Chapter 43
The calls continued, same blocked number, same thirty seconds of nothing.
I never picked up, just watched the screen light my palm and felt that old crawl along my spine.
Twice it rang while I was on a solo hike, up the ridge past the birches where the trail overlooks the creek.
I waited for the third call to come through, but it never did.
I was halfway across the footbridge when I got the unmistakable feeling of being watched, skin prickling, breath hitching, only to turn, reach for the bear spray in my pack and see nothing but trees.
I told myself it was nerves. New things nerves. Dating-Brody nerves. Book nerves.
When I got home, I told Chase anyway. He listened with his doctor-face first, calm, measured, then with his big-brother face.
“You don’t hike alone without telling someone where you’re going,” he said, handing me a bottle of water like I’d forgotten how to hydrate. “Share your live location. Humour me.”
“I do not want your Find My Sister alerts going off every time I stop for a snack.”
“Then keep moving, Morgan.” He didn’t smile; instead, he turned on location sharing on my contact and, without asking, grabbed my phone to accept. “And text me. Every time.”
My lawyer called to update me on our progress.
“We still don’t have a firm trial date,” he said over the phone.
“These things can take time to land on the docket. Last I heard, he’s no longer at the marital home.
” He didn’t say where Andrew was now. He didn’t have to.
The quiet between his sentences said, Be careful.
The lead-up to the date felt like balancing a glass of water on my head, every movement careful, every thought a ripple threatening to spill.
It wasn’t him. I knew Brody would be the softest landing.
It was me. It was the part of me that felt like I was used up, dirty and not worthy of someone like Brody Palmer.
The night he was coming to pick me up, my family conspired to be home.
Of course they did. Dad was “running late” on purpose but still managed to get there in time to meet the doorbell.
Mom had laid out a cheeseboard “for energy.” Chase was “just passing through,” leaning against the counter like a bouncer. Clara commandeered my room.
She stood behind me in the mirror, curling iron in hand. “Why are you so nervous?” she asked, eyes soft and too perceptive. “It’s Brody.”
“Exactly.” I adjusted the strap of my dress, then adjusted it again.
“This isn’t just a date. This isn’t just some guy.
It’s...” I exhaled. “It’s Brody Palmer. I used to write our names together in my journals like a deranged Hallmark pen pal.
I probably have old schoolbooks that have ‘Cassidy Palmer’ scribbled all over. ”
Clara’s grin went nuclear. “Oh, we are absolutely finding those later.”
“No, we are not.”
“What did he say?” she pressed, her tone dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “You told me he got all intense when you guys were camping, which made you believe him.”
I stared at my own mouth in the mirror, the mouth he hadn’t kissed. I could still feel his breath against my lips. “He said he won’t kiss me until we both know, really know, that we’re a forever kind of love. That we won’t… You know… until we both know it’s making love. Not…” I flapped a hand.
Clara happy-clapped so hard the iron thunked on the vanity. “He looooooves you,” she sang in a terrible Sandra Bullock impression. “He wants to kiss you. He wants to marry you. He wants to have your babies...”
“Okay!” I threw a pillow at her. “Not helping.”
She caught it, eyes softening. “He’s good, Cass. Let yourself have good.”
The doorbell rang.
Brody arrived with flowers like a man who’d been raised right: a small, wild bunch of blush peonies and eucalyptus for me, a cheerful mixed bouquet for Mom, and a sunny handful of daisies for Clara.
He shook Dad’s hand, hugged Mom because she made him, and offered Chase a respectful nod that said I know we are best friends, and you could make this difficult, please don’t.
Then, with my hand in his, he did exactly what he’d promised: he told my family, with my agreement, what he intended.
“I’m taking Cassidy to dinner,” he said to the room, steady as bedrock.
“I’m going to date her. Properly. I’m going to take care of her heart.
No rushing. No hiding. You’ll see me around a lot.
.. Well, a lot more than you already do.
” He didn’t look away from Dad until Dad’s mouth ticked into something that wasn’t a smile, but wasn’t not one either.
“You have her home when she wants to be home,” Dad said, a formality we all let stand like ritual.
“Yes, Mr. Morgan.”
Brody opened doors like it wasn’t a performance.
He pulled out my chair, but he also listened, really listened, tilting toward me when I talked, tipping his head the way he does when he’s storing your words somewhere safe.
We spoke about little things (how Jackson’s vampire phase had become a paleontology phase) and big things (how going through the process of writing my story felt like taking off a weighted vest you’d forgotten to stop wearing).
He told me the shop orders were piling up, farmhouse tables, a walnut credenza for a lake house, a cradle someone wanted, “if time allowed.” I told him the edits were already trickling in from Marin’s team, kind, precise, annoying in the way only good edits are.
He didn’t kiss me at the door. He walked me back inside, squeezed my hand like a secret only we knew, and left me buzzing all over.
We camped that Saturday beside the ridge where the creek makes its shiest bend. The fire caught slowly; the night held still. He told me about his ex when the stars were bright enough to pretend we were inside a dome.
“Amber,” he said, the name like a pebble placed, not thrown.
“We looked right on paper. Or at least I thought we did. College sweethearts, two good jobs, a condo with tall windows and a plant we tried not to kill. She wanted the next rung, promotion, proposal, picture-perfect, and I kept telling myself that wanting it would arrive if I just kept climbing. It never did.” He picked at the label on his beer.
“Found out about her and her boss through a mutual friend.
I didn't believe him, but I had to know. So I asked her flat out. She huffed and rolled her eyes, as if I was the problem. She actually tried to convince me that it wasn't that big of a deal. I packed my clothes and left. I spent a month travelling because the silence felt honest, and that felt good after living in what felt like a lie. Then out of nowhere, my dad sent me a photo of a rocking chair I made when I was sixteen; he’d found it in the loft. I came home because this felt like breathing.”
“Were you in love with her?” I asked, gentler than I felt.
“I was in love with the idea of not disappointing anyone. With the idea of what I thought my life should look like.” He looked at me across the fire. “That’s not love.”
I let the weight of his words sink in, felt the breeze kiss my cheeks. “No. It’s not.”
Later, when the fire turned to a red seam of heat, I asked him out with the bravest voice I had. “Vineyard yoga on Thursday… and dinner? If you can handle me seeing you in stretchy pants.”
I didn't know why I was nervous. Well, I did.
Andrew never let me initiate anything; he controlled the relationship.
.. But Brody wasn't Andrew, and if I really wanted this, I would have to do something about it.
And I was starting to realize that I did want this.
..him, much more than I could say out loud at this point.
So, I needed to start treating Brody like Brody and not like my past.
He laughed, head tipping back, the sound warm enough to be its own season. “You just want to ogle me in downward dog.”
“That would be correct.”
“And after,” he said, that half-grin I’d started to want to see every day, “we’ll get pasta. Carbs after a workout. A courtship classic.”
He tucked me beneath his arm, our breaths syncing with the creek’s hush, and somehow that felt more intimate than anything else we weren’t doing yet.
What followed wasn’t a montage so much as a deepening: hands linked in the farmers’ market crowd; passing a basket back and forth at the grocery store, arguing aisle etiquette like we were eighty; taking Jackson for ice cream and letting him pick the ridiculous toppings because childhood is short and sugar is a rite of passage; mornings on opposite ends of the old barn, me with my red pen, him sanding a length of oak, the scent of sawdust and coffee knitting the hours together.
I joined a book club with Mom, Judy, and Clara and spent one evening laughing so hard about a plot twist that Adam claimed he could hear us from the pub.
The blocked-number calls kept coming, then stopped long enough for me to relax, then started again. I logged what I could for the lawyer and let the rest go, because I refused to allow a ghost to keep me from living.
And then it was Canada Day.
Town permits let businesses spill into the street with makeshift patios; Adam built an extra bar outside, strung with lights and bunting in red and white.
The evening felt like an exhale, grills working overtime, kids with temporary tattoos peeling at the corners, the happy chaos of a summer holiday humming across the crowd.
I worked the outdoor bar beside Adam, a white tank top with little red maple leaves all over it, feeling inexplicably like myself.
People smiled without that edge of curiosity.
A few regulars called me “our favourite barkeep” and insisted I taste-test a new mocktail and then the not-at-all-mocktail version “for science.” It was easy. It was light. It was mine.
Still, now and then, a chill slid across my shoulders like someone had opened a door. That watched feeling again. I scanned the crowd, finding only faces I recognized, along with a few I didn’t. I told myself it was the size of the crowd. I told myself, you’re safe. I told myself, he’s gone.
When the fireworks started, Brody slid behind the bar to stand with me. He came up against my back, and I felt my body relax, like it recognized him faster than my brain did.
“Hey,” he murmured, breath warm at my temple.
“Hey.”
The first big bloom cracked open over us, white light stuttering into gold, then another, then a red one that looked like it was raining glitter. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
So I turned, tugged him closer by the front of his shirt, and said the bravest thing I’d said all summer: “I’m going to kiss you now.”
His smile was perfection, devastating, yes, but also gentle, like he was relieved to finally arrive here with me. “It’s about time. I thought you’d never do it.”
We paused there, a breath’s width between us, eyes saying a thousand things I didn’t have to translate. Then I closed the distance.
If a first kiss has a sound, the fireworks overhead would be the soundtrack.
It tasted like summer, citrus, strawberries and beer, and something purely him, and it felt inevitable, like our bodies had been practicing this moment for years without telling us.
He caged my face in his palms, and I rose to my toes, and the crowd and the noise and the heat dissolved into the singular truth of his mouth learning mine.
It wasn’t hurried. It was reverent. It was ours.
When we broke, he chased one more kiss, softer, a punctuation mark, then pressed another to the corner of my mouth and one to the tip of my nose like he was cataloging places to return to.
My whole body buzzed, electric and new.
I was smiling before I heard myself say it, the words tumbling out on a laugh that sounded a little like wonder: “If I asked you to marry me, would you make love to me?”
Brody laughed, a helpless groan caught in it. His forehead rested against mine. “You cannot weaponize proposals, Morgan.”
“Noted,” I whispered, giddy and so so turned on.
The crash came like a slap behind us, cases of empties toppling, glass clattering, a ripple of startle moving through the patio.
I flinched hard. Brody pivoted, instincts first, twisting in front of me.
A few bottles rolled, spinning to a stop at the base of the bar.
Whoever had knocked them over was already gone, just a smear of movement at the edge of the crowd, or maybe that was my fear jumping to paint a target.
“I’ve got it,” I said automatically, reaching for the cases.
He caught my wrist, gentle but absolute. “No. If there’s broken glass, I don’t want you near it.” He squeezed once, like he was reassuring me, then released my arm. “I’ll grab the bin and the broom.”
He took three steps, turned back as if he’d remembered something essential, and kissed me again, quickly, like a habit he already had, mouth, nose, forehead. “Stay put.”
I watched him go, broad shoulders, steady stride, and allowed myself one long breath of a thought I didn’t try to shove away: Please let the rest of my life look exactly like this, light and laughter and work and ordinary moments handled by extraordinary care, and him, always him, turning back to kiss me like it’s the first thing he learned to do.
Behind the bar, the fireworks continued to puncture the sky open, red trailing to silver, white falling like rain. Someone cheered. Someone called for two more pints. Adam laughed, and I realized he'd been standing behind us the whole time.
“Palmer fireworks inside and out, HR’s filing the paperwork as we speak,” I elbowed him without looking away from the spot where Brody disappeared into the pub.
I felt it again then, a needle-prick of attention sliding across my skin.
Somewhere behind the patio, I swear I heard a camera shutter click... or maybe that was just one of the bottles settling.
I couldn't explain or justify it. Just a feeling... Just the sense of something being off.
I straightened my shoulders, palms flat on the cool bar wood, and reminded myself who I was: Cassidy Morgan. Not a secret. Not a mistake. Not a thing to hide. I was safe with people who cared about me. People who proved they would always keep me safe.
I was a woman who had chosen a path for herself. A woman who had just chosen to kiss her future in the middle of her town, with the sky igniting above her.
A woman who wrote her way into the light and then stepped into it.
“Hey,” Adam said softly, catching the shift in my face. “You good?”
I turned, letting the anxiety leave my body and smiled, small but real. “Yeah. I think I really am.”