CHAPTER 1 #2
My fingers curled into the front of his shirt. The noise in the restaurant smeared into nothing. His mouth moved against mine, unhurried and deliberate, and something in my chest cracked open and ran hot all the way down to my hands.
When we separated, his hand stayed on my jaw for an extra beat. His eyes were darker than before. His breathing had changed.
"Hi," he said. Quiet.
"Hi," I managed, because my entire vocabulary had apparently evacuated.
The room had noticed. Of course the room had noticed — we were standing at the bar in full view of sixty-some people who treated other people's lives like a competitive sport.
Willa got there first. "Oh my God." Her gaze went from me to Beckett and back, fast, like she was watching a tennis match. "Are you — how long has — Nora."
"It's new," I said. My voice came out surprisingly steady for someone whose central nervous system had just left the building. "It's, um. Really new."
Beckett's hand had dropped from my face but landed on the small of my back — warm, solid, exactly where the fabric of my dress was thinnest — and I genuinely could not remember what a complete sentence was supposed to sound like.
"Pretty new," he confirmed beside me. Easy. Calm. Like he said this sort of thing every day of his life. Like I couldn't see his pulse jumping at the side of his throat.
Willa made a sound that was part gasp, part squeal, part bride-on-the-edge-of-wedding-week-hysteria. "Eli! Eli, did you know about this?"
Eli appeared, grinning so wide it was practically structural. "Beck's been cagey all month. I had a theory."
"You did not have a theory," Beckett said.
"I absolutely had a theory."
Theo materialized with his camera already raised, because Theo had never once in his life missed an opportunity to make things worse. "The maid of honor and the best man," he said, delighted. "That's almost offensively perfect. Hold still, I need this."
"Theo —" I started.
"Already got it." He grinned and disappeared back into the crowd.
I could feel it spreading. Not like a rumor — faster than that, more like weather.
Glances hopping between tables. Nudges. The energy that moves through a room when a group of people who came in with one story suddenly get handed a better one.
Thirty seconds ago I was the sad sister.
Now I was something else, something the room wanted to watch, and the momentum of it was already bigger than anything I could take back with a correction.
My mother was smiling at me from across the room. Not the worried smile. The other one — surprised, pleased, relieved in a way that made my stomach flip because I knew what it meant. She was already building on this. By tomorrow she'd have a timeline.
Tyler was watching from his table with an expression I couldn't quite read and didn't want to.
Beckett leaned down. His mouth close enough to my ear that I felt his breath move my hair. "You good?" he asked, low enough that only I heard it.
"I have no idea," I whispered back.
His hand pressed once against my back. Brief. Warm. Not reassuring, exactly — more like an acknowledgment that we were now in something together, whatever it was.
I kept my smile in place. The room kept watching. Somewhere between my second sip of wine and whatever expression I was making, the story had locked, and I had no idea how to unlock it.
Later, I walked up the path to Aunt June's cottage with my shoes in my hand and no idea how I was supposed to survive the week.
The night air was cool and I breathed it in, trying to get my head straight, but my head did not want to get straight.
My head wanted to replay the way Beckett's thumb had felt on my cheekbone and the way his voice had sounded when he said hi — low and a little rough, like the kiss had done something to him too —
Stop. I needed to stop, get inside, wash my face, and figure out how to survive a week of whatever I had just started.
I reached the front door, turned the key, and stepped into half an inch of water.
I stood there, shoes in one hand, key in the other, cold water soaking through my bare feet, and stared at the dark wet shine of the cottage floor stretching all the way to the kitchen.
I could hear it — the hiss of water still running somewhere behind the wall.
"No," I said out loud, to the cottage. "No. Not tonight."
The cottage didn't care. Water kept running. My feet were freezing. Somewhere in the walls, a pipe had given up on structural integrity at the worst possible moment in my entire life, and I was standing in the evidence.
I backed out onto the porch, pulled out my phone, and stared at the screen.
I could call Aunt June. I could call Willa, except Willa had enough to deal with this week, and adding your cottage is flooding to her plate felt criminal. I could call my mother, except my mother would ask why I wasn't calling Beckett, because as of forty-five minutes ago, the whole town thought —
My phone lit up. A text. From a number I didn't have saved but recognized, because our property lines had shared a fence since I was seventeen.
Saw your porch light go on and off. Everything okay over there?
I looked across the dark yard toward Beckett's house. One window was lit upstairs. He was awake. He was paying attention. He was right there.
My feet were still wet. The cottage was still flooding. And the man I'd publicly kissed two hours ago was thirty yards away, asking if I was all right.
This week was going to be a disaster.