Chapter 11 JACE
JACE
I set the bucket where she points—left of the entrance, angled out toward the sidewalk—and go back inside for the second one without being asked. She’s already positioning the first, pulling stems, adjusting the arrangement without looking up.
“They need to catch the morning light,” she says. Not explaining herself. Just talking.
She looks up at me. There’s still some fight left in her expression from the walk over—she’s not done being annoyed—but it’s different now. Quieter underneath.
Then she turns and heads back inside without another word.
I follow her.
Inside, she moves through the shop like muscle memory, pulling a delivery order from beneath the counter and scanning it once before crossing to the cooler for stems.
She doesn’t ask me to leave.
Doesn’t acknowledge that I’m there either.
I watch her work.
After a few minutes she glances up and catches me looking. “What?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“Whether you always run the cooler that cold. The compressor’s working too hard.”
She sets down the stems. “My refrigeration guy said it was fine.”
“Your refrigeration guy is wrong.”
She blinks at me. “Seriously?”
“Trust me.”
By the time she sets down the stems, I’m already crossing to the cooler. She follows a second later, watching while I crouch in front of the unit and listen through another cycle. I run a hand along the seal where the door meets the frame.
“The door seal’s worn out,” I tell her. “It’s leaking cold air. The cooler’s working twice as hard as it should.”
I sit back on my heels. “You got a flathead?”
A pause behind me. Then drawers opening.
“Somewhere. Hang on.”
She digs through the junk drawer by the register before walking back over with a screwdriver in hand. I reach for it without looking up. It slips between our fingers.
We both bend for it at the same time, and suddenly she’s right there—crouched in front of me with both our hands wrapped around the screwdriver on the floor between us.
Neither of us moves. Her eyes flick to my mouth for half a second before lifting again, and I force myself to look away first.
Her eyes are hazel.
I’ve been in rooms with her since she was fourteen and I never once looked long enough to notice that.
For a second, the only sound is the low hum of the compressor while I loosen the seal plate.
“You do this often?” she asks eventually.
I glance up. “Fix coolers in flower shops?”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “You know what I mean.”
She’s leaning against the counter now, arms folded loosely across her chest, watching me while I work.
“I notice things,” I say.
“Clearly.”
Silence settles again, quieter this time, before she asks, “You really think Tyler’s dangerous?”
I tighten the last screw into place. “I think men like him don’t like losing control.”
She looks away for a second after that, then opens her mouth to say something else just as the bell above the door jingles.
Sasha arrives at ten on the dot, takes one look at me, and stops dead in the doorway. The expression she throws at Wren is immediate and completely unsubtle, which means Wren catches it instantly without even turning around.
“Not a word,” Wren says.
Sasha presses her lips together like she’s physically restraining herself while she hangs up her jacket, then asks me if I want coffee with the aggressively cheerful energy of someone who is absolutely going to interrogate Wren the second I leave.
“I’m good,” I tell her, pushing off the cooler. “I’ll be back.”
Then I leave before Sasha’s expression gets any louder.
* * *
I walk the block.
Tyler’s at the coffee shop window across the street, facing straight toward Wild Tide’s entrance with a coffee in his hand like he’s got nowhere else to be.
I know exactly what he’s doing.
Wren moves somewhere in the back of the shop, and even from across the street I catch the shift in his posture. His attention tracks automatically toward the movement before settling again when she doesn’t reappear.
I start toward the crosswalk before I can stop myself.
Then I stop.
No.
If Vaughn knows we’re watching him, this whole thing gets harder. He gets smarter. More careful.
Harder to predict.
Harder to catch.
I stay on the sidewalk long enough to confirm what my gut already knows.
Then I pull out my phone.
Me : Vaughn’s back. Start logging times again.
Davis : On it.
Then I go back inside.
* * *
Wren’s at the worktable building a wedding arrangement when she glances over at me.
“You keep coming back.”
I hold her look longer than I mean to.
Her expression shifts slightly as she studies my face.
“Tyler.”
“Yeah.”
Her hands still over the arrangement. “Wait. He’s here?”
“Across the street.”
Her expression changes immediately. “You’re serious.”
“Yeah.”
She sets down the stem in her hand. “Okay, no. This has officially crossed into insane.”
Then she starts toward the front of the shop.
I catch her wrist before she gets two steps.
She stops.
Looks down at my hand.
Then up at me.
“Wren.”
“I’m not doing this.” Her voice is tight now. “If he wants to sit across the street and stalk me like a psycho, he can at least say it to my face.”
“You confronting him is exactly what he wants.”
“So what? I just ignore it?”
“For now, yeah.”
Her jaw tightens. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” I say quietly. “It isn’t.”
Slowly, she looks down at where I’m still holding her wrist.
I let go immediately.
“Right now he’s staying just careful enough that nobody’s going to do much about it,” I say. “Sitting in a coffee shop isn’t a crime.”
She exhales sharply and looks toward the front window again. “So what, we wait until he escalates?”
“We document it.” I keep my voice even. “Patterns matter. Timing matters. The more he pushes, the less room he has to explain it away later.”
She looks toward the front window again.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
She picks up the roses again.
I keep watching the front window.