Cara
It was finally evening, and I was closing up the shop.
The day had passed in a hush—only a handful of customers, the last a woman who lingered nearly an hour among the fiction shelves before choosing a single paperback with the quiet care of someone selecting a fine wine.
I had wrapped it in brown paper for her, told her I hoped she enjoyed it, and then the shop had fallen silent once more.
I was behind the counter, wiping the wood in slow circles, when the door opened.
I looked up, and my hands stopped moving.
Jasper.
The cloth stayed where it was, pressed against the counter, and I stood there for a second in which my body seemed to process him before my brain did.
I took a full stop, catching my breath. With the ache of seeing someone you love and are angry at and have missed with an intensity that surprised you, all at the same time.
Three days. It had been three days, and I had rehearsed this moment approximately forty times, and now that it was here, I couldn’t locate a single word I’d prepared.
He stood in the doorway holding flowers.
Not the loose wildflower bunches he usually brought, wrapped casually in paper.
These were deliberate—lush white blooms laced with soft green, long stems gathered with intention, a bouquet a man drives across town to a real florist for.
He held them at his side, not yet offered, as if they were still part of the weight he was carrying.
His jacket hung open, and his face looked like sleep had abandoned him days ago.
I recognized that look because I had been wearing a version of it myself, and something in my chest pulled hard toward him before I could stop it.
I made myself stay where I was.
He hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted. He had simply walked in at five-thirty on a weekday night.
I set the cloth down.
He drew a slow breath, the sound rough in the quiet shop.
“I couldn’t give it another day. I tried, Cara.
I swear I did. I sat in the cabin staring at the chair you’d been in, and I couldn’t face another night like that.
If you need me to leave, I will. But I needed to come here first. I needed to say some things. ”
I didn’t tell him to stay. I didn’t tell him to go. I simply stood behind the counter as the evening light slanted through the front window, warm gold brushing the shelves, and let the silence stretch between us.
“Can I talk?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He set the flowers on the counter between us with careful hands, as though releasing something he had carried too long. Then he met my eyes. “I took the job. Formally accepted it.”
The words landed heavily in the stillness. I went still.
“I drove to Emmett’s office. I sat across from his desk and told him I was in. The partnership, the office in Willowmist Falls—everything. I said yes.”
“Jasper—”
“Please. Let me finish.”
I closed my mouth and waited, heart thudding against my ribs.
“I told him yes, but I told him how it had to be. I wasn’t going to build my life around the job anymore.
The job would have to fit around my life, I told him.
I’m keeping the cabin. I’m coming home every night I can.
Then Emmett looked at me for a long time and told me something I didn’t know.
” His voice thinned, not quite shaking, but stripped of its usual steadiness.
“What did he tell you?” The question was a whisper of breath between us.
“He started the firm with one rule—he was never going to let the job consume his life again. That’s the firm I’m walking into.
He’s been trying to tell me that for months, but all I heard was partnership and saw the Marines all over again.
I thought the work would be grueling with a lot of travel, but Emmett takes cases that are almost exclusively local.
The travel is limited—mostly just occasional day trips. That changes everything.”
His knuckles had gone white against the counter.
“I should have told you everything,” he continued, voice low. “I should have told you before you ever came to the cabin. Before I kissed you on the landing. I had a hundred chances, and I didn’t take one. And the reason wasn’t good, but it was true.”
“Tell me.”
“I was scared.” His eyes glistened, wet in the soft light.
I had never seen Jasper cry. “I’ve been scared my whole life of becoming the man who leaves.
Every woman I’ve been with, I was only half there—present in body, but my mind was already planning the next deployment, the next mission.
They all left, and they were right to. I wasn’t really with them. ”
He swallowed hard, the sound audible in the quiet shop.
“When Emmett offered the partnership, the first thing I felt wasn’t excitement.
It was fear. Because I thought it carried the same danger—hours away, mental space I wouldn’t have, stretches where I couldn’t be fully here.
And I had just found you. You were the first person who made me want to be completely in my life, Cara.
The thought of showing you that door—of watching you see the man who might leave again—I couldn’t do it.
So I carried it alone. I told myself I’d figure out the right way first, then bring it to you without scaring you.
But every day it got heavier, and the conversation got harder to start.
I let you fall in love with me while I kept that in my pocket.
That was wrong. That wasn’t protecting you.
That was protecting myself from the chance you might look at me and decide I wasn’t worth the risk. ”
The shop felt smaller, the air thick with the hope and love between us.
“That’s what I’m most sorry for,” he said.
“Not the job. Not even keeping it from you. I’m sorry for not trusting you.
You’re the smartest, steadiest woman I’ve ever known.
You took your grandfather’s shop and made it your own.
You’ve made every important decision about your life yourself, and every one of them has been right.
I didn’t trust you with this one. I decided for you. I’m never going to do that again.”
Silence wrapped around us like a held breath.
“I went to my parents’ house,” he added softly.
“Told the family I was staying. Hannah sat me down on the back porch and told me I was wrong to keep this from you—and she was right. She said I let you fall in love with me while making a decision that would change your life without you in the room. But she also said that hurt doesn’t mean we have to be done.
That when a woman says, ‘don’t call,’ it often means she needs space to think, not that she’s finished.
She told me to give you room and when you were ready, to show up and just listen. ”
“You’re giving me a speech right now, Jasper.”
A faint, rueful smile touched his mouth. “I know. I tried to come in with nothing prepared. Then I opened my mouth, and all of this came out. I’m sorry. I couldn’t wait for you to call. I’ve been sitting in that cabin for days, building a bookshelf.”
I blinked. “You—what?”
“I built a bookshelf. In the bedroom, against the wall next to the dresser. It took two days because I’ve never built one before.
The first attempt was terrible—I had to take it apart and start over.
The joints are rough. The stain isn’t even.
If you look from the side, you can tell I should have bought a level or taken a trip to IKEA.
But it’s there. I put the books on it. All of them. In the order you gave them to me.”
My throat tightened until breathing hurt.
“There’s an empty space on the top shelf,” he said, voice rough with emotion.
“Where the morning light comes through the window. I left it for Devotions. The one I gave you on the landing. The one you left on the stack at the cabin because you wanted it to live with the others. It’s at your apartment now.
I know it is. I left that space because I’m asking you to bring it back. ”
Tears slipped down my cheeks, warm and silent. I didn’t wipe them away.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight,” he continued.
“I’m not asking you to move in or decide anything about the job or us right now.
I’m asking you to bring the book back. I’m asking you to come fill that shelf.
I’m asking you to let me show you the life I’m trying to build—with the job inside it, not the other way around—and to tell me if it’s a life you want to be part of.
If it isn’t, I’ll take it. If it is, then I’ll spend every day making sure you never regret it. ”
He fell quiet, eyes wet, everything laid bare. The flowers scented the air between us with something fresh and alive, like spring breaking through frost.
I stood there a long moment, crying softly, letting the tears come the way I had with my grandmother—quiet, unstoppable.
“You built a bookshelf.”
“With my hands. And a YouTube video. And more swearing than I care to admit.”
A watery sound escaped me, half laugh, half sob. “I wasn’t afraid of the job.”
He went very still.
“I was afraid because you kept something so important from me. You let me fall for you while you were making a decision that would affect both of us, and I didn’t even know it existed. That’s what hurt the most. That’s what I’ve been sitting with.”
“I know.”
“My grandmother came and helped me separate the two. The job is something we can figure out together—the hours, the travel, the nights you’re gone.
Those are practical things with practical answers.
But the hiding, that cut deep. But I’m done being hurt by it because I did it too.
I never told you how much Eric scared me.
Never confided in you that I couldn’t sleep because of him.
You had to talk to Paige about it. That was wrong, and I’m sorry. ”
“Oh, sweetheart. It’s okay.”