12. The Turning Tide
The Turning Tide
The first sound was rain: hard, steady, the kind that pressed against the windows like a heartbeat. Then a shadow filled the doorway.
Cole.
In her dream, he wasn’t on the roof or drenched in storm light. He was inside, the air around him warm and charged, his voice quiet when he said her name. The whole room seemed to shift with him, the scent of rain and cedar curling in behind his body as he stepped closer.
She should’ve told him to stay outside, that it was late, that this was just work, that she didn’t need him.
But nothing in her would form the words. The storm swallowed every objection whole.
When he reached for her, thunder rolled through her ribcage. His hands anchored her, steady and undeniable, and she rose instinctively, arms around his neck, legs around his waist, pulled into the heat of him like she’d been waiting years for that exact gravity.
His nearness was overwhelming with his warm breath against her throat, voice low in her ear, the kind of closeness that blurred the edges of sleep and memory until she couldn’t tell one from the other.
Then—silence.
She woke with her heart hammering, the echo of his name still pressed against the inside of her mouth.
For a moment, she didn’t move, heart still racing, the ghost of his breath at her ear vivid enough to make her shiver.
Morning light pushed weakly through the blinds, catching the edge of the towel she’d left on the counter last night, proof that the storm had been real, even if everything else hadn’t.
Coffee. Emails. The steady clacking of keys tapping while the sounds of work moved dimly through the walls.
Emmie yawned and reached for a banana from the counter, thumb already scrolling through her phone. “Think it’ll rain again today?”
“Forecast says scattered,” Jenna said, though her voice still felt unsteady.
“Good,” Emmie said. “I promised Casey I’d drive her to the beach. Can’t break in the new car if the roads flood.”
Jenna smiled faintly. “Try not to hydroplane.”
“Please,” Emmie said with mock offense, “I’m basically a professional now.”
She kissed Jenna on the cheek, then disappeared down the hall, humming off-key as she went. The sound faded beneath the distant thrum of construction next door.
Jenna stared at her laptop screen, the cursor blinking over an unfinished sentence.
She’d answered half her emails, skimmed three invoices, and still hadn’t read a single line that made sense.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but her mind was somewhere else entirely, on the dream, on the storm, on the towel still hanging by the door.
She reminded herself it didn’t mean anything, that he’d come to fix a tarp, not to see her, but the image of him out there in the rain wouldn’t let go.
The way he hadn’t looked at her when she offered the towel.
The way he said “Go back to bed, Jenna,” as if she had interrupted some moment he was having.
By late morning, Jenna had checked off most of her list: final payroll, insurance through the end of the month, and a note to the accountant about dissolving the LLC.
She poured herself more coffee, glanced out the window toward the bakery, and realized she hadn’t checked on the crew since early morning.
She kept trying to lose herself in it, spreadsheets, invoices, all the small distractions that made her life feel manageable. But the night before clung to her like humidity.
Maybe she’d overstepped. Maybe Cole was just being polite before, and she’d read into all of it. It was the looks, the easy jokes, the way his tone dipped when he said her name that made her second-guess.
Work. It was just work. That was all this was.
She closed her laptop, wiped her hands on her jeans, and walked next door.
The air hit her first: drywall dust and pine from the new lumber stacked by the counter.
The bakery looked emptier, cleaner in the way that things look when they’re halfway torn apart. She was halfway across the room before she noticed what was missing.
The chalkboard. The specials. Grace’s handwriting.
Her stomach dropped.
She turned toward one of the men near the door. “Hey—where’s the menu board that was on that wall?”
He looked up from a toolbox. “Oh, that old thing? It was cracked. We pulled it out earlier. Thought it was trash, so it’s already gone.”
“Gone?” she repeated.
“Yeah, we tossed it in the dumpster this morning.”
The walls started closing in on her as soon as she heard it. “Oh.”
He hesitated, clearly realizing too late that it mattered. “Sorry. I can—”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly, even though it wasn’t. “Just . . . fine.”
She turned, moving toward the counter, trying to breathe through the sudden heat climbing up her neck. The counter was covered in paint trays, brushes, half-empty cups of coffee, and somebody’s phone playing a song she didn’t know.
For a heartbeat, she didn’t recognize the scream ripping through the room as her own. It was raw and guttural, the kind of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs.
Before she knew it, she’d shoved.
The sound startled even her. The sharp scrape of wood, the crash of something hitting the floor, the echo that followed.
Her body moved before her mind could catch up, hands sweeping across the counter, sending brushes, rags, and a can of paint clattering to the floor.
White spilled everywhere, seeping into the cracks of the tile, running down the cabinet like milk.
It was like watching someone else do it.
She saw her own arms move, felt her throat strain, but her mind floated somewhere above, detached, horrified.
Grief had stepped into her body, and she’d just . . . let it. Then, silence.
Her breath came in ragged pulls, her palms slick with paint and sweat. The smell of latex and salt hung heavy in the air.
Every head turned toward her. Then, the room froze. No one moved. No breath, no sound. Just the hum of the overhead lights and the drip of the paint sliding off the counter.
She felt the weight of every stare pressing in on her.
One man’s eyes were wide with shock; another’s brows pulled together, unsure whether to step in or back away.
Someone looked at her with sympathy, soft and sad. The way people are when they realize they’ve just witnessed something private, something they weren’t meant to see.
She stood there, staring at the mess, mortified. “I—Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
She dropped to her knees and started trying to scoop the paint back into the container with her hands, babbling as she worked. “It was just a board, I know that. It was just—Grace wrote on it. That was the last thing she—”
“Jenna.”
Cole’s voice came from somewhere above her, calm but sure. When she didn’t respond, he crouched down, boots scraping against the tile, and got on his hands and knees beside her. The movement drew the crew’s eyes, but the quiet authority in his tone told them to stay back.
He didn’t touch her right away. Just stayed there, level with her, waiting until she finally looked up.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Breathe.”
She tried, but it came out in hiccups, uneven. “It was just—she wrote on it—”
“I know,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He leaned in closer, his shoulder brushing hers, close enough that Jenna could feel the warmth of him even through the smell of paint. “You’re okay.”
His hand found her wrist, gentle but firm. “We will clean this. You don’t have to.”
Her breath hitched. Cole’s proximity was both grounding and dizzying at once, his voice low, his presence filling the air like something solid she could hold on to.
“Look at me,” he said quietly. When she did, his eyes leveled her the way nothing else had in weeks. “It’s just paint. That’s all this is. We’ll fix it.”
Without breaking her gaze, he shifted his body toward the men behind him in a way that clearly said, Give us a minute.
They nodded and wordlessly went back to work, the shuffle of movement filling the space again.
He stayed there another moment before adding, softer still, “You’ve been carrying too much. Let someone else do the heavy lifting for a change.”
The words broke something loose in her chest. Her shoulders sagged, and she nodded, silent tears sliding down her cheeks violently like the monsoon that had come every afternoon this week.
“I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, and you don’t have to have a reason.”
Embarrassment overcame her all at once, “I’ll go get cleaned up.”
“Good idea.” He said with a small laugh that seemed out of place.
Outside, the afternoon heat pressed down like a weight. Jenna walked until the drills and voices blurred into background noise, scrubbing paint from her hands with a towel she’d snagged on her way out.
The bayou waited ahead, mangroves twisting into the water like they were holding everything in place.
When she reached the edge, she eased to a stop, and the stillness rushed in, too loud, too sudden.
She thought about Grace, about how she’d spent ten years choosing distance over discomfort.
She thought there would always be more time; she’d called less and less after Brooks died, she’d poured everything into work because it was easier than calling home and hearing Grace’s voice break through the phone.
She’d told herself she was protecting them both, Grace from her sadness, herself from Grace’s joy, but now it just felt selfish.
Jenna had been in Georgia drafting floor plans while her sister held an entire world together. Grace had lost Manny, lost the bakery’s footing, lost everything except Emmie.
The shame hit hard. Jenna’s own grief for Brooks had consumed her, but Grace had endured blow after blow: Grandma Hart, Manny, Brooks, and the slow collapse of her own life, and she’d done it completely alone.
She looked down at her reflection in the water, hair falling loose from her clip, her face drawn and tired. “You were still here,” she whispered, voice cracking. “And I wasn’t.”
A single pelican glided low across the surface, breaking the silence. She watched it until it disappeared, then wiped her eyes and headed back toward home. Grace’s home. Now her home.
Hours later, Jenna was showered with her hair pulled back, and the heat of embarrassment was finally fading, but she found the bakery was nearly empty. Most of the crew had gone. The counters were spotless. The paint had been cleaned.
And in the corner, propped against the wall near the back door, was the chalkboard.
Someone had cleaned the frame, not the writing. Grace’s chalk still curved across the surface, faded but untouched. A new screw gleamed on one side where the wood had split, holding it steady again.
Cole was outside, on a ladder, checking the fascia. He saw her through the window and climbed down.
“Hey,” he said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Feeling better?”
She nodded, “I, um, I lost it.”
“You had a moment.”
“A big one,” jenna confessed, avoiding eye contact.
“Yeah. But you didn’t scare anybody.”
“You’re not scared of me?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said with a grin.
Desperate to change the subject, her eyes flicked to the chalkboard. “You found it.”
“Didn’t let it get far,” he said. “Figured you weren’t done with it yet.”
“I’m not,” she said quietly.
“Then we keep it.”
She looked at him for a long second, grateful and a little undone. “Thank you. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, “It’s nothing. I’ve had worse days on a site.”
He wiped his hands on a rag, nodding toward the water. “You ever paddleboard?”
The question caught her off guard. “What?”
“Paddleboard,” he said again. “I go out sometimes early, up near Caladesi. Good for stress. Good for remembering you’re small.”
She smirked. “Says the guy who has to duck through every doorway in Pinellas County?”
That earned her a laugh. “Fair point.”
She shook her head, still smiling, unsure why her chest felt lighter.
“Saturday,” he said. “I’ll bring an extra board.”
She nodded before she even realized she’d agreed.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go, she did, but the question itself left her off balance. Cole had spent the week keeping his distance, polite and professional, all business. She’d started to believe she’d imagined the moments between them.
So why ask now?
She told herself it was nothing, just a friendly gesture, another kindness in a long list of them.
But part of her brain replayed every mixed signal: the rain-soaked night he wouldn’t step inside, the way he’d looked at her on the floor today, the softness in his voice that didn’t match the distance he kept.
He was a contradiction, or at least he seemed that way to her. Constant, unreadable, warm in small flashes that felt accidental. Distant in ways that were probably just him doing his job.
And she was the fool trying to decode it like it meant something. Or maybe he wasn’t a contradiction at all.
Maybe she just wanted more than this arrangement allowed, and anything that didn’t move in that direction felt like a mixed signal.
When he went back to work, she ran her fingers along the edge of the chalkboard. The dust came away soft against her skin.
It wasn’t the only thing Grace left behind. Not by a long shot. But it was something she could touch.
Something that remained.