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I’d watched him keep everyone at arm’s length, including me. Especially me. We’d had moments, glances that lasted too long, conversations that went deeper than friendship should allow, times when he’d touched my hand or shoulder and left my skin tingling for hours afterward. But he’d always pulled back, always maintained that careful distance.
Until last night, when desperation had made him bold enough to ask the impossible.
I abandoned the chrysanthemums and moved to the front of the shop, staring out at Main Street as the morning crowd began to emerge. Mrs. Patterson from the deli was setting up her sidewalk sign. The mailman was making his rounds, stopping to chat with Mr. Henderson about the weather. Normal small-town life continuing as if my world hadn’t been turned upside down.
The truth was, I’d been dreaming about being part of Colby and Luca’s family for so long that the fantasy had worn grooves in my heart. I knew exactly how Luca liked his sandwiches, cut diagonally, with the crusts removed. I knew he was afraid of thunderstorms but tried to be brave about it. I knew he saved his best artwork to show me first, that he asked for me specifically when he was sick, that he’d started calling me his “almost-mom” to his friends at school.
I knew Colby took his coffee black in the morning but with cream in the evening. I knew he hummed old country songs while he worked, that he read three chapters of a book every night before bed, that he checked on Luca at least twice after tucking him in. I knew the exact shade of gray his eyes turned when he was worried, and how his voice got rough when he was trying not to cry.
I knew them both so well that stepping into the role of wife and mother wouldn’t require acting. It would just require making official what my heart had been doing for years.
But that’s exactly what made it so dangerous.
The bell chimed again, and I turned to see my assistant manager, Miranda, arriving for her shift. She was a sweet college student who worked part-time to help pay for her education, and she had an uncanny ability to read my moods.
“You look like you haven’t slept,” she said, setting down her purse behind the counter. “Everything okay?”
“Just thinking about some big decisions,” I said vaguely.
“The kind that keep you up all night?”
“The kind that could change everything.”
Miranda studied my face with the wisdom of someone who’d grown up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else’s business. “Does this have anything to do with Colby Marshall? Because I saw him at the hardware store yesterday, and he looked like a man with something heavy on his mind.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d connected the dots. Miranda had worked for me for two years, and she’d seen Colby and Luca in the shop countless times. She’d also seen the way I lit up whenever they walked through the door.
“What would you do,” I asked carefully, “if someone you cared about asked you to do something that could either be the best decision of your life or completely destroy you?”
“Depends. Do you love them?”
The simple question hit me like a physical blow. “What?”
“Do you love them? Because if you do, really love them, then the risk might be worth it. But if you’re just trying to help, or if you think you can change them . . .” She shrugged. “That never ends well.”
I stared at her, this twenty-year-old who somehow had more clarity about love than I did at thirty-four. “What if they don’t love you back the same way?”
“What if they do, and you’re just too scared to find out?”
After Miranda took over the front of the shop, I escaped to my office and tried to lose myself in paperwork. Orders to process, invoices to pay, schedules to arrange. The mundane details of running a small business that usually grounded me but today felt like meaningless distractions.
My phone buzzed with a text from my mother:
Haven’t heard from you in weeks. Everything alright?
I stared at the message for a long time before typing back:
Everything’s fine. Just busy with the shop.
It was a lie, of course. Nothing was fine. My carefully constructed life was teetering on the edge of a precipice, and I was about to either leap to safety or fall into something that would change me forever.
Another text came through, this one from Summer:
Thinking about you. Call me if you need to talk.
I thought about Luca, probably sitting in his first-grade classroom right now, blissfully unaware that his world might be about to change forever. He’d be working on math problems or listening to a story, secure in the knowledge that his dad would pick him up after school and that Miss G would probably be there for dinner, just like always.
What if Lyla won? What if she took him away from Millbrook, from his friends, from the only stable home he’d everknown? What if he ended up in some sterile apartment in Boston or New York, shuttled between his mother’s social obligations and a string of nannies? How would this be any better for Luca than his current situation?