Chapter Four
CHARLIE
Most nights, the silence in the studio was a salve—soothing, earned. But tonight it pressed in, thick and damp and restless.
I should’ve been next door at the wine tasting, pretending to enjoy myself, pretending to sell art, pretending Magnolia wasn’t circling the emotional drain like she did every time Lee Wilder showed up to any of our get-togethers.
Instead, I cracked the side door open and hauled the half-sanded barstools out into the alley, hoping for a breeze while I worked.
I lost myself in the rhythm of it—the scrape of wood grain, the burn of old varnish against my fingers, the scent of sawdust clinging to the thick, humid night.
It wasn’t working.
Uncle Cole had been gone for a few months, but the loss still came in waves.
Sharp. Relentless. Sometimes I’d be halfway through a text—usually a dumb question about plumbing in the bar or how to handle Magnolia’s latest disaster—before I remembered he was gone.
The ache had settled into background noise.
I only noticed it when I stopped moving.
He wasn’t just family. My uncle got me, no explanations needed. He was the guy who handed me my first toolbox and told me I could build something out of nothing. That there was a kind of beauty in giving discarded things a second chance.
Now, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was building out of this life anymore.
And Magnolia—well. Between the on-again/off-again thing with Dane, the way she and Lee kept trading those ridiculous, hopeful looks every time they were in the same room, and the very real possibility that O’Malley’s might not survive, I was one crisis away from losing my mind.
So, when I stepped into the alley to toss some scraps and found a woman crouched near the back door—muttering to herself as she fiddled with the lock to Cheese, Please!—I stopped cold.
I probably should’ve turned around and minded my own business. But I was already halfway to the dumpster, and it’s not every day you catch someone staging a late-night cheese heist.
“You know I could call the cops, right?” I said, leaning against the studio’s side door.
She startled so hard the poodle at her feet did a backflip. The dog, for its part, seemed rather proud of the party trick.
She spun around, dark curls sticking to her neck, eyes wide but defiant. “That seems excessive. Are you a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
She gave me a once-over, then shrugged. “Everyone looks like the fuzz when they’re standing in shadows.”
“So what, exactly, is it that you’re doing?” I asked, taking a half-step toward her.
“I could ask you the same thing. Creeping around like a Scooby-Doo villain in a dark alley.”
I lifted the sander in my hand. “Pretty sure I’m not the suspicious one here.”
She squinted. “Is that a weapon?”
“Sander.”
“Yeah, okay. Still weird.” She dusted herself off like she hadn’t been caught red-handed, standing up straight, trying to look taller than she was. “I wasn’t breaking in. I was… visiting a friend.”
I glanced at the locked service door. “Through the back entrance?”
“I’m picking up groceries,” she said, a little too fast.
I raised a brow. “Groceries. From a wine shop?”
She blinked. “Okay, fine. I left something in there during the last tasting. And hey, they sell cheese and stuff in there, too. I think…”
“They’re having a tasting right now,” I said, nodding toward the front. “You could try the actual door. Like a normal person.”
Something crossed her face—shame, maybe. Or frustration. Hard to tell. But she straightened like she was bracing for a fight. “Guess I wasn’t in the mood for a crowd.”
She stepped forward, the building light catching the frizz haloed around her brunette ringlets.
Savannah’s humidity had claimed her as its latest victim, curls plastered to her cheeks, dress rumpled like it had given up on the night long before she had.
Her shoes dangled from her fingers, the way a girl holds a weapon she’s already surrendered, leaving her bare feet ready to crouch down and jimmy the lock.
She didn’t belong here. Not in this alley. Not fiddling with a locked door under flickering bulbs and the scent of sour wine and rotting wood. She looked like she should be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
She had the kind of face you remembered long after you’d walked away. Big hazel eyes. A mouth with just enough curve to suggest mischief. She looked like trouble pretending to have its shit together.
Before I could say anything, before I could ask why someone so beautiful was hiding in a back alley, no shoes and no shame, she opened her mouth.
“Look, like I said, my friend owns this place. I was just—”
And then something slammed into my shins like a rocket-powered throw pillow.
I stumbled back in time to watch her scrappy little poodle launch itself into a frantic figure-eight around my legs, nails skittering on the pavement, ears flapping like it was gunning for takeoff.
I took a step back, tripped into a precarious stack of barstools, and barely had time to wince before they clattered down like a drunk game of Jenga.
Somewhere between the crash and my muttered, “Oh, for—” she made a sound.
Then she crumpled forward, hands on her knees, and let loose the unmistakable soundtrack of a body staging a full-scale revolt. Directly into the open sculpture frame at my feet. My yearlong masterpiece. Perfect.
Ah, fuck.
It wasn’t the smell or the mess that got me. It was the sheer, unholy timing of it all.
It was a commissioned piece for one of Eunice Wilder’s friends.
Lee’s momma had a whole network of them that loved to show off how well they could cut a check.
And this one in particular had too much money and not enough taste, redecorating her alimony-funded penthouse after divorce number three.
She’d seen one of my pieces at a gallery Magnolia had dragged me to, and next thing I knew, her assistant was sending me Pinterest boards labeled “Mixed Media Madness” and “Moody Metal That Says Healing.”
She wanted a bespoke piece. “Raw but elegant,” she’d said on the phone.
“Something that whispers reinvention.” It was meant to sit between her champagne fridge and the antique mirror she swore came from a Tuscan palace.
A showpiece for the entryway. A conversation starter.
The kind of installation that would impress whoever she invited over next.
The fuck you piece she hoped he’d stumble across on Instagram and immediately regret losing all of his money in exchange for a younger woman. Her words. Not mine.
But for me, it had turned into an escape hatch. I kept working on it long after the check had cleared, and I wasn’t done yet. I kept adjusting the angles, smoothing the welds, staring at the shape until I didn’t know exactly what it was I was trying to fix.
It wasn’t just a job. It was the gateway to countless opportunities. If this went right, who knew how many other multi-divorced women would seek me out to decorate their new homes with metal and ungodly amounts of money. Now it was covered in whatever this stranger had eaten for dinner.
I stared, mute. Powerless. Like the universe had kicked me in the shins, too.
The back door of Cheese, Please! banged open and Lee stumbled out, beer in hand, laughter already bubbling from his throat.
“Oh my God,” he called out. “Someone’s hurling into your latest masterpiece.”
He sloshed beer onto his shoes like it was part of the bit. My stomach twisted.
It wasn’t the mess itself; it was the way she sank into it, like everything had finally caught up with her.
“Jesus,” I muttered, stepping forward. “What the hell?”
She lifted her gaze, her skin pale beneath the flush, her eyes glassy but clear enough to know something had gone wrong. Sweat-damp curls clung to her face, and for a second, I thought she might apologize again—but she blinked, unsteady, as if the world had tilted.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice barely audible. Then she bent again, her shoulders rounding as she fought to steady herself.
Lee was already moving. He came back with a stack of napkins and crouched beside her, his voice soft and steady. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, dabbing at her mouth with a cocktail napkin like it might erase the last thirty seconds.
“This is my poodle, Nancy Reagan,” she said, and that was truly the last thing I expected to come tumbling out of her mouth.
I looked at her. Then the dog. Then back to the sculpture that now had a new layer of residue I hadn’t planned for.
Sensing my ever-rising blood pressure, Lee shot me a look. “Calm down,” he whispered. “Don’t make it worse.”
Easy for him to say. He hadn’t spent the last few months building that piece one weld at a time. He hadn’t been the one left holding the wreckage when someone else unraveled in front of him.
“Very nice to meet you, Nancy, but is your mother okay?” Lee quipped, trying to tamp down his building laughter as he kneeled beside her to pet the dog.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Totally fine. Happens all the time.”
“It happens all the time?” I repeated.
“Low blood sugar,” she said confidently. “And stress. And heat. And, probably, Mercury in retrograde? I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”
Nancy Reagan sneezed and curled up next to her like she’d seen worse.
I scrubbed a hand through my hair and stared down at the carnage beside her. “You know you just ruined a commissioned sculpture, right?”
Her eyes darted toward it. “Oh. Shit. That’s art?”
“Yes.”
She winced. “I thought it was a bike rack.”
My jaw worked, but nothing came out.