Chapter 5
CHLOE
One month of bugging Sawyer Cole was the most fun I’d had since moving to Pinewood Ridge.
It had become a routine, the way most good things in my life became routines: gradually, then all at once.
Three times a week, sometimes four, I drove out to the sawmill with Dollie after work.
Dollie brought cookies or sandwiches or whatever new recipe she was testing on Josh, and I brought myself, which seemed to be the thing Sawyer wanted least and needed most.
The first week, he’d barely acknowledged me. Grunts. One-word answers. A glare so consistent you could set your watch by it. I’d say hello and he’d look at me like I was a stray cat that kept showing up on his porch, one he was determined not to feed but couldn’t quite bring himself to chase away.
The second week, the grunts became sentences. Short ones, clipped and reluctant, but sentences. “You’re here again.” “Don’t touch the equipment.” “That’s not where visitors stand.” I counted each one like a victory.
The third week, I caught him looking at me.
Not the annoyed, why-are-you-still-here look.
A different one. Quieter. Like he was trying to figure something out and the math wasn’t working.
He’d looked away the second I noticed, and the tips of his ears had gone red, and I’d felt something warm spread through my chest that I was not ready to examine.
By the fourth week, the changes were small but unmistakable.
He stopped telling me to leave. He stopped walking away when I sat near him.
Once, when I’d been talking to Josh about a kid in my class who’d drawn a picture of a dinosaur eating a school, I’d heard a sound from behind me, short and bitten off, like someone had started to laugh and caught themselves.
I’d turned around, but Sawyer’s face was stone, his eyes fixed on whatever he was working on.
Josh had given me a look that said I told you so.
He was letting me in. Slowly. Reluctantly. Like a door opening one millimeter at a time, just enough to let a sliver of light through.
But today, I couldn’t come.
“Are you sure?” Dollie asked, leaning against my classroom door at the end of the day. She had her coat on and her keys in her hand, the sunflower cookie tin (she’d started using it as a permanent transport vessel) tucked under her arm. “It’s Wednesday. We always go on Wednesday.”
“I know, but I have twenty-three parent-teacher conference forms to fill out, and Mrs. Brennan wants them on her desk by Friday.” I gestured at the towering pile of papers on my desk, which I had been steadily ignoring all week with the kind of determined avoidance usually reserved for tax season.
Dollie looked at the pile. Then at me. Then she grinned.
“You’re going to miss your grumpy,” she said in a singsong voice.
“He’s not my grumpy.”
“You literally call him ‘my grumpy’ in texts.”
“That’s different. That’s texting. Texting doesn’t count.”
“It one hundred percent counts.”
“Go deliver your cookies, Dollie.”
She laughed, blew me a kiss, and disappeared down the hallway with the particular bounce in her step that she always had on sawmill days. I shook my head, picked up the first conference form, and got to work.
Three hours later, my hand was cramping, my eyes were blurring, and my back had formed a personal grudge against the wooden chair at my desk.
But the stack was done. Every form filled out, every “areas of growth” section diplomatically worded to avoid saying “your child ate three crayons and tried to flush a shoe down the toilet.”
I gathered everything into my bag, turned off the classroom lights, and drove home.
The November afternoon had tipped into early evening, the sky turning that deep, bruised blue that happened when the sun dropped behind the mountains but hadn’t fully surrendered to night.
The air was bitter now, winter creeping closer with each passing day, and the smell of woodsmoke from somewhere down the valley hung thick and warm against the cold.
I cracked the window and let the sharp air rush in, clearing the fog from my brain.
I pulled onto my street, parked in my usual spot, and got out of the car.
That’s when I saw him.
Sawyer was standing on the sidewalk near my building.
Not at my door, not on my porch, but close enough that there was no pretending he was just passing through.
He was leaning against the trunk of the old elm tree that grew between the sidewalk and the street, arms crossed, wearing his usual uniform of flannel, work boots, and a scowl that could curdle milk. His truck was parked a few spaces down.
I stopped on the sidewalk, my bag over one shoulder, my keys in my hand.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, and then, because I couldn’t help myself: “Waiting for me?”
The scowl deepened. “No. I was just passing by. Coming from a friend’s house. Don’t assume.”
“You’re standing outside my apartment.”
“I’m standing near a tree.”
“The tree that is directly outside my apartment.”
“It’s a public tree.”
I bit my lip to keep from grinning. He was a terrible liar.
Absolutely, spectacularly terrible. His jaw was set too hard and his eyes kept drifting to the side, the way they always did when he was saying something he knew was nonsense.
He’d been waiting for me. The realization sent a warm flush spreading from my chest to my fingertips.
“Okay,” I said simply. “Public tree. You were visiting a friend. Total coincidence. Got it.”
He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether to argue or to let the obviously false story stand. After a moment, he uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, which was Sawyer code for “I’m uncomfortable and I don’t know what to do with my body.”
I shifted my bag to the other shoulder and was about to ask him how long he’d been standing there when a voice called out from behind me.
“Chloe! Hey!”
I turned. Ryan Marsh was jogging up the sidewalk, his messenger bag bouncing against his hip and his cheeks flushed from the cold.
Ryan taught third grade at the elementary school, and he had the kind of wholesome, golden-retriever energy that made him a favorite among students, parents, and approximately every single woman in Pinewood Ridge under forty.
He was nice. Genuinely nice, in the uncomplicated way that some people managed without any visible effort.
“Hey, Ryan,” I said, smiling. “What are you doing on this side of town?”
“Dropped off some stuff at the community center.” He stopped in front of me, slightly out of breath, his smile wide and easy.
“Listen, I was going to ask you at school tomorrow, but since you’re here, a bunch of us are going to Mabel’s on Friday for dinner.
Nothing fancy, just burgers and that apple pie she makes. Would you want to come?”
Before I could answer, a voice cut in from behind me like a blade through lumber.
“Sorry, but we’re eating dinner later.”
Ryan’s eyes shifted over my shoulder, and I watched the easy confidence drain from his face.
I turned to find Sawyer standing closer than he’d been a moment ago, having crossed the distance from the tree to my side without making a sound.
He was looking at Ryan with an expression that was, technically, neutral.
But the kind of neutral that a thunderstorm was neutral before the lightning started.
His shoulders were squared, his jaw was set, and he had about six inches and forty pounds on Ryan, which he seemed very aware of.
Ryan looked from Sawyer to me. Then back to Sawyer. “Oh. I didn’t realize you two were…”
“We’re not,” I said quickly.
“We’re having dinner,” Sawyer said flatly.
“Right.” Ryan nodded, the kind of nod that said he was choosing the path of least resistance, which was wise given that Sawyer looked approximately one wrong word away from turning into a mountain. “Well, the offer stands, Chloe. Friday. If you’re free.”
“Thanks, Ryan,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
Ryan gave a final, slightly nervous smile, raised a hand in a half-wave, and headed off down the street at a pace that was just a little faster than his arrival.
I waited until he was around the corner. Then I turned to Sawyer.
“Since when did we talk about having dinner?” I asked.
His expression didn’t change. Not exactly. But something in his eyes shifted, a flicker of something that looked suspiciously like uncertainty, like a man who had acted on instinct and was only now catching up to what he’d done.
“You want to or not?” he said.
It wasn’t a smooth line. It wasn’t a grand gesture. It was blunt and awkward and delivered with all the romantic finesse of a man asking someone to pass the salt. And it was, without question, the most endearing thing anyone had ever said to me.
I smiled. “Let’s go to my house. I’ll cook for you.”
Something eased in his shoulders. The tension didn’t leave entirely, because I was starting to understand that tension never fully left Sawyer Cole, it just rearranged itself into different configurations. But the sharp edge of it softened, and he gave a single nod.
We walked to my apartment in a silence that felt, for the first time, comfortable.
Not the strained quiet of two people who didn’t know what to say, but the easy quiet of two people who didn’t need to fill every second with sound.
Our footsteps fell into rhythm on the sidewalk, his heavy, mine light, and the cold air pressed close around us like a held breath.
Inside, my apartment was warm. I’d left the string lights on that morning (energy bill be damned, they made the place feel like home), and the golden glow softened everything. I dropped my bag by the door, kicked off my shoes, and headed for the kitchen.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said over my shoulder. “And before you say something grumpy about the throw pillows, I already know there are too many. I don’t care. They spark joy.”