Chapter 7
Eleanor — Sky Bar Saturday Evening
The band kicked into a bluesy cover of “Hard to Handle,” the rhythm loose and teasing, built for trouble. The bass thrummed through the floorboards, up her calves, into her chest.
April was cornered near the bar by a man in a salmon shirt who leaned too close and laughed too loud.
Eleanor slipped toward the railing.
She wrapped her fingers around the cool iron and looked down at the square. Mystery Mountain Week banners snapped in the breeze. Tourists posed at the base of the courthouse steps, trading phones and angles.
The ghost tour guide lifted his lantern high.
“And some say,” he called to his group, “if you stand at the base of these steps long enough, the mountains start whispering back.”
A few tourists laughed.
“Others say,” the guide added, lantern swinging slightly, “the mountains don’t whisper at all. They just keep what’s given to them.”
A presence stepped in beside her.
Close enough that heat brushed along her bare arm.
Not touching.
“Busy down there,” Reid said.
She didn’t look at him. “You here for the spectacle?”
“I prefer higher ground.”
She turned.
No jacket. Dark jeans. Navy button-down open at the throat, sleeves rolled to strong forearms, gold watch catching the light.
Less armor.
Somehow more dangerous.
Across the patio, Lila’s crew shifted their rig, camera angling their way.
Eleanor saw it at the same time he did.
Flash.
Reid moved before she finished blinking—one smooth step that put his body between hers and the lens.
“That’s enough,” he said, voice even but edged.
Lila smiled like she’d been expecting the moment.
“Public venue, Counselor.”
Deputy Luke Hale materialized at Reid’s shoulder, loose stance, authority humming under it.
“Evening,” Luke said. “Let’s not turn this into a production.”
Lila held his gaze a second too long, calculating.
Then nodded. “Wrap it.”
The cameras dipped, but Eleanor could still feel the attention, sliding over her skin.
Reid turned back.
“You okay, Ellie?”
The nickname slipped out of his mouth like he’d been using it for years.
She blinked.
“What did you just call me?”
“Ellie.”
“That’s what my daddy calls me.”
No one else did.
The name hit somewhere soft and buried—a place no one in Sylva ever touched.
A beat.
His smile softened. Just slightly.
“Good taste.”
Something low in her chest tightened, sharp and uninvited.
She shut it down.
“I’m leaving.”
“They’re gone,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”
She should’ve said no.
Instead, she hesitated.
Then nodded.
Ten minutes later, they stood at a small high-top near the edge of the patio. April had escaped Salmon Shirt and was now laughing with someone far more tolerable. Out here at the fringe, the music blurred into a steady thrum and the square below was just color and movement.
Condensation slid down the sides of their beer bottles.
“You handled that well,” Eleanor said finally.
“I try not to escalate.”
She arched a brow.
“Liar.”
His mouth curved, slow and wicked.
For a moment, the night narrowed to the table between them, the scrape of glass on wood, his body an inch away from hers. The air felt thick, charged.
Then—
Ping.
Her phone shivered against the tabletop.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Reid’s phone lit up in sync.
They both glanced down.
And there they were.
A photo of them at the railing.
Her shoulder angled toward his.
His head tipped just enough that, frozen in pixels, it looked like intimacy instead of oxygen.
Too close.
The caption was already everywhere.
District Attorney his body cut off the rest of the world. A clean, warm scent—cedar and soap—closed in with him. Purely him.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered, then came back to her eyes.
“Kiss me.”
Shock snapped through her like a live wire. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said, lower. “Kiss me.”
Her mouth parted, the air snagging somewhere between chest and lips.
He didn’t give her time to close it.
He kissed her—hard.
Demanding. His mouth claimed hers, firm and sure, the faint taste of beer and something wild, as his hand at her waist yanked her in, crushing her chest to his.
The movement hitched her court skirt higher, and the sudden, rough friction of his denim jeans against her bare thigh sent a fresh jolt of electricity through her.
For a heartbeat, she went still, every nerve flaring white—then the pressure shifted. He eased just enough to breathe, his lips brushing hers again in a slow, deliberate pass, a softer drag over the sting he’d left. Her lips tingled, swollen and sensitive. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.
He started to pull back.
Somewhere above them, the mechanical clack of a camera shutter sliced through the quiet—sharp, clinical, and permanent.
Her eyes were wide, pupils blown, something wild and bright burning there.
He didn’t hesitate.
He leaned in again, and this time, she met him halfway.
She grabbed his shirt in both hands, the cotton bunching in her fists as she hauled him down to her, her mouth crashing into his.
Fierce.
His response was immediate. His hand abandoned her waist, fingers tangling deep into the hair at the nape of her neck, a possessive, blunt grip that tilted her head back and anchored her to him.
All the want and frustration they’d been holding back since the courthouse poured into the slide of his mouth on hers.
She rose onto her toes without thinking, chasing the heat, her bare leg pressing into the solid, unyielding line of his body. For a moment, she forgot where they were.
Just cold brick at her back, the weight of his hand in her hair, and the way her body kept answering yes.
He broke the kiss on a rough exhale, resting his forehead against hers for a beat.
“Look,” he said softly. His mouth brushed hers when he spoke. “This will blow over in a day or two. Don’t let them own it.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I know how cycles work.”
“You’re not worried?”
“About us?”
The word hung there—hotter than the kiss. He didn’t smile.
“No.”
That unsettled her more than everything that had come before.
Above them, the ghost tour guide’s voice drifted faintly through the night. “And some say the mountains remember…”
Reid stepped back a fraction. Giving her space. He took her in one last time, lips curving in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“There’s some attention for you.”
If she let herself, she could still smell him—cedar and soap—ghosting the back of her throat. He turned toward the lot, shoulders loose, hands sliding into his pockets like he hadn’t just set her nerves on fire.
“Goodnight, Counselor.”
She watched him walk toward the street. Heart pounding. Lips still tingling. Somewhere on the square, a phone camera flashed.
On the balcony, Micah pulled back from the viewfinder, his thumb hovering over the playback.
Lila leaned over his shoulder, the glow of the screen illuminating the jagged edge of her smile as she took in the image of Eleanor’s back against the brick and Reid’s hand buried in her hair.
It looked like a movie poster. It looked like an indictment.
“There it is,” Lila murmured. “The money shot.”
Later
Eleanor lay awake long after midnight.
The house was quiet around her, the only sound the rustle of dogwood branches shifting outside her bedroom window. Her phone lay face down on the nightstand, but the images were already burned into her mind.
She ran a slow hand over her face, her skin still humming with the phantom heat of his hands. Her fingers trailed down, tracing the edge of her lower lip—a physical record of the way he’d claimed her mouth.
It had been as hot as she’d feared.
That was the problem. She’d spent two years building a wall ten feet thick, only to find out that the most honest thing about Reid Calloway was the way he’d destroyed her defenses in a single breath.
Suddenly, the nightstand shivered. A sharp, rhythmic buzzing.
Eleanor froze. She didn't want to look, but the blue light of the screen was already bleeding into the dark, casting skeletal shadows of the dogwood across her white ceiling.
She flipped the phone over.
It was a notification from a local "Sylva Sightings" account. A grainy, high-contrast photo of the stairwell. Her back against the brick. Reid’s hand was buried in her hair.
@MountainMysteries: spied at Sky Bar: The DA and the Defense taking "sidebar" to a whole new level. Is this how "justice" works in Sylva? Looks like the Ice Queen finally found someone to melt for.
@LilaGrantOfficial: This is exactly why I came to this valley. The people in power are too busy playing games with each other to care about the truth. If the DA is this close to the woman who let a monster walk free in Charleston, who is actually looking out for the victims?
@WNC_HottieHunter: omg I knew Calloway was fine but I wouldn’t mind being pinned against a brick wall by the DA. Is she taking applications for co-counsel?
@JacksonCoLocal: How is he allowed to prosecute cases if he's dating the defense? This whole town is rigged.
Eleanor dropped the phone like it had burned her.
The warmth was gone, replaced by a cold, familiar dread. She had wanted to be invisible. She had wanted to be safe. But as the notifications began to chime one after another—a relentless, digital heartbeat—she realized she was already trending.
She stared at the screen's glow, her pulse thundering in her ears. Charleston. God help her, if this was starting up again...
She’d spent three years running from that name, building a fortress of "no comment" and clinical distance. She had finally started to think the ghosts were buried. But there it was again, typed out in black and white for forty thousand listeners to dissect.
Not random.
Never random.
She turned over and squeezed her eyes shut, willing the room to go dark again, willing the panic back down where she'd kept it for years.
But underneath the fear, underneath the dread, there was still the memory of his mouth on hers.
God.
What a kiss.
Her lips still felt swollen. Her pulse still kicked every time she remembered the way his hand had tangled in her hair, the way he'd studied her like he already knew there was no going back.
And even then, she could still hear him.
There’s some attention for you.