Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Muddy Boots was louder than usual for a weekday afternoon.
Mac felt it the second she stepped inside—the scrape of chair legs on wood, the burst of laughter from the counter, the humid mix of coffee and sunscreen and lake air clinging to everyone’s skin.
Summer had settled into itself. Tourists and locals moved in the same lazy current, all of them buoyed by longer days and the illusion of extra time.
She slid into the booth across from Bella, the vinyl warm against the backs of her legs.
Bella didn’t reach for a menu. “So,” she said, already studying Mac. “Have you told Connor yet?”
Mac reached for the coffee that was waiting for her. “Told him what?”
Bella’s look didn’t change. “About the job.”
The rim of the mug hovered just short of Mac’s mouth. “Not yet. He’s helping Callum with something today.”
Bella didn’t blink. “That’s not what I asked.”
Mac took a long drink, letting the heat anchor her.
“I don’t get it,” Bella said, tearing open a sugar packet. “You two have basically been together all summer. Sitting on something this big instead of telling him isn’t…great.”
The words landed harder than Mac expected.
“I wasn’t excluding him,” she said, setting the mug down a little too firmly. “I needed to make the decision on my own first.”
Bella stirred her coffee slowly. “I’m not saying you needed his permission. But when you care about someone, you don’t keep the big stuff to yourself.”
Mac’s gaze drifted toward the counter. Helen had three customers waiting to pay their tabs, moving efficiently from register to coffee pot.
Bella leaned forward, voice softening.
“You know what the difference is between basketball and this?”
Mac looked at her.
“In basketball, the goal is to make the right play.” Bella shrugged. “In a relationship, the goal is just to be honest about where you are.”
She held Mac’s gaze.
“So what’s really stopping you from telling him?”
Mac’s throat tightened.
Because once she said it out loud, Connor would know exactly where she’d chosen to go.
“I’m afraid he’ll be upset about the choice I made,” she admitted. “I chose a job that involves regular travel instead of Clay’s offer.”
Bella nodded, considering that. “He might be.”
Mac blinked.
“But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t support you.” Bella reached across the table and covered Mac’s hand. “I’m your best friend. I’m a little sad I won’t see you every week. That’s real.” She squeezed gently. “But I’m also excited for you because I want you to be happy.”
The simplicity of it pressed somewhere tender.
“Connor really likes you,” Bella added. “If he’s going to be upset about anything, it’ll be that you didn’t trust him enough to tell him.”
That one hit.
Mac felt it in her ribs, in the space just beneath her sternum, where anticipation and dread lived side by side.
“I should go talk to him,” she said.
“Yes,” Bella said immediately. “You should.”
Mac managed a crooked smile. “Don’t say anything to Daisy. Or anyone.”
Bella mimed zipping her lips. “I won’t say a word. But this is Good Hope. Secrets have a shelf life. Go.”
“What about lunch?”
“We’ll reschedule.” Bella’s grin flashed. “Your treat.”
Mac slid out of the booth, pulse moving faster than it should when the conversation coming up was simple.
She’d spent most of her life deciding first and explaining later. It had kept her efficient. Contained. Untangled from anyone else’s reactions.
But as she headed out of the café, surrounded by the noise of a town that had slowly begun to feel like hers, she felt the cost of that habit.
This wasn’t about control.
It was about letting someone stand beside her before the decision hardened into fact.
Outside, the sun hit her full in the face. The street shimmered with heat and motion—families drifting past storefronts, someone calling for a child to slow down, a car door slamming somewhere down the block.
Mac paused on the sidewalk.
She pulled out her phone.
Connor’s name sat at the top of her screen.
Her thumb hovered.
She could call. She could wait. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and started walking toward home.
She’d tell him in person.
This wasn’t something she wanted to say over the phone.
Connor deserved better than that.
Mac saw Connor the second she turned onto the street. He was standing under a basketball hoop, its clean white backboard catching the late-afternoon sun. For a moment, she slowed, wondering how she could have missed seeing it before.
But no, it was clearly new.
The weighted base was squared to the side of the drive, the adjustment crank still gleaming. The net looked stiff, unused.
She stepped closer, scuff marks streaking the driveway where he’d wrestled it into position.
Connor had his sleeves pushed to his forearms, a ball tucked under one arm like it belonged there.
He looked up and saw her. His smile started small, then widened. Hopeful, but not pushy.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Mac stopped at the edge of the drive, taking it in fully now—the straight lines, the care in how it had been set up.
“You put up a hoop.”
“I did.” He shifted the ball to his hip. “Figured it was time.”
Time.
The word brushed something tender.
She stepped closer. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.”
That tightened her chest more than any grand gesture would have.
He bounced the ball once and passed it to her. It hit her palms with a familiar weight, fingers falling automatically onto the seams. The hollow echo of it against the concrete carried down the quiet street.
“Winner buys dinner?” he asked.
“You’re assuming you have a chance.”
“Always.”
They started easy. No score, no clock. Just movement. The steady rhythm of dribbling and pivoting. Mac felt something inside her unclench, the day’s tension leaking out through her shoulders.
She took a shot from the edge of the drive.
Swish.
Connor let out a low whistle. “Okay. I see how this is going to be.”
They fell into a rhythm that felt older than the hoop, older than the street. Mac overbanked a shot and muttered under her breath. Connor bricked an open jumper and stared at the rim like it had personally betrayed him.
“This thing might be crooked,” he said.
“Already blaming the equipment?”
“Just gathering data.”
She retrieved the ball and stopped instead of shooting, let it rest against her hip. The breeze lifted her hair. The moment shifted.
“Hey,” she said.
Connor stilled. Not braced. Just present. “Yeah.”
She bounced the ball once, caught it again.
“I took an analyst job.”
The words hung there, unpadded.
Connor didn’t rush to answer. He didn’t soften the silence or fill it. He let the statement stand.
“Okay,” he said.
Mac searched his face for a flicker of disappointment or calculation.
“Okay?” she repeated.
“Yeah.” He nodded once. “Congratulations.”
Relief moved through her, but it wasn’t clean. It snagged on something.
“They wanted an answer by Friday,” she added. “I said yes.”
He absorbed that. His gaze dropped briefly to the driveway, tracing the chalk dust near the base of the pole, then returned to her.
“You sound sure.”
“I am.”
A beat.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
The ball felt heavier in her hands.
“A few days.”
His jaw flexed—not angrily. Processing.
“You didn’t tell me.”
Not an accusation. Just fact.
The truth of it landed squarely between them.
“I wasn’t hiding it,” she said. “I just needed to sit with it first.”
Connor nodded slowly. “I get that.”
But something in his shoulders shifted.
He set his hands on his hips, looking up at the backboard for a second like it might offer clarity.
“I guess I thought…” He stopped, recalibrated. “I thought maybe you’d want me there while you figured it out.”
Mac’s throat tightened. “I do. I just—after I decided.”
There it was. The line she hadn’t meant to draw.
Connor met her eyes again. “That’s the part.”
She waited.
“When you decide first and tell me later, it makes me feel like I’m…outside of it. Not your…” He searched for the right word. “Teammate. Just someone you update.”
The ball slipped slightly in her grip.
“I don’t want to decide things for you,” he continued, steady. “I don’t even want to influence you. I just want to be in the room while you’re figuring it out. I want us to feel like a team.”
Team.
That word hit somewhere deep and old.
“That’s what I want, too,” she said, too quickly.
“I know.” His voice softened. “But it doesn’t feel like that right now.”
Mac hugged the ball closer, the rubber pressing against her ribs.
“I’m not used to letting people see me before I’ve landed somewhere,” she admitted. “It feels…vulnerable.”
“I’m not asking you to choose differently,” he said. “I just don’t want to find out after the fact.”
Silence stretched, but it didn’t snap.
Her vision blurred slightly at the edges. Not tears, just the sting of being understood and challenged at the same time.
“I’m not trying to shut you out,” she said quietly. “I just don’t always know how to do this as…a couple.”
Connor held her gaze. No impatience in it.
“We can learn,” he said.
The simplicity of that undid her more than anything else.
She drew in a breath, long and steady, and passed him the ball.
“Okay,” she said. “But fair warning. I don’t lose gracefully.”
His smile returned, warm, real, a little fragile. “Neither do I.”
They went back to shooting. The ball thudded against the pavement. The net snapped, no longer stiff and untouched.
The rhythm between them was different now—steadier, but not easy.
Not seamless.
Not broken.
Just honest.
Mac caught the rebound and passed the ball back to him.
She didn’t want to keep making decisions alone.
She wanted him in the room.
She just wasn’t sure yet how to let him be there.