Chapter 8
chapter
eight
Oliver
I see her before she sees me.
That’s been the pattern since the night we met—me watching her before she knows I’m there.
At the bar, it was across a room full of strangers under green neon.
Tonight, it’s across my grandparents’ anniversary party under a canopy of string lights that Kelsie and my mother spent all afternoon hanging while the rest of us hauled tables, dragged smokers into position, and tried not to get conscripted into flower arrangements.
Cora is standing near the edge of the pavilion, talking to Caroline LeBlanc.
She’s wearing a dress. I’ve never seen her in a dress.
A skirt that first night. Every day since, it’s been cutoffs and tank tops and bare feet, and now she’s standing twenty yards away in something dark green and fitted that stops just above her knees, and the hem moves when she laughs, and I can see the ink on her leg trailing down to the strappy sandals on her feet.
She looks—
I take a pull off my beer and redirect my gaze toward the smokers.
She looks like something I have no business staring at in front of my entire family.
“You’re doing it again,” Leo says beside me.
“Doing what?”
“That thing where you pretend you’re not looking at her by aggressively looking at something else.” My cousin tips his beer toward the smoker. “Nobody stares at a brisket that hard, Ollie.”
“Don’t call me Ollie.”
“Don’t stare at your grandparents’ caretaker like you want to eat her alive, and I’ll consider it.”
I cut him a look. Leo grins back, completely unbothered. He’s the only person in this family—blood or otherwise—who can push me without consequence, mostly because he’s been doing it since we were six and I’ve accepted it as a permanent condition.
“I’m not staring,” I say.
“You’re right. Staring implies she doesn’t know. That woman has clocked you at least three times in the last ten minutes. She’s just better at pretending.”
I don’t respond to that.
Because he’s right.
“What are the odds the woman you hooked up with at Ace’s would end up in your life in this way?” he muses.
“I’m not answering that. Besides, statistics if your thing, not mine.”
We’ve been at this party for an hour, and Cora and I have not spoken a single word to each other.
Not one. We arrived separately—I came early to help set up; she came a little later with I learned was a slideshow loaded on her laptop and a USB drive clutched in her hand like a grenade pin.
I watched her hand it to my mother, watched my mom pull her into a hug, watched Cora’s face do that thing it does when someone is kind to her.
It’s like the gesture is always unexpected.
So her features have a flicker of surprise, then something soft and unguarded, then the walls going back up so fast you’d miss it if you blinked.
I didn’t blink.
I never blink with her. That’s the whole goddamn problem.
Since the morning I showed up to find her in my grandparents’ kitchen in a towel, we’ve existed in a careful, unspoken arrangement. Parallel lives under the same roof. I leave before dawn. She’s asleep—or pretending to be. I come home after dark. We pass like ships.
We’ve exchanged words you could count on both hands. The only evidence that the other person exists is a clean plate in the drying rack and the faint scent of her shampoo lingering.
And dinner.
She’s been leaving me dinner every night. With sticky notes. Handwritten, in purple ink, and always something that makes me stand alone in the dark kitchen, fighting a smile like an idiot.
Not poison. Probably.
Still not poison. You’re welcome.
Okay, this one might be poison. Kidding. It’s Mimz’s pot roast. You’re fine.
I kept the notes. All three of them. They’re in the drawer of my nightstand, which is a fact I will take to my grave.
“Oliver.” Leo’s voice pulls me back. “Seriously. What’s the deal with her?”
“There’s no deal.”
“There’s obviously a deal. You’ve been wound tighter than a fence wire since I got here, and every time she moves, you track her like a retriever.”
“Drop it, Leo.”
He raises both hands. “Dropped. For now.” He takes a long sip of his beer. “But for the record? She keeps looking at you too.”
I don’t look over to confirm that.
I want to.
I don’t.
The party fills in fast. Blankenships and Wests account for a good third of the crowd, but Saddle Creek shows up for its own.
Half the town is here, or it feels like it.
The Whitmores are clustered near the bar—Bram helping my Uncle Graham drag another table into position.
Jared and Garrett, and their wives, are settled near the front.
My other uncle, Heath, is telling a story to a captive audience at one of the back tables.
Various kids tear through the legs of adults like a school of fish navigating coral.
And in the center of all of it—Mimz and Pops.
They got back from the cruise yesterday, tanned and bickering and looking more alive than people half their age.
Mimz had walked through the front door, seen Cora, and immediately pulled her into a hug so fierce I thought the girl might crack.
Pops had shuffled in behind her, patted Cora on the head like she was a golden retriever, and said, “House still standing? Good girl.”
Then Mimz had seen me standing in the living room and her eyes had gone very bright and very knowing, and she’d said, “Oh, wonderful. You’re both here.” In a tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I still haven’t unpacked that.
Tonight, Pops has one hand wrapped around Mimz’s, the other holding a beer, and she’s smiling at him like she always does.
The band kicks into something upbeat—fiddle and guitar—and that’s when Henry arrives.
With Gracie.
Holding her hand.
“So I guess it’s true, then?” Leo asks. “About them being married.”
“Apparently. Still seems strange to me they didn’t even tell people they were dating.”
Henry catches my eye across the crowd and gives me a look that says I know, just go with it. I give him a short nod. We’ll talk later.
Right now, I’ve got my own situation to manage.
Because Cora has moved. She’s sitting at a table now — the one Caroline and Damien have claimed—and there’s an empty seat beside her that I’m going to have to either take or visibly avoid, and both options feel loaded.
I finish my beer. Set the empty on the nearest flat surface.
“Going in?” Leo asks.
“Shut up.”
He salutes me with his bottle.
I ignore him as I make my way over and take the seat.
Not next to her. Across from her. One seat buffer. Enough distance to be respectable. Close enough to scent her. She smells of something warm and floral that I know isn’t Mimz’s lavender soap. This is Cora. Just hers.
She glances up when I sit. Those pale green eyes hit mine and hold.
“Hey,” she says. Casual and light. Like my presence is unremarkable.
“Hey.”
Damien offers her wine, and she declines. “I’m good with my water. Thank you.” Water with lime.
My brain files that away with all the other things I’ve noticed and don’t know what to do with. Like how I’ve heard her up getting sick in her bathroom every morning I’ve been there.
I look at her then. Really look. “You look—” I start, then catch myself. Because what I was about to say is you look so goddamn beautiful it’s making it hard to think, and that is not an appropriate thing to say to the woman you’ve been actively pretending doesn’t affect you. “—nice,” I finish.
Smooth. Real smooth.
Caroline snorts from across the table. I ignore her. She’s one of my sister Kelsie’s best friends. Together, they and my new sister-in-law, Gracie, own SugarBakers in town.
Cora bites the inside of her cheek. “Nice?”
“The dress,” I clarify, which makes it worse. “It’s—green.”
That gets a real smile out of her. “It is green. Excellent observation, Cowboy.”
My jaw tightens at the name. She hasn’t called me that since the morning I showed up in the kitchen. Where she stood wearing a towel and a temper and it took every shred of restraint I had not to—
“You are bad at this, my friend,” Damien says.
Henry and Gracie join our table, both carrying plates loaded down with barbecue and all the fixings.
Cora doesn’t have food. Should I get her some? She’s been making sure I have meals every night. I stand quickly and make my way over to the food table and methodically build two plates. By the time I return, Cora is engaged in a conversation with Caroline.
I set the plate of food down in front of Cora without a word, then take my seat.
“That’s a little better,” Damien murmurs. “You need some tips? You’re acting like a damn couillion.”
“Damien, I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good. Is that a crazy Cajun thing?”
He chuckles. “It is Cajun. Means you’re acting like the fool.”
My father stands and gives a toast. He talks about Mimz and Pops, about their example, about fifty years of choosing the same person. He ends with happy wife, happy life, right darlin’? and my mother heckles him from the crowd.
Then Pops steps up.
The crowd goes quiet. That’s the effect Pops has. Always has. You don’t demand attention when you’ve earned the kind of respect that makes a room hold its breath.
He reaches back for Mimz. She fits into his side like she was designed for the space.
He keeps it simple, the way he always does. Years and luck and stubbornness. Loving someone isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. Choosing the same person again and again.
I feel something tighten in my chest.
I don’t look at Cora.
I absolutely do not look at Cora.
Until I do. She’s watching Mimz and Pops with an expression I’ve never seen on her before.
Open. Unguarded. Her lips are parted slightly, her eyes bright in the string lights, and there’s something on her face that looks like longing.
The deep, aching, bone-level kind. The kind that comes from wanting something so badly you’ve convinced yourself you can’t have it because the wanting itself feels too dangerous.
I know that look.
I’ve been wearing it for three months.
Then Pops calls Henry up, and the moment breaks. Cora blinks. Takes a sip of her water. Puts her walls back up, brick by brick, so fast it’s almost invisible.
But I saw it.
I saw it, and now I can’t unsee it.