Jasper #3
She rang it up, movements automatic—tap, scan, bag. Efficient. Routine. But her fingers hesitated when the register lagged, and I noticed the hesitation the way I noticed everything about her right now, which was too closely and without much ability to stop.
We used to talk for hours. That was the thing sitting at the back of my throat while I stood there watching her press buttons with unnecessary focus.
Two kids in a school library, and the time had moved differently in there—slower, more meaningful.
Afternoons that felt like peace, that felt like discovery.
She’d made conversation feel like the easiest thing in the world, and I hadn’t understood until much later how rare that was.
Now she was only inches away from me across a counter, and we were talking about a book neither of us was thinking about, and the distance between those two versions of the same thing was not something I knew what to do with.
“So,” she said, a little too casually. “You’ve been… around.”
I huffed a quiet breath. “Yeah.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, then away just as quickly. “Honeybrook Hollow isn’t exactly a big place. Nowhere to hide.”
“True.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d been aware of that—of her—every time our paths had crossed since I came back.
I’d managed it by keeping things simple.
Polite. Distant in a way I’d told myself was considerate rather than cowardly.
Standing on the other side of this counter, close enough to see the pen mark on her index finger and the small crease between her brows, and her beautiful brown eyes, I was considerably less convinced by my own reasoning.
The receipt printed with a soft whirr. She tore it off, then didn’t hand it to me right away. Her gaze drifted to the sign taped near the register.
“Oh—” She gestured toward it, then dropped her hand halfway through the motion like she wasn’t sure she wanted to draw attention to it. “We’re doing that. Friday.”
“I saw the poster in the window.”
“Right.” She nodded, then immediately looked like she wished she hadn’t. “It’s—um. It’s small. Not, like, a big thing. Just… people, and clues, and—” She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
Something loosened in my chest at that. The almost-laugh.
The way she did that thing where she started explaining something and then seemed to catch herself mid-sentence as if she’d said too much.
I remembered that too. I’d spent a lot of time in that library hoping she’d keep talking past the point where she thought she should stop.
“Sounds like your kind of thing,” I said.
That got her. A real smile this time—full and unguarded, the kind that made everything else in the room recede—and then it was gone almost as fast as it came, as if she’d remembered where she was and reeled it back in. I wanted to say something that would bring that pretty smile back. I didn’t.
“Yeah,” she said. “It is.” She tapped the edge of the book lightly against the counter, once, twice. Then handed me the receipt.
Her fingers brushed mine—light and quick, but it felt like more. I went very still. The warmth of her touch registered somewhere it had no business registering and stayed there.
She pulled back as if she’d touched something hot, turning immediately to the register and pressing buttons that didn’t need pressing. “Sorry,” she murmured, not looking up.
“For what?”
“I—” She shook her head. “Nothing. Just—”
She didn’t finish, and I didn’t push, because if I pushed, I wasn’t entirely sure what would come out of my mouth, and this didn’t feel like the moment for it. I tucked the book under my arm and let the silence sit there between us, warm and unresolved.
“See you around, Cara.”
She glanced up. A smile ghosted across her face—there and gone. “See you,” she said.
I walked out into the afternoon and stood on the sidewalk for a moment before I moved, the book under my arm and the receipt still in my hand, and thought about how fourteen years of distance had apparently done very little to solve the fundamental problem of Cara Darlington.
Once on the sidewalk, I didn’t move right away. The glass caught the light at an angle, reflection cutting across the window so I could only see pieces of the shop inside. A shelf. A flicker of movement. The edge of the counter.
I adjusted the book under my arm and headed toward my truck, Cara still in the back of my mind. I hadn’t planned on coming in. Now I was already planning on coming back. And that felt like something I should probably think harder about.
My phone lit up on the passenger seat as I pulled out of the spot, the screen flashing bright in the dim cab. I glanced at it at the next stop sign, thumb hovering just long enough to read the name before I turned it face down again.
Emmett Harrington: Haven’t heard from you in a while. Got something that might interest you. Call me.
I sat there a second longer than I needed to, the engine idling, the bookstore still visible in the rearview mirror. Then I eased my foot off the brake and drove, leaving the message unanswered.