Chapter 14 Luke
Luke
He wasn’t waiting for anything. The bell rang when it rang. Kids poured out when they poured out. It wasn’t like he was driving around counting minutes.
Still—
There she was.
Grace walked along the sidewalk with her tote slung over one shoulder, hair pulled back in that way he loved. The late afternoon light caught on her, softening the edges of everything else until she stood out like a memory layered over the present.
Luke’s heart beat faster.
He kept the cruiser moving. Same speed. Same posture. Both hands on the wheel. Anything else would be noticeable.
But his eyes—
His eyes betrayed him.
He drank her in like he was starving.
The movement of her when she walked. The familiar curve of her waist beneath the cardigan she wore. The line of her legs. A line he’d traced with his hands more times than he cared to admit.
God.
He knew every inch of her. He knew the warmth of her skin. He could still feel the way she melted against him when he pulled her close.
He slowed at the stop sign.
Grace didn’t turn.
She kept walking, sneakers scuffing lightly against the pavement, attention fixed ahead. Kids called out to her from across the street—“Bye, Miss Hart!”—and she waved back easily, smiling wide and bright.
She’d smiled at him like that once.
Luke swallowed.
He’d spent months avoiding moments like this whenever they crossed paths in town. Ducking his head. Breaking eye contact first. Making sure she understand the rules of what they had.
The cruiser rolled forward.
She didn’t look. Not a flicker. Not even the barest awareness that he was there.
It was like he’d been erased.
Something twisted hard in his chest.
He passed her—slowly, inevitably—and continued on his route.
Jesus Christ.
This wasn’t supposed to bother him.
In the rearview mirror, she grew smaller. Then she turned the corner onto her street and vanished from sight.
Luke exhaled slowly, realizing too late he’d been holding his breath.
The road stretched ahead, familiar and empty.
The image wouldn’t leave him alone: her turning onto Maple, heading toward a house with a boarded window and a lock that had already failed once.
She was walking back to something broken. Something exposed.
And that—that—was something he could do something about.
This wasn’t personal.
It was responsibility. Community-minded. The sort of thing a Bennett did without being asked.
It didn’t mean anything.
Still—his pulse kicked harder than it should have as he drove down Main Street, jaw set. He hated the thought of someone touching her house. Of someone deciding they were allowed to scare her. That kind of violation scraped something raw inside him, hot and immediate.
It made him want to break things.
Or fix them.
Preferably both.
He wasn’t here as Grace’s man. He was just a friend running an errand. A man who happened to know exactly how to make a house secure and had the tools to do it.
The bell over the hardware store door jingled as he went in, the familiar smell of sawdust and oil grounding in a way that surprised him. His shoulders loosened a fraction. This was tangible. Solvable. A problem with a clear beginning and a clear end.
“Luke,” Mr. Wilson called from behind the counter. “Afternoon.”
“Afternoon,” Luke replied, nodding. He scanned the shelves automatically—plywood, glass cutters, sealant. His brain clicked into a familiar, satisfying gear. Measure. Cut. Seal. Done.
Fix the thing. Make it solid. Keep the bad out.
From the back of the shop, a young man emerged carrying a box of screws. Wilson’s son, sleeves rolled up, hands roughened by a summer of work instead of textbooks.
“Hey,” the kid said, offering a polite smile. “Be right with you.”
A year ago, this place had felt different. It had been reeling from the scandal that had rocked the town. Mr. Wilson had aged ten years in a month back then—college fund gone, store on the brink, the future yanked sideways.
And yet—
Here it was. Still standing. Still open. Still moving forward.
The town had been quick to misjudge Hannah Everett. Friends and neighbors had written her off. Whispered about her. Crystal Lake had soon seen how wrong they’d been.
Luke’s fingers curled into his palms.
Maybe he’d been scared of nothing. Maybe he hadn’t needed to keep his relationship with Grace so clandestine.
What if he’d been with her openly and unapologetically? What if she’d been on his arm at the fall festival, at the bar on Fridays, at the damn grocery store? Would it really have cost him so much to walk down Main Street with her hand in his?
He grabbed a sheet of plexiglass instead of real glass—stronger, harder to shatter—then paused, reconsidered, and took both. Sealant. Screws. A temporary board. Enough to make the place secure tonight. Enough to show up and do something.
The idea of being there—of standing in her kitchen, sleeves rolled up, hands busy—sent an unwelcome surge of anticipation through him.
But Grace wasn’t his to protect. She wasn’t his responsibility.
She was a Hart. And he was a Bennett.
His last name came with expectations. Legacy. A council seat with his name practically engraved on it. Maybe a mayoral run someday. His future had been mapped out since birth. He knew what his parents expected. What the whole town expected.
Grace Hart didn’t fit neatly into that future.
And yet his hands were already full of supplies meant for her house.
Luke paid at the counter, barely registering the total.
He walked back out onto Main Street with the materials under his arm, the autumn sun already casting long shadows. The physical heft felt right. Purposeful. Like he was doing something that mattered.
This wasn’t about romance. It definitely wasn’t about feelings.
It was about making sure her house was secure. About removing risk. About putting a barrier between her and whatever idiot thought they could scare her.
He could do that much.
He should do that much.
And if it meant spending an evening at Grace Hart’s house—working in silence, fixing what had been broken, putting his body between her and danger—
Well.
He knew her. And she knew him. Intimately.
Luke adjusted his grip on the supplies and headed for his police vehicle.
Grace had never turned him away before now. This—him showing up, fixing the window, making things feel safe again—would remind her where she fit. Where they fit.
The arrangement had worked. It had been easy. Good. And Grace was smart.
She’d get over this phase.
Luke opened the car door and set the supplies inside, already settling into the certainty of it.
He wasn’t courting her.
There was no need.
Grace Hart would be his again. She’d come back to him.
Luke pulled into Grace’s driveway and cut the engine. Fixing a broken window wasn’t sneaking. Wasn’t hiding. Wasn’t anything that needed explaining.
He grabbed the supplies from the passenger seat and stepped out, letting the door close with a thud. Parking in the driveway felt… fine. Appropriate. He had a reason to be here. A good one.
Luke checked his watch. He’d get the window fixed, make sure everything was secure, and then…
There was no reason he couldn’t slide right back into her bed. She wasn’t immune to him—she never had been.
As he turned toward the house, something down the street caught his eye.
A dark sedan sat half a block away, parked along the curb. Engine off. Windows tinted.
Luke slowed.
He didn’t recognize the car. Didn’t belong to any of the usual neighbors. And he was good at noticing things like that—years of patrol work wired into his bones.
He made a mental note of it.
It might be nothing, he told himself. Still, his shoulders squared as he turned back toward Grace’s front door. He leaned the sheet of plexiglass against the railing.
From inside the house came the unmistakable sound of hammering.
Luke frowned. She should have waited for him. He’d fix the door for her.
He knocked and the hammering stopped. Footsteps approached the door.
Grace opened it—and just like earlier, relief at seeing her unharmed and safe surged through him. Automatic. Instinctive.
“Luke,” she said. She looked startled to see him. Annoyed.
And behind her, from somewhere near the kitchen, the sound of hammering restarted.
Luke's entire body went still. Someone else was already fixing her window. He heard a muttered curse. Another man was fixing her window. Luke’s jaw locked.
He kept his expression neutral, but something ugly coiled tight in his chest.
“I came to repair the door,” he said, lifting his tools to show her.
Her look of surprise annoyed him. She should expect him to show up. She should expect him to fix things in her life. “You didn’t call ahead,” she said.
Another sound from the back of the house, and Grace looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen.
Luke felt a wave of jealousy, hot and stupid and irrational, crashing into him.
He forced his shoulders to stay loose, his stance open, even as his thoughts raced ahead, dark and territorial and deeply inconvenient.
“You’ve got company,” he said. He had intended to sound casual, but he missed the mark.
Grace didn’t answer right away.
And that pause—that single, measured pause—did more damage than a shouted confession ever could.
So much for things sliding back into place.
So much for knowing her.
Luke waited.
Grace didn’t fill the silence.
The hammering started again behind her—three solid strikes, measured and sure. The sound scraped against Luke’s nerves in a way he didn’t like.
“Well,” he said, biting out the word, “looks like you’ve got it handled.”
Grace’s eyes stayed on his. Steady. Unapologetic.
“I do,” she said.
No explanation. No reassurance. No scrambling to make him comfortable.
Luke nodded once, jaw tight.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the handful of sealant and screws out toward her.
She hesitated—just a beat—then took hold of bundle.
“Thank you,” she said. Polite. Distant. Finished.
The sound of the hammer stopped. Footsteps crossed the kitchen.
Luke didn’t look past her. He didn’t want to see the face he’d already built in his head.
“Lock up tonight,” he said instead. “If anything else happens—”
“I know how to call the police,” Grace replied calmly.
Luke felt almost physical pain. She wouldn’t be calling Luke. It didn’t even seem to occur to her that if she was in trouble, she should call him.
“Right,” he said. “Of course.”
She didn’t invite him in.
She didn’t ask him to stay.
She didn’t soften.
He stepped back onto the porch, the late evening air suddenly cooler against his skin.
Grace met his eyes one last time. “Goodbye, Luke.”
The door closed between them with a soft, final click.
Luke stood there for a second longer than necessary, staring at the plexiglass he’d left on her porch. Then he turned and walked down the steps, the sound of his boots loud in the quiet.
As he reached his cruiser, the hammering started up again.
Luke climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door harder than he needed to. He pulled out of the driveway. Down the street, the dark sedan was still there.
He drove past, jaw clenched, thoughts circling too fast and too sharp for comfort.
He wasn't going to be an idiot about this.
She’ll come around.
The thought arrived without its usual certainty, but Luke grabbed onto it anyway.
She was smart. She understood how this town worked.
Once the pride faded and the practicality set back in, she'd see that what they'd had was good.
Better than good. And he could give her more of it—he could make more of an effort, take her somewhere nice, somewhere outside Crystal Lake where they could just—
He turned onto Main.
She’ll come around, he told himself again.
He didn't examine why it felt, underneath, like something he was holding together with both hands.