Chapter 5 #2
“Warmer.”
“Less than five?”
“One. When he said he wanted to see me again and I told him it wasn’t going to happen, he said ‘What?’”
Her head tilted to the side. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. I can tell you Evan’s college roommates’ names, Troy, Mark, Lane, and Peter. His fraternity, Phi Delta Gama. He’s a Libra. His parents divorced when he was nine, he has two sisters, Megan and Michelle. He’s the youngest. Middle name Christopher—”
“He didn’t ask you one question?” she interjected. “I mean, about yourself?”
“Nope.”
“I’m so glad I’m not single.”
Not single? Aren’t you though? For all intents and purposes. I was surprised I didn’t have stitches from the number of times I bit my tongue when Birdie talked about her fiancé, who held the position in name only.
I couldn’t remember the last time Dylan Hart had attended a family event, including a holiday. Sometimes Birdie would fly out and meet him on the road, but he never came to her. He never made any concessions for her. She did everything alone.
She sipped her seltzer thoughtfully. “Maybe you just like being single more than you think you should.”
Or maybe I’m just still hung up on a man who ghosted me twenty years ago.
“There’s a truck!” Leo, the smaller of the twins, shrieked, nearly catapulting himself off the trampoline.
“A big truck!” Luke echoed, grabbing at his brother’s shirt with both hands and nearly missing.
The trampoline dipped and popped like a launch pad as the twins and Jeremiah synchronized their exit, bodies midair, arms windmilling, before the trio hit the lawn and bolted through the back door, running towards the front of the house.
I watched them go, a little jealous. What was the last thing that excited me that much?
“I think you should try it,” Birdie stated, just as Luke’s joyous whoop echoed from the front porch.
“Try what?”
“Letting Trevor and Olivia set you up.”
Bailey’s bestie had taken over running Ever After Matchmaking after giving up her career as a high-powered divorce attorney. Apps were not working for me, obviously, and Olivia and Trevor were the best of the best.
“Come on,” she persisted, “Olivia’s already got a list for you. Trevor has the entire gayborhood on notice to be on the lookout for you.”
I thought about it, really thought about it.
I imagined letting Trevor and Olivia, two of the most aggressively competent people I knew, take control of my love life.
There would be spreadsheets, background checks, and probably an NDA.
It was both horrifying and the most secure I’d felt about dating in years.
“Okay,” I said, surprising myself almost as much as Birdie.
She stopped mid-swig, seltzer foam pooling in the corners of her mouth. “Wait. Did you just say ‘okay’?”
“Don’t make me repeat it,” I warned. “It’s a limited-time offer.”
Her jaw literally dropped. “Are you serious?” she stage-whispered, like I’d just agreed to jump from a plane or donate a kidney.
I nodded once, sharply, before the gravity of what I’d done could catch up to me.
Before Birdie could rally the celebratory parade I knew was coming, Olivia appeared at the patio door, cradling her curly-haired baby on her hip, her expression frazzled in the way only new motherhood could manage. “Has anyone seen Bailey? She was just here.”
Needing to escape my sister’s unwelcome enthusiasm at my acquiescence to use a dating coach, I hopped up to go look for my other sister, who was no longer in the kitchen.
I headed through the house and spotted her on the porch.
She was perched on the steps, flanked by Cole and the three truck-obsessed boys.
Cole had his arm slung possessively around her shoulders, the picture of domestic contentment.
I wondered what that felt like, to simply belong somewhere, to someone.
I stepped outside, shading my eyes from the late afternoon sun. “Olivia’s looking for you—”
But Bailey cut in, never taking her eyes off the house next door. “Adam’s back,” she said, flat, almost neutral. Then she pointed, like I’d miss it even if I tried.
I followed her line of sight, and time stopped. Or maybe my heart just forgot how to beat for a second.
There he was.
Adam Knight.
I’d spent twenty years telling myself it was normal for the mere thought of your childhood best friend, first-crush-slash-love-slash-one-time-almost-everything, to make your skin burn and your lungs go tight.
I’d built emotional walls so thick that even the strongest feelings got stuck like bugs in amber.
None of that mattered now. I saw him, and every nerve in my body remembered.
He wasn’t just a tall, athletically lean teenager anymore.
He was…a whole man. Adult. Bigger and stronger, like he’d been built from the same materials but with better blueprints.
His chest was broader, shoulders wider, arms thicker and corded with muscle.
His hair was still dark but now cut a little close to his head.
His jaw was squarer, with more stubble around his face.
He had tattoos on his neck and on his forearm, and my brain shorted out for a second imagining the story behind them.
He looked exactly how I’d remembered him, only more. More real, more solid, more…Adam. He’d spent the past twenty years in the Navy, most of them as a Navy SEAL, and it showed. But I still saw Adam, my Adam.
He was walking up the driveway and then, suddenly, his gaze flicked up to me. Locked on.
I froze in place, but my knees went to water. For one brief, excruciating second, neither of us looked away. He didn’t smile, neither did I. We just…stared.
For all the years and all the continents between us, I knew that look.
It was the same one he used to give me when he’d climb into my window at night, bringing me an ice cream sandwich.
Or when he snuck into my hospital room when my appendix burst because he knew I was scared of hospitals after my mom died in one, so he slept on the floor by my bed for the three nights I had to stay in one.
He was asking me if I was okay, if I needed anything.
And suddenly I did. I needed to get away. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out. I needed to…
I turned away and power-walked inside. Out of pure instinct, I walked upstairs and into my room.
Except it wasn’t my room anymore. There were bunkbeds with superhero sheets and piles of Legos, and the walls were covered in stick-on stars that glowed in the dark. It smelled like bubblegum and clean laundry.
I backed up to the door, closed it gently, and slid down until my butt hit the old hardwood floor.
For a long minute, I just sat there, staring at the ceiling, trying to inhale enough air to fill my actual lungs. My hands were shaking.
Adam Knight was back. He’d driven a literal moving truck up to his dad’s house and was probably going to live there, on the other side of my childhood fence, for the foreseeable future.
All the carefully compartmentalized feelings—the ones I’d spent a decade packing away in the emotional equivalent of a climate-controlled storage unit—were now free to tumble out, right alongside my dignity.
And I had a stalker. So yeah, today was turning out to be a really fun day.