Jasper #2
“I’m going to need a minute.” She pressed her lips together and looked down at the counter, and when she looked back up, there was a faint pink at the tops of her cheeks that I felt personally responsible for.
“Did you cry?” she murmured the question. “I always do.” Her words hung in the air between us, soft as a cloud.
I had. I wasn’t going to tell her that. I’d been lying in bed on the second night with the lamp on and the cabin completely quiet, and I’d gotten to the letter, where he admits he’s loved no one but her.
I’d thought about eight years. I’d thought about almost. I’d thought about Cara’s handwriting on the labels of the clue envelopes, and the way she’d looked at the room after Mystery Night like she couldn’t quite believe it was real, and the sound she’d made when I caught her on the ladder.
I’d thought about all the years I’d been somewhere else, doing something else, and hadn’t known this shop existed with her in it.
I wasn’t ready to say any of that out loud.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to say it out loud.
“I’m not answering that,” I said.
“That’s a yes.”
“That’s a firm no comment.”
“Jasper.” Her mouth curved. “It’s okay if you cried. It’s a very good book.”
“I’m aware it’s a very good book. You’ve told me that approximately fifteen times.”
“And now you agree with me.”
“I’ve always agreed with you. Even back when I was a stubborn kid and refused to talk to you about it.”
She laughed—a real one, short and bright—and shook her head.
Then she reached for a hardcover I didn’t recognize sitting near the register, slim and deep green with gold lettering on the spine, and held it out toward me.
“I have something for you. You don’t have to take it.
But it came in this morning, and I thought of you immediately.
” She paused. “A former war correspondent who now writes about rivers and quiet places. I read the first essay over my coffee in the back room and had to put it down because it felt like he was writing in a voice I recognized.”
I looked at her for a second. “You read it this morning thinking about me.”
The color moved into her cheeks, just slightly, and she kept the book extended between us with the composure of someone who had committed to a thing and was seeing it through. I reached out and took it from her, my fingers brushing hers as I did, and neither of us rushed that part.
I turned it over in my hands. The cover was understated, the kind that didn’t try too hard.
I read the back, then opened to the first page and read the opening paragraph standing there at the counter, because it felt like the right thing to do, and because I wanted her to see that I was taking it seriously.
I closed it carefully and looked up at her. She was watching me with that quiet, attentive expression she got when she was waiting to see how something landed.
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it in more directions than one, and I thought she knew that. I looked at her for a second. “You read it this morning thinking about me.”
She met my eyes and didn’t look away. “I read everything thinking about you lately, Jasper.”
It hung between us, honest and unguarded, and for a second I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t.
Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say—I knew exactly what I wanted to say—but because she’d caught me completely off guard and I needed a moment to stay where I was instead of closing the distance between us, which was what every instinct I had was currently voting for.
This was Cara Darlington, who pushed her glasses up when she was nervous and apologized for talking too much and went pink at the ears when I paid her a compliment, standing behind her counter telling me plainly that I’d been on her mind.
Not deflecting it. Not wrapping it in something safer.
Just saying it and letting it sit there between us, chin lifted slightly, holding my gaze with that quiet steadiness she had when she’d decided to be brave about something.
It hit me somewhere I hadn’t been braced for.
I watched her register what she’d said, watched the awareness of it move across her face, and I smiled when she decided not to take it back. Because she wasn’t going to. I could see that. She’d meant it, and she knew I knew she’d meant it, and she was going to stand there and let that be true.
“Good,” I said quietly.
Her chin stayed up. But her cheeks were warm, and she looked at me like she was deciding what came next, and I looked back at her like I already knew.