Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 32231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
“I didn’t mean to push Gabe,” she says. “He likes to talk while he cleans hose and I like to listen while people talk, and before I knew it—”
“You didn’t push him.” I move toward the window, check the frost lacing the corners. “He thinks I’m stuck. He’s not wrong.”
Her laugh is quick, startled. “He thinks I’m the pry bar?”
“He thinks you’re a blowtorch.”
“Well.” She flicks the stove on and lifts a brow. “Maybe I am.”
“Don’t set my life on fire, Ember.”
“You already did that to mine.” She winces, then grimaces. “Too soon?”
“Always,” I say, and the worst part is that I’m almost smiling.
The kettle trills. She pours. Hands me a mug without asking how I take it. Her fingers brush mine and it’s nothing—just warmth and ceramic and human skin on a cold night—and it’s everything. The tiny crackle of static jumps from her to me and I feel it, low and off-limits.
“Sit,” she says, nodding to the two-chair table. “Drink your tea. Try not to brood. I hear it causes wrinkles.”
I drag a chair back and brace my thighs around wood that wasn’t built for men my size. Ember tucks one foot under herself and sits across from me, sweater sliding off one shoulder, collarbone a line I don’t have the right to follow with my eyes. I look anyway.
“I hate that you know,” I tell her, because truth sits better than silence.
“That you loved someone?” she asks. “Or that she’s gone?”
“That you know where the floor gives out.”
Ember holds my stare. “Then we won’t step there.”
“You don’t get to decide the weak points.”
“Maybe not. But I can listen when the boards start to creak.” Her mouth curves, self-aware and infuriatingly tender. “And I can bring extra nails.”
“You’re not fixing me with craft supplies.”
“Wrong,” she says. “I’m going to fix you with inappropriate jokes and carbs.”
I snort. “Terrible plan.”
“Wonderful plan. It’s got sugar.”
I sip tea because my mouth needs something to do besides find hers. She watches like she’s drawing me—line, shade, smudge. I want to tell her to stop making me into something softer. I want to stop wanting the thing I stopped letting myself want.
“So the fiancé thing,” she says, and I nearly choke on honey.
“Quinn.”
“I’m serious.” She sets her mug down, palms flat on the table between us. “The investigator’s back Wednesday. The story in the Gazette… it helps me. It makes me look, you know—legitimate.”
“You are legitimate.”
“Tell that to my tax returns,” she deadpans. When I don’t bite, she softens. “You know what I mean. My studio is gone. My invoices are ash. People remember headlines. ‘Artist loses everything’ is sad. ‘Artist engaged to local hero’…” She trails off, winces at herself. “It’s gross. I know it. But it’s helping. I didn’t start it, but I’m not exactly stomping it out.”
“I know.” I drag a thumb around the rim of my mug. “We’re in it now.”
“We are.” Her voice thins. “Are you mad?”
I think about the burn of seeing my name next to a ring emoji. The way the guys at the house ribbed me about flower arrangements. I think about how she stood in ash and tears.
“I’m not mad,” I say. “I’m… adjusting.”
“To me?”
“To all of it.”
Her mouth tilts. “I am a lot.”
“You’re kinetic,” I say, surprising myself.
Her eyes brighten. “That sounds like a compliment.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Observer implies you’re watching.” She props her chin in her hand. “You watching me, Clay?”
“Don’t fish,” I say, but heat crawls up the back of my neck anyway.
She laughs under her breath, victory small and smug. “Fine. We set new rules, then.”
“We already have rules.”
“Those were ‘no kissing’ and ‘no touching’ and ‘no fun.’”
“I never said the last one.”
“You implied it with your face.”
I work my jaw.
“Honesty,” she says immediately. “If we’re going to do this for the town, then inside the little bubble we fake, we tell the truth. We say when we’re comfortable and when we’re not. We say when we want to—” She breaks off, eyes flicking to my mouth. Then back up. “When we want to revise the terms.”
I hold her stare until my pulse slows down. “What else?”
“Protection,” she says. “I don’t want to get blindsided by reporters again. If you need to leave a thing early, you tell me. I’ll run interference. If I need to duck out, you—”
“I walk you out,” I finish, voice rougher than I mean.
“Yeah.” She wets her lips. “That.”
“And when this ends,” I add, working a burr out of the wood grain with my thumb, “we end it clean. No pretending after. No ghosting town events. We can both walk into the diner without Betty and everyone else whispering.”
She flinches like I touched bone. “Right. Of course. End clean.”
The air between us cools a degree. My chest registers the drop. I want to fix it. I don’t know how without making a mess.