Chapter 6 #2
"Amber Carr," Clint said quietly. He wasn't looking at her like she was famous. He was rethinking her. "That's a big deal."
"Most days it doesn't feel like that." She tried for lightness. "Most days it feels like deadlines."
"And today?"
She thought about it. "Today it felt good."
He nodded slowly then smiled. "So you're the one with the real deadline pressure. And here I am complaining about my band."
"Yours counts too," she said.
"I'm glad I came over," he said. No irony in it.
Before she could figure out how to respond, his phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it then grimaced. "Band stuff. We're supposed to run through the new material before Thursday." He started gathering his things. Laptop, bag, the paperback. "I'm sorry, I have to run."
"No, of course. Go."
He stood, then paused. Let his eyes hold hers. "We play Thursdays at the Hard Rock. Nine o'clock." Not quite an invitation. Just information. "In case you want to hear what I've been working on."
"Maybe," she said.
"I hope so." He smiled, quick but guarded, and headed for the door.
The coffee shop went back to its background hum.
Jen sat alone at the table, eyes on the empty chair across from her.
The conversation had ended too soon. Interrupted by a fan, then a phone call, then the regular demands of a Thursday.
But he'd invited her to see him play. And he'd been sincere when he said he was glad he came over. She'd seen it in his face.
The Hard Rock. Thursdays. Atlantic City.
She opened her email. Amanda's latest was a week old now. Marketing needs fifty pages by end of month. Even rough is fine. Let me know how it's going?
Two weeks. She had two hundred pages. What she didn't have was an ending.
Jen had been telling Amanda for months that she was almost done.
Tightening the final act, she'd said. Just landing the reveal.
All of it stalling. The longer she waited, the harder it got to admit she was stuck.
The fantasy romance had been a distraction at first, a way to keep the words flowing while she figured out how to finish Clementine.
But now the distraction had become the thing she actually wanted to write.
Readers like you are the reason I get to keep doing this.
Those words had surprised her. Under the deadline panic and the block and the guilt, she still believed them.
That woman, Linda's friend, had been hooked since A Bitter Brew in Brambleton.
Had argued about suspects with her book club.
Had waited, genuinely waited, to find out if Clementine and Detective Stovers would figure it out.
Those readers deserved an ending.
Jen opened the cozy mystery file. Scrolled past the two hundred pages that worked, down to the place where she'd stopped. The cursor waited after that last line, patient as ever.
She put her fingers on the keys. To see.
The grandfather clock had been moved six inches to the left. Clementine measured it twice to be certain, ignoring the way Detective Stovers watched her from the doorway with that infuriating half-smile. She was close now. She could feel it.
She read it back. It wasn't terrible.
She kept typing.
The parking lot at Cape May Point State Park was nearly full by early afternoon.
Olivia found a spot near the trailhead and sat for a moment, watching families unload from minivans and couples lace up hiking shoes.
Beyond the lot, trails wound through woods and wetlands toward the beach.
Quieter than Sea Isle, no promenade crowds, no shops or restaurants.
Just the rustle of wind through the trees and birdsong from somewhere deeper in the woods.
Michael was already there, leaning against the wooden railing at the trailhead. He pushed off when he saw her car pull in, then seemed to catch himself, force himself to wait.
She got out. Grabbed her water bottle. Walked toward him with a steadiness she didn't feel.
This was the first time she'd seen him since their carpool days back home. The hiking group, the coffee runs afterward. It had all felt innocent then. Just two people who enjoyed the same trails, the same easy silences that came from walking through woods together.
But then February happened. Dan's phone on the kitchen counter. Rachel's name lighting up the screen. After that, the texts with Michael felt like something else entirely.
"Hey." He straightened as she approached. Up close, he was as she remembered. Not classically handsome, but interesting. Brown eyes that paid attention. A slight crookedness to his nose, like it had been broken once and set imperfectly.
"Hey yourself."
"Ready?"
"Always."
They started down the boardwalk, side by side, the wooden planks stretching ahead through the trees. The canopy filtered the sunlight into shifting patterns around them, and the air was cool and damp. Leaves and earth, a trace of honeysuckle. Shaded and still.
"I forgot how much I needed this," Olivia said. "Trees. Actual trees."
"The beach is nice, but it's a lot of... exposure." Michael ducked under a low branch. "Sometimes you want walls. Even if they're made of leaves."
They walked. The trail wound deeper into the woods, the sounds of the parking lot fading behind them. At one point, Michael stopped and pointed. A black snake sunning itself on a flat rock just off the path.
"Don't move," he said, though she hadn't been about to.
They watched it together. The snake seemed unbothered, soaking up the warmth, utterly still except for the occasional flick of its tongue.
"Beautiful," Olivia said quietly.
"Most people would run."
"Their loss."
The snake slid off the rock and disappeared into the underbrush. They kept walking.
Michael noticed things. That was part of what she'd always liked about him.
A hawk circling overhead. A cluster of wildflowers she would have walked right past. He asked questions about her work, the art history stuff, and remembered the answers.
Remembered details from conversations they'd had months ago.
"How's the research going?" he asked. "The Eakins project?"
She blinked. She'd mentioned the Eakins project exactly once, during a car ride back in March. "Still gathering sources. The archive access has been complicated."
"But you got the grant, right? The one you were waiting on?"
"I did. Last month." She hadn't told Dan about the grant. He hadn't asked.
They walked on. The conversation moved easily. Books they'd read, places they wanted to travel, the frustrations of academic bureaucracy. Nothing that would have looked wrong from the outside. Two colleagues, two friends, enjoying a walk through nature.
But Olivia felt it underneath. The awareness of where he was in space, how close his arm was to hers as they walked. Her pulse quickening when he held her gaze a moment too long.
The trail opened up as they reached the lakes at the end.
The trees fell away, and there was sky again—wide and blue, the lighthouse visible in the distance.
A pair of swans drifted on the nearer lake, their reflections perfect on the still surface.
Beyond them, the second lake glinted in the sun, an egret standing motionless at its edge.
Michael stopped. "This is the spot."
"It really is."
They stood there, taking it in. The quiet was different here. The hush of the woods replaced by the sound of waves beyond the dunes.
"Olivia, I need to tell you something."
She went still. "Okay."
"I'm not just down for the weekend." He was looking at her now, fully, the way he did when he was about to say something he'd been thinking about for a while. "I rented a place. In Avalon. For the summer."
She didn't say anything. The summer had just gotten more complicated.
"I know how that sounds. I know it's—" He rubbed the back of his neck. "A friend had a share in Avalon. He bailed last minute, needed someone to take it. I said yes because I needed to get away." He paused. "Then I remembered you'd be in Sea Isle. Fifteen minutes away. I wanted you to know."
The swans drifted closer together on the water. The egret hadn't moved. Everything as it had been sixty seconds ago, and nothing the same.
"I'm not asking for anything. I know things are complicated for you." He held up his hands, palms out. "I just wanted to be honest about it. I'm here. You're here. That's all."
Her heart was beating too fast.
They stood there, the confession suspended between them. On the lake, one of the swans dipped its head beneath the surface and came up again, water streaming from its neck.
"We should head back," Olivia said at last.
They did. But the silence was different now, heavy with what he'd said, with what she hadn't.
At one point, the trail dipped down through a stretch of soft sand between the dunes. Olivia's foot caught on a buried root, and Michael's hand shot out, catching her elbow, steadying her.
"Careful."
His hand lingered. She felt the pressure of each finger through the thin fabric of her shirt.
"Thanks," she said, and he let go.
Neither of them acknowledged it. But when they started walking again, she was aware of every inch of space between them. How easily it could change.
The trail curved back toward the parking lot, dunes rising to their left, another pond glinting through the reeds. They passed families with binoculars, a couple holding hands, a woman jogging with earbuds in. Normal people doing normal things on a normal summer day.
Olivia wondered what they saw when they looked at her. A woman walking with a man who wasn't her husband. Nothing unusual. Nothing scandalous. A pair of hikers sharing the path.
Except she knew better.
"I'm not going to push," Michael said, as the parking lot came into view. "Whatever you decide, I'll respect it. But I'll be here. If you want to talk. Or walk. Or anything."
She nodded. She didn't know what to say.
They reached the lot. He walked her to her car, not touching, not even close enough to suggest it. Present. Waiting.