Chapter Seven – Bailey
The smell of tea haunts me.
It’s in the rug, the kettle, the memory of him sitting too close. I try to pretend it’s just plain tea, but it’s not. It’s him—his laugh low in his throat, his knee brushing mine, his stupid, perfect smile when he realized I’d made rules.
I pull the blanket over my head like it might erase him. It doesn’t. It just makes the air smell more like salt and him and last night.
The lighthouse creaks as the wind picks up, the same way it always does, but everything sounds different today. The tide feels higher. The light sweeps slower. Even the gulls sound smug.
I groan, roll over, and stare at the ceiling. “You’re not sixteen,” I tell myself. “You are a grown, emotionally stable woman with a mortgage and a business license.”
The ceiling, traitorous, says nothing back.
By the time I drag myself downstairs, the shop smells like vanilla and ocean air. Sunlight slants through the front windows, hitting the shelves like a spotlight. A Page in Time looks beautiful this morning. Unforgivably romantic. Even the damn books look like they’re conspiring.
The bell above the door jingles as I flip the sign to OPEN. “You,” I mutter to the novels in the front display, “are not allowed to look smug.”
Jane Austen doesn’t respond, but she’s definitely judging me.
I brew a fresh pot of coffee, open my ledger, and try to focus on anything other than Crew Wright’s hands. It’s hopeless. Everything reminds me of him. The way he carried those boxes as if they weighed nothing. The way his voice wrapped around my name like it had been waiting a decade to repeat it.
There’s a knock on the side door before I can spiral too far. I don’t have to check who it is—only one person knocks like they’re trying to summon the dead.
Lila strides in holding a pastry box the size of a toddler. “I come bearing muffins and judgment.”
“I’m not on trial,” I say even though I absolutely am.
She plops the box on the counter, grinning. “You’re glowing.”
“It’s called morning light.”
“It’s called my brother kissed your emotional stability right in the face.”
“He didn’t kiss anything,” I say, and she raises an eyebrow so high it could pierce clouds.
“Didn’t have to,” she says. “You look like a woman who’s been thoroughly eye-fucked.”
“Language,” I hiss even though she’s not wrong.
She laughs, pouring herself coffee like she owns the place. “You forget, I’ve been married to Dean for long enough to recognize the post-slow-burn look. It’s adorable. You’re doomed.”
Before I can argue, her phone buzzes on the counter, and she flips it toward me. Ivy’s name flashes across the screen, along with approximately seventeen heart emojis.
Lila grins. “Speak of the glamorous devil.” She taps Accept. “Morning, superstar. You’re on speaker with the emotionally constipated one.”
Ivy’s voice floods the shop like sunshine and chaos. “Hi, my favorite book witch! Why are you emotionally constipated? Did Crew finally remember how to use his words?”
“Goodbye,” I say, reaching for the phone. Lila dances away like a mischievous toddler.
Ivy gasps theatrically. “Wait—he was there last night, wasn’t he? Lila said she saw him leaving the lighthouse.”
“I’m surrounded by spies,” I mutter. Sometimes I have to remind myself that even though Ivy and Crew were a PR relationship a few years ago, she’s happily married to Crew’s brother.
Lila smirks. “Small towns are basically social media with better pie.”
Ivy hums. “So… did he apologize?”
“Yes,” I say carefully. “He apologized.”
“And?”
“And nothing, Ivy. We talked. Like adults.”
The silence lasts for approximately two seconds before they both burst into laughter.
“You two talking like adults is about as believable as me retiring to a farm,” Ivy says. “You’re both one shared glance away from spontaneous combustion.”
“Not helping,” I mutter.
Lila sips her coffee, her tone suddenly softer. “Bailey, he looks at you like he’s been starving.”
My chest tightens. “He looked at me like that in high school, too. Right before he didn’t defend me and went on to laugh at me with his friends.”
Lila winces. “People change.”
“Sometimes they don’t,” I say, quieter this time.
Ivy’s voice gentles through the speaker. “You know, Crew’s not the same guy who laughed with the team. He’s the guy who left fame to come home and rebuild something broken. Sounds like a man who’s learning.”
I pick at the edge of a muffin wrapper. “Maybe. Or maybe he just got good at pretending.”
Lila leans across the counter, eyes sharp and kind. “Or maybe you’re scared because the only thing more terrifying than him breaking your heart again is him not doing it this time.”
I hate that she’s right. I hate even more that she knows it.
Ivy claps once. “Okay! That’s enough emotional honesty for one morning. Bailey, go sell some books. Lila, go kiss your billionaire husband. I’m hanging up before I start writing a song about it.”
The call ends, and the shop goes quiet again.
“Traitors,” I mutter, but my chest feels a little lighter anyway as Lila scurries out the same way she came.
I busy myself restocking a few shelves, humming under my breath, pretending everything’s fine. That’s when I hear the rumble of a truck outside.
Of course.
Crew Wright has the worst timing and the best jawline.
He steps through the door like the storm he is—dark jeans, worn boots, Henley sleeves rolled to the elbows. The sunlight hits his hair just right, because apparently God likes to torture me.
He’s carrying a box of new releases. “Delivery guy left these by the fence,” he says, voice low and smooth.
“Thank you, though I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be lifting that,” I say, keeping my tone polite. Professional. Not murderous.
He sets the box down, his hand brushing mine for half a second—just long enough to short-circuit my entire nervous system.
“Your shoulder?” I ask, desperate for neutral ground.
“Better.” He nods. “Still a little tight.”
“You’re supposed to rest.”
“You’re not supposed to lift boxes alone.”
“I manage fine.”
“I noticed.” His eyes flick down to my hands before returning to my face.
The air between us shifts.
We’re standing too close, the kind of close that remembers things bodies shouldn’t. The books around us might as well be cheering for all the noise my pulse is making.
I reach for the box, and he reaches for the same corner. Our fingers brush. Electricity.
We freeze.
He doesn’t move his hand. “Bailey.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah?”
“This counts as breaking at least one rule.”
“Which one?”
He smiles. “The one where I don’t think about kissing you when you look at me like that.”
I blink up at him, every muscle in my body vibrating. “Crew…”
He steps back first. Always the gentleman. Always the one who leaves me breathless and unfinished. “You have a smudge on your cheek,” he says quietly.
“I—what?”
He reaches out, thumb brushing the spot, skin against skin, a flash of warmth that shouldn’t feel like a promise.
“There,” he murmurs. “Got it.”
He leaves before I can say a word, the door closing behind him with a soft jingle that sounds like trouble.
I lean against the counter, heart pounding, face flushed. “Idiot,” I whisper—to him, to me, to the universe.
Outside, the lighthouse shadow cuts across the ground like a line I already know I’ll cross.
The door shuts, and the quiet that follows feels personal. The kind of quiet that remembers.
I stand there too long, pulse still thrumming where his thumb brushed my cheek.
The smell of cedar and sea air lingers, like he left part of himself behind on purpose.
My brain, the traitor, replays the moment on repeat: his eyes locking on mine, the heat there, the restraint. That deliberate not yet.
I press a hand to my chest. “Nope,” I say out loud to the empty shop. “Absolutely not. We are not doing this again.”
The books, naturally, disagree.
Even the display table looks smug—stacked high with slow-burn romances and second-chance tropes. There’s one on top titled When He Came Back. Of course there is.
I grab it, flip it upside down, and mutter, “You hush.”
It’s ridiculous, this whole thing. I’m not fifteen. I have responsibilities, deadlines, invoices, and an aging lighthouse with a leaky roof. I don’t have time for Crew Wright and his stupid kind eyes and his big, apologetic hands.
But as the hours crawl by, I can’t shake it—the way his voice dropped when he said my name. The careful way he stepped back, like he knew exactly how close too close really was.
By late afternoon, the sun paints long gold streaks across the counter.
The bell above the door rings occasionally—locals stopping in for used paperbacks and tourists snapping photos of the spiral staircase—but it all feels like static.
Every time the door opens, I half expect him to walk back through it.
He doesn’t.
By the time I close up, the shop smells like candle wax and sea salt, and my head is a mess of thoughts I can’t catalog.
I sweep the floor twice because sweeping is easier than feeling.
When that doesn’t help, I do what I always do when my heart won’t quiet down—I pull a book off the shelf and start reading.
It’s one of the ones I inherited from my grandfather’s attic. The spine is cracked, and the margins are full of notes in his sharp handwriting. He said books teach you what people can’t say out loud.
Tonight, the words don’t comfort me. They feel like accusations.
I set it aside, pour the last of the tea from this morning, and step outside.
The wind carries the scent of the bay, sharp and briny.
The light above the tower sweeps out over the water, steady as a heartbeat.
I lean on the railing, mug warm between my hands, and try to breathe around the knot in my chest.
I should feel proud. The shop’s doing better than ever. The roof’s getting repaired next week. I’ve built something solid out of the wreckage of what used to be heartbreak.