.” I cracked my knuckles and smiled. “But payback is best delivered when he least expects it.”
The way Kai’s eyes narrowed had me holding back a smirk. Good, let him sweat it out a little.
Mr. Torres’s barn looked even worse up close.
A whole section of the roof had caved in on the east side—not a full collapse, but enough to make the structure look like it had lost a heavyweight fight with the sky.
Dust hung thick in the air, punctuated by the rhythmic scream of a circular saw and the shouting of measurements.
And standing right in the middle of the chaos, with her hair twisted up off her neck and a pencil behind her ear like she’d been born to organize disaster responses, was Nora.
Of course. Fate was set on torturing me, or Mabel was. Possibly both.
Nora was holding one end of a measuring tape while Palila squinted at a warped support beam as if she could personally will it back into shape. Emma stood on an overturned bucket reading off numbers while Zion hauled scrap wood toward a burn pile.
Nora looked up. Our eyes met, and there it was again—that same stupid, immediate tightening in my chest that proved my body was making decisions my brain had not approved.
She raised a hand. I lifted mine in return, realizing I’d lost the ability to act normal in almost any setting involving her.
Kai hopped down from the truck. “I brought Holliston!”
Palila glanced over. “Which one?”
“The tall, grumpy one.”
“That narrows it down not at all,” Palila shot back.
Nora laughed, and I had the sudden, ridiculous urge to jump back in the truck before things got worse. Instead, I grabbed the tools and headed toward the barn.
Mr. Torres emerged from the shadows with a streak of dust across his cheek and relief written plain on his face. “Evan. Glad you’re here.”
“Happy to help.” That part, at least, was true. Physical labor was easier than thinking.
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Can you and Kai clear the broken rafters? Nora’s been trying to help, but you know she’s not great with a hammer.”
Nora made a face. “I am literally standing right here, Mr. Torres.”
“Then maybe stop leaving dent marks around the nails.”
She put a hand to her chest, but she was more amused than offended. “Wow. The disrespect.”
Mr. Torres took the cookies and grinned. “These for me?”
“Well, they aren’t for Kai,” I said without missing a beat.
“Let it go,” Kai said with a shameless grin. “You city boys are so sensitive.”
“Mr. Torres,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Is that an eagle nest?” I pointed toward the tree line. When he turned to check, I spun and gave Kai a punch to the stomach that sent him stumbling back a few feet.
Nora gasped.
Mr. Torres turned back, confused by the commotion.
Kai bent over, laughing. “You got me good that time. I forgot how hard you punch.”
“Mountain boys are so sensitive.”
Nora made a choking sound that suspiciously resembled a laugh. We shared a quick, amused look. “He had it coming,” I assured her.
“I don’t doubt that at all,” she answered with a smile.
The warmth in her tone and the laughter in her eyes did funny things to my ability to remember why I was there. I traveled extensively and had seen most of the world. Beautiful women came in all shapes, sizes, races, and cultures . . . but not one made my heart race the way she did.
I succeeded in putting her out of my thoughts before. I can do it again.
I have to put some distance between us.
For the next half hour, I threw myself into the work hard enough to pretend I didn’t know exactly where Nora was at all times. It was difficult. She kept ending up near me—handing me nails, holding boards steady, passing the level.
Once, when I jumped down from a ladder and landed against another, she flinched as if she’d been the one to feel the impact. “You okay?” she asked.
I will be, as soon as I’m far away from this place. “Physically? Mentally?” I joked.
Instead of laughing, she gave me a slow once over, the intensity of which had the front of my jeans tightening. “Is it hard to be back?” she asked softly.
Hard?
I’m trying not to be.
Oh, she’s asking about how I feel. I counted to ten in my head before answering. “It’s different, but also painfully no different than it always was.”
Her eyes darkened. “Did you find what you were looking for out there?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes and no.” After a beat, I said, “Congratulations on graduating from college. I would have attended or sent you a gift but . . .”
“I know.” She nodded. “And thank you.”
She handed me a hammer, and our fingers brushed. Just for a split second, but it was enough. The jolt of it ran straight up my arm and settled somewhere inconveniently close to my heart. I took the hammer and stepped back like a coward. “Are you glad you went?”
There was a pause before she answered. “Yes and no. Sometimes I think if I’d chosen to be here . . .”
“Don’t,” I said, forgetting my decision to keep space between us. “Being here wouldn’t have changed that she liked to ride alone.”
Nora pressed her lips together tightly. “That’s what I tell myself.”
I ran a hand down her arm. “Believe it. She was surrounded by people who cared about her and that didn’t change the outcome. Plus, I know she was proud of you.”
“You never spoke to her. How would you know if she was or wasn’t?”
Nora wasn’t pushing back to be cruel. She wanted reassurance and I could give that to her. “Because everyone in Firebrook Valley is proud of you.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Even you?”
“Especially me,” I said, instantly regretting how that level of honesty might make things awkward between us.
Her expression remained slightly guarded. “How did your father take the news?”
“Surprisingly well.”
“That’s ominous.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She tossed a wrench into the toolbox. “Mine said he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Shocking.”
“Yeah.”
I snorted. “We’ve either handled this really well or they’re both about to explode.”
She smiled at that, and the sight of her hit me with an absurd amount of force for a woman covered in barn dust. “It might be healthy for them to yell. It’s the quiet I don’t trust.”
“We should book them both a day at one of those smash rooms.”
“Imagine? We’d lock them in, let the dishes fly, and come back for them later.”
“They’d hopefully both still be alive.”
She sighed. “I’d risk it if I thought it had a chance of working.”
God, I wish I could fix this for her.
There was a beat of silence. “A little shared trauma is good for a friendship, right?” she asked softly.
My chest squeezed. That wasn’t a bond I wanted to share with anyone, least of all her. “Did hearing the news about the wedding hit you hard?”
Her smile faded. “Yeah,” she said, eyes dropping. “I’m happy for them, I am. And I get why they did it. But . . . it still hurt.”
“Of course it did.”
Her gaze lifted back to mine. Something in her face softened. “How did you handle it?” she asked quietly.
I laughed once, without humor. “I’ve been away so much, and all things considered, I wasn’t surprised.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t sting.”
There it was again. That impossible thing she did where she looked directly through my defenses and found the truth. I set the boards down. “Guess we both got demoted.”
“To what?”
“To people who find out about major life events after the fact.”
That got a laugh out of her. “Let’s finish this roof,” she said.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to make light of it.”
“I know, but I’m here pretending I know how to fix a roof so I don’t have to think.”
“That sounds suspiciously healthy, Nora.”
“Gotcha.” I picked up a two by four. “And I’m on board with that plan.”
I looked at her for one second too long. No makeup. Dust all over her shirt. And still so damn beautiful.