Jasper #2
Honeybrook Hollow at six-forty on a Friday in early fall was kind of magical.
The streetlights were just starting to come on.
The diner had its windows lit up. The Coffee Cabin was closing for the day.
A few couples were walking on the sidewalk in jackets and scarves.
The air smelled like fireplaces and pine, and the whole town looked like it had been arranged specifically for tonight.
I pulled up at the curb in front of Pine & Pages at six-fifty-five. Sat in the truck for one full minute before I got out. Checked the mirror once, briefly, just to make sure I wasn’t going to embarrass myself. Picked up the book of poems from the passenger seat.
Got out of the truck.
The bookshop was dark, the lights off behind the glass.
I walked around to the back of the building, where the stairs led up to her apartment, climbed them slowly because my knee was aching a little after the long day, and stood on the small landing at the top with the book in one hand and my other hand raised to knock.
I knocked.
A small movement inside. A pause. Soft footsteps coming to the door.
The door opened.
I had seen Cara Darlington in her element behind her bookshop counter, on the floor surrounded by paperbacks, in her kitchen making soup, in the reading nook with her feet tucked beneath her and her hands wrapped around a mug.
I had been paying close attention for weeks.
I thought I had a reasonable handle on what she did to me.
I did not have a reasonable handle on this.
She was wearing a dark green dress, thin straps, the fabric draping softly over her shoulders and the curve of her waist and falling to just above her knee, and she was standing in the warm light of her doorway with her hair down over her shoulders the way it had been at lunch, loose and dark, and she’d done something to her eyes behind her glasses that made them deeper, more luminous, and there was a hint of gloss on her mouth and small silver earrings catching the light, and I stood there on her doorstep and forgot entirely what I had been planning to say.
I took her in slowly, because she deserved that, because she had clearly stood in front of her mirror and made decisions, and the decisions were devastating, and I was not going to rush past them.
The line of her collarbone above the neckline of the dress.
The way the fabric moved when she breathed.
The smooth skin of her shoulders, bare above the thin straps, in a way that made me want to reach out and touch, just lightly, just to see how soft her skin would feel.
Her hair I had seen down before, but not like this—not with the light behind her and the dress and the earrings and everything assembled together into something that was making it genuinely difficult to remember how language worked.
She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful. But standing in that doorway, having made this particular effort for this particular evening, she was something else entirely, and it moved through me with a force I hadn’t anticipated and didn’t try to contain.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” I looked at her for a moment longer, because I needed it. “You look—” I stopped. Nothing I was reaching for felt adequate. I tried again. “You look really good, Cara. Beautiful.”
Her mouth curved. “You too.” Then her eyes dropped to the brown paper package in my hand, and something in her expression went quiet and careful. “What is that?”
“Something I saw when I first got into town.”
“You can’t keep bringing me things.” But she was already reaching for it.
“I can keep bringing you things.” I let her take it from me. “Get used to it.”
She made a small sound from the back of her throat—not quite a laugh—and undid the kitchen twine slowly, folded back the brown paper, and then her whole face went very still when she saw what it was.
She stood there with the book open in her hands, looking down at it. She didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Mary Oliver,” she said finally, very quietly. She looked up at me, and I was going to remember this look for a long time. “Jasper. This is signed.”
“I saw it a few months ago in a used bookshop in the next town over, and I almost bought it then.” I watched her face. “I didn’t. I didn’t have a reason to yet. I went back this afternoon.” I paused. “I had a reason this time.”
She pressed the book against her chest. “I’m going to cry on this porch,” she said.
“Don’t cry on the porch. We have a reservation.”
“Okay. I’ll fight it.”
I reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from her face, and she went very still under my hand, and I let my thumb rest against her cheekbone for just a second before I let go. “Where do you think I’m taking you?”
Something shifted in her expression. The unshed tears gave way to curiosity, and she tilted her head at me, trying to read my face. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“No. It’s a surprise.”
“Jasper Dean.”
“Cara Darlington,” I said it the same way she’d said mine. “Trust me,” I said. “It’s the best place I’ve ever been to. I hope you love it too.”
She held my eyes for a long beat. Then she smiled—slow and wide and gorgeous, the smile she usually kept small, but this time she set it free, and it took my breath away.
I composed myself when she turned to grab her coat from the hook by the door.
I stepped back to give her room, and she pulled the door shut and locked it behind her, and we went down the stairs together with my hand at the small of her back.
It was the first time I had touched her there. The way her breath caught when I did told me everything I needed to know.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, and I moved to step ahead of her toward the truck, but she stopped me with a hand on my chest. Light, just her palm flat against the front of my jacket, right over where my heart was doing something it had absolutely no interest in hiding.
She looked up at me, and I looked down at her, and the street was quiet around us, and neither of us said anything for a moment.
Her eyes searched mine with that particular careful attention she gave to things that mattered to her. Whatever she found there made something in her expression settle—soft and certain, like a question she’d been holding onto and had just gotten the answer to.
“Okay,” she said quietly. Not to me, exactly. More like she was saying it to herself.
I covered her hand with mine, briefly, and felt her fingers curl slightly against my jacket before she let her hand drop.
I opened the truck’s passenger door for her.
She stepped close as she passed me, and slid into the seat with the book of poems held against her chest. I closed the door.
Stood there for a second on the sidewalk with my hand still on the handle, looking at her through the glass—the dress, her sweet smile, the soft light catching her face—and took a breath.
I walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine.
She was looking at me. I could feel it. “This already feels like a date,” she said.
“That’s good.” I grinned at her sideways. “It is one.”
She let out a small soft laugh, the tension going out of her shoulders, and turned to look at the windshield.
I put the truck in gear, and pulled away from the curb.
We didn’t talk much on the drive. She sat with the book of poems in her lap, one hand resting on the cover, and I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the gear shift between us, and the warm, slow weight of the next few hours was sitting in the cab with us in a way that felt like the most precious thing I had ever been responsible for.
I turned off the main road and pulled into The Hearthstone’s parking lot.
Cara went very still in the seat next to me.
After a moment, she let out a long, slow breath, and I felt her squeeze my hand, and I brought both our hands up and pressed my mouth softly against the back of her knuckles.
“Ready?” I said against her hand.
“Yes.”
I cut the engine. I got out and walked around to her side and opened the door. She took my hand, and I realized that I was holding the hand of a woman I was falling for, and I was keeping a secret about my future. Both things were real, and I could not change either of them.