17. Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Savannah
The whole town is up early for Books & Blooms, and for the first time since I got home, I don't feel like a visitor watching Stonebridge from the outside.
I feel like I belong here.
Main Street's closed off for the bike parade by eight, kids weaving past in capes and costumes stitched together from favorite book characters. Ellie rides by twice, waving so hard she nearly clips a mailbox, Moose loping alongside her like an overgrown, extremely proud escort.
By nine, the library doors are open, book sale tables spilling out onto the lawn, and somebody's set up a booth for the Blake Co.
pieces we shipped down — jackets and packs arranged on a folding table with hand-lettered signs, already drawing a small crowd of people running their hands over the fabric like they can't believe it's real.
“People keep asking if you're actually here,” Texie says, appearing at my elbow with two lemonades. “I told them yes, and now half of them want a photo.”
“Tell them no photos. Tell them to bid on the jacket instead.”
“Already working on it.”
The morning moves easy and warm. At eleven, I find Wyatt in the reading chair with a picture book open across his knees, a semicircle of kids at his feet and Moose sprawled beside him like he's supervising.
I stop longer than I need to.
There's something unfairly attractive about a broad-shouldered sheriff reading a book about a runaway rabbit to twelve completely captivated children.
Halfway through a page, Wyatt catches me watching.
He smiles.
Not the polite smile he gives everybody else.
The one from last night.
I smile back and keep walking before Texie catches me standing there.
Wyatt and I fall into an easy rhythm all day—passing lemonade back and forth, him steadying a ladder while I straighten a Sponsor a Shelf sign, small check-ins every time we drift apart in the crowd.
Every time we cross paths, there's a little reminder of last night. A smile that lasts too long. His hand at my back when we squeeze past each other behind a table.
We keep finding each other without discussing it.
At two, the dunk tank draws a crowd, and Ellie — after two misses that clearly wound her pride — finally lands the pitch dead center. Wyatt goes under to genuine applause, comes up soaked and laughing, and Ellie is the proudest nine-year-old I’ve seen all summer.
“She's been waiting all year for that,” Wyatt says, wringing out his shirt, grinning despite himself.
“Worth it?”
“Completely.”
I catch myself watching him a beat too long, water dripping off his jaw, laughing at something Luke says, and think—not for the first time today—that I don't want to be anywhere else.
That's when I see the car.
Not a truck, not one of the dusty sedans that fill the festival parking lot. A black town car, polished enough to catch the sun, easing down Main Street at a speed that suggests the driver's never navigated a closed street full of kids and bunting before.
Heads start turning before it's even fully parked.
I don't recognize the car. I recognize the feeling in my stomach a half second before I recognize the man stepping out of it — pressed shirt, city shoes completely wrong for gravel, sunglasses he doesn't bother taking off right away.
Preston.
My face goes hot before he's even looked in my direction.
Half the festival's already staring at the car like it dropped out of the sky, and I can feel Texie go rigid beside me, can feel Millie's head swivel from two booths over, can feel the exact moment word starts moving through the crowd faster than I can stop it.
“Is that—” Texie starts.
“Yes.”
“In a town car.”
“Yes, Texie.”
“To a bike parade.”
“I'm aware.”
He spots me and starts across the grass, sunglasses finally coming off, and I have about four seconds to decide how I want to handle this in front of the entire town before he's standing right in front of me.
“Savannah.”
He says my name carefully, like he's not sure what kind of welcome he's walking into.
“You look—” He stops himself, recalibrates. “It's good to see you.”
“Preston. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. In person.”
Half the town has found an excuse to linger near the booths, well within earshot.
“I should've called first. I know that.”
“You should have.”
He steps in for a hug before I've decided whether to offer one, arms already around me out of ten months of habit.
He pulls back from the hug and leans in automatically, like kissing me is still part of the routine.
I turn my head, and his lips land on my cheek instead.
“Preston—” I step back, putting real space between us. “Don't.”
He has the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry. Old habit.”
I turn my head.
Wyatt is across the square near the dunk tank.
He saw it.
Not staring. Not making a scene. Just standing completely still.
Our eyes meet for half a second before Ellie tugs on his sleeve and his attention shifts to her.
My stomach drops.
Nothing happened.
I turned my head. I stepped away.
But from fifty feet across a crowded festival, I'm not sure how much he really saw.
“Can we talk?” Preston asks, quiet now, some of the polish gone out of his voice. “Somewhere that isn't in front of the whole town.”
I can see enough to know Texie is watching, and half of Stonebridge is pretending not to.
“Fine,” I say. “Not here.”
We sit in the town car, engine running, air conditioning a strange, sterile contrast to the warm chaos of the festival outside.
“I've been thinking,” Preston says, hands folded in his lap like he's rehearsed this.
“Since you got cold feet and ran out of our wedding, I've had a lot of time to sit with it.”
I stare at him. “Cold feet?”
He lifts a hand. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“I call it realizing I shouldn't marry you.”
His jaw tightens. “Yeah. That.”
“Let me finish. Please.”
He looks at me, and for the first time since I've known him, he looks genuinely uncertain—not managing an outcome, not already three steps ahead in the conversation. Just a man saying something hard.
“I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I didn't see it coming.”
I don't say anything.
“And I think that's the problem. I wasn't paying attention.” He looks down at his hands. “I planned a wedding instead of building a marriage. I assumed if everything looked right, then we were right.”
That's more honesty than I expected from him.
“I'm asking if there's any version of this where we try again,” he says. “Where I do it right this time. Where I ask instead of assume.”
And I believe him. He knows he got it wrong, and in his own way, he's trying to make it right.
“Preston, I don't think that's what either of us actually wants.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do, though. I've known it for a while now, if I'm honest. Longer than I want to admit.” I say it gently, because he deserves gentleness, even now. “I'm glad you came. I'm glad we finally talked about it. But the answer is still no.”
He's quiet for a moment. Then he nods, and I can see that some part of him already knew what I was going to say.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
He drops the sunglasses back on before we get out, some old armor sliding back into place, and walks me partway back toward the festival before stopping at the edge of the crowd.
“For what it's worth,” he says, “I hope whatever you find here is everything I couldn't give you.”
“Thank you, Preston. I mean that.”
He gets back in the town car and the crowd turns to watch it pull slowly away down Main Street, this time with a lot less mystery attached and a lot more knowing looks aimed in my direction.
I search for Wyatt.
He's still near the dunk tank, his attention on the town car disappearing down Main Street.
I start toward him.
Halfway there, he notices me.
And I know immediately.
He saw.
Maybe not all of it. Maybe not enough.
But enough.
“Wyatt—”
“Uncle Wyatt!”
Ellie reaches him first, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the library where somebody's calling his name from the silent auction table.
Before he disappears into the crowd, he turns back once.
Then he's gone.
I stand there with everything I want to tell him sitting in my head.
It wasn't what it looked like.
I said no.
You were my choice.
An hour ago, Wyatt and I kept finding each other without even trying.
Now, for the first time since I came home, I don't know how to get back to him.