Page 77

He turned and held the door for Sage.

Mary Sue stared after him. The outrage held for another second — firm, committed, absolutely genuine — and then the corner of her mouth twitched. She pressed her lips together. Looked at the ceiling. Breathed.

Annie was still holding the plate.

"Don't say a word," Mary Sue said.

Annie didn’t. But she was grinning. The whole diner was — quiet, knowing smiles from people who’d seen this show a dozen times and never got tired of it. Frank Delaney shook his head. The Halverson sisters exchanged a delighted look. Old Jim Petersen, from his eternal stool, raised his coffee mug an inch in Cal's direction and said nothing, because nothing needed to be said.

SAGE

Sage was standing by the door.

She’d watched the whole thing — the tip jar heist, Mary Sue’s sharp yell, Annie’s frozen plate, Cal’s easy tip of the hat — and something was happening on her face that she couldn’t control and wanted to hide. It was soft and fierce and terrified all at once. It was the expression of a woman watching a man be exactly who he was and feeling the ground shift dangerously under her feet.

Oh no...

The feeling arrived quiet, certain, and she let it. No point fighting it anymore.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Because she had never felt this before. Not really.

She knew of it. She’d read about it, mocked it, rolled her eyes so hard it hurt in every dog-eared romance novel Felicity left scattered across the bathroom counter. She’d always thought it was pretty fiction. Something reserved for soft, unbroken girls — girls who hadn’t learned at twelve that “love” was just a word men whispered right before they took what they wanted and left the rest in pieces.

But here she was.

Standing in a diner doorway in Montana, watching a man in a Stetson and trenchcoat casually drop three hundred dollars in a tip jar and call the scariest woman in town Mama, and something deep in her chest was cracking wide open. It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t joy. It was something bigger than both.

She didn’t want to name it.

She refused to name it.

Because the second she did, the implications would curl around her heart like the first real warmth she’d ever truly felt — soft, golden, almost too good to be true. And that was exactly why it terrified her. She didn’t trust warmth. Warmth always lied. Warmth always left scars.

So she told herself she didn't know what this was.

Liar…

I’ve known him for only one day!

So?

This is insane.

I know.

I’m going to get destroyed.

Probably.

Fuck me.

Well, if you get another lollipop and–

Shutup Sage!!

The internal argument ended the way all her internal arguments ended — with the part of her that was honest winning over the part of her that was safe.