Page 16 of Brewing Up My Fresh Start (Twin Waves #2)

We fall into comfortable silence, but it’s charged with an awareness that wasn’t there before.

The sugar granules catch the lamplight between our still-connected hands like tiny stars, and I realize we haven’t moved apart.

If anything, we’ve somehow shifted closer, drawn together by gravitational forces beyond our control.

Outside, autumn wind whispers through the trees, and the coffee shop feels intimate—amber lamplight reflecting off copper accents, the lingering scent of cinnamon creating an atmosphere that could make anyone confess their deepest secrets or commit their most beautiful sins.

“Can I ask you something?” Michelle says, her voice softer now but no less dangerous.

“Shoot.”

“What made you realize Miranda was right? About the emotional unavailability situation.”

I think about it, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I understood how completely I’d failed, all while trying to ignore how Michelle’s thumb is still moving across my knuckles in hypnotic patterns. “She left me a note.”

“A note?”

“Taped to the bathroom mirror. Said she’d been trying to have a real conversation with me for three years, but I was always distracted by work or tired from work or stressed about work. Said she felt married to my career instead of me.”

“That must have hurt.” Her voice is gentle now, and she squeezes my hand in comfort—a gesture that shouldn’t be as intimate as it feels.

“The worst part was that I couldn’t argue with her assessment. I read that note and realized I couldn’t remember the last time we’d talked about anything besides schedules and logistics. I knew more about my subcontractors’ personal lives than my wife’s dreams or fears or hopes for our future.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m sitting here telling a woman I thought I barely knew more about myself than I ever told Miranda.” The admission hangs between us, loaded with implications I’m not ready to examine.

“Maybe because Miranda was trying to change you, and I’m just trying to understand you.”

The observation lands like a physical blow, true and devastating. Our hands are still connected over the scattered sugar, and I can feel her pulse beating against my palm like a secret message.

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“I don’t know.” Her honesty is brutal and beautiful. “Maybe I’m trying to figure out how a person can be so good at caring for an entire community and so terrible at caring for the people closest to him.”

“You’ve been looking out for this town’s economy and infrastructure for years, but you couldn’t look out for your own marriage for three.”

“When you phrase it that way, it sounds pathologically dysfunctional and borderline sociopathic.”

“Not pathological. Just... complicated. Like you understand love in theory but not in practice.” Her fingers tighten around mine. “Like you’re fluent in the language but have never had a real conversation.”

“Miranda said the same thing. That I treated love exactly like a construction project—lots of planning and preparation, but never actually building anything real or lasting.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think she was right. I think I was so afraid of doing it wrong that I never really tried to do it at all.”

Michelle sets down her coffee with her free hand and looks at me with an expression that makes my pulse stutter. There’s something almost predatory in her gaze, like she’s seeing straight through every defense I’ve ever constructed.

“What would it look like if you tried?”

The question hits me like a challenge, and suddenly the air between us is so charged I can barely breathe. Her hand is still in mine, warm and soft and anchoring me to this moment that feels like standing on the edge of a cliff.

“I have absolutely no idea. Probably a spectacular disaster of epic proportions. Miranda got three years of me attempting to be a good husband, and that ended with her running off with a man who remembered her birthday without digital reminders and smartphone alerts.”

“Maybe Miranda wasn’t the right person to try with.”

“Or maybe I’m fundamentally broken and should stick to construction projects that don’t require emotional intelligence or human connection.”

“Or maybe you just need a woman who speaks your language.” Her voice drops to that whisper that makes my skin burn.

“Construction terminology and project management jargon?”

“Coffee shop regulars and morning routines.” She leans closer, her breath warming my skin. “A girl who knows how you like your coffee and what makes you smile and exactly which expression you get when you’re thinking too hard about something.”

The words are loaded with years of accumulated meaning, of Michelle having my coffee ready before I reached the counter, of building something together through daily interactions and shared morning rituals without either of us realizing what we were creating.

“Michelle...” I start, then make the fatal mistake of leaning forward for emphasis.

The chair—which has been protesting my presence all evening—finally surrenders to physics entirely.

I feel it give way beneath me just as I’m shifting my weight, sending me sliding backward at an impossible angle that defies both gravity and dignity.

But this time, instead of just ending up wedged against furniture, my momentum carries me completely off the chair.

I grab instinctively for something to steady myself and end up catching Michelle’s hand—the same hand that was tracing patterns on my knuckles—pulling her forward just as I’m falling backward.

The next few seconds unfold in spectacular slow motion.

Michelle, caught off balance by my death grip on her hand, tumbles forward off the couch just as I’m crashing toward the floor.

We collide mid-air with the grace of two people who clearly skipped physics class, creating a tangle of limbs that would be comedic if it weren’t so potentially awful.

I land first, my back hitting the area rug with enough force to knock the wind out of me, and then Michelle lands on top of me with the full weight of a woman who was not expecting to participate in impromptu trust falls during municipal committee meetings.

For a moment, we’re both completely still, trying to process what just happened and whether any bones are broken.

Michelle’s hair has fallen around her face like a curtain, creating an intimate cocoon that blocks out the rest of the world.

Her hands are braced on either side of my head, and her body is pressed against mine in ways that make every nerve ending in my body light up like a Christmas tree.

“Are you okay?” she whispers, her face inches from mine, close enough that I can see the concern in her dark eyes and count her eyelashes and feel her breath against my lips.

“I’m fine,” I manage, though my voice comes out rough and breathless for reasons that have nothing to do with hitting the floor. “Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head slightly, but doesn’t move away. If anything, she seems to realize our position at the same moment I do—how perfectly she fits against me, how right this feels despite being the result of furniture failure and gravitational betrayal.

“Hi,” I say stupidly, because apparently when my brain short-circuits, it defaults to monosyllabic greetings while my body focuses on more pressing concerns—like how soft she feels pressed against me and how her pulse is racing at the base of her throat.

“Hi yourself,” she whispers back, and there’s something different in her voice now—something heated and dangerous that makes my hands want to slide up to frame her face and discover exactly how she tastes.

The moment stretches between us like a held breath, loaded with years of unspoken attraction and the kind of tension that could ignite with the wrong word or right touch.

I can see the exact second she becomes aware of how we’re positioned, how her breathing changes and her pupils dilate and something wild flickers across her features.

“This doesn’t change anything practical,” she says finally, but her voice is breathless now, and she still hasn’t moved away. “You’re still planning to demolish my coffee shop, and I’m still organizing the entire town against you in an epic battle for the soul of Twin Waves.”

“Right. We’re still technically enemies engaged in professional warfare,” I agree, but my hands have somehow found her waist. Heat seeps through her shirt, burning into my palms. My chest tightens, lungs pulling shallow breaths I can’t seem to deepen.

“Enemies who’ve been accidentally falling for each other for years while completely missing all the obvious signs.”

Her words are a lit fuse between us. I feel it in my body before I register it in my brain—my pulse hammering, my mouth going dry.

She realizes what she’s said, eyes widening, color rushing her cheeks, but she doesn’t pull back.

If anything, she leans closer. Our foreheads almost touch, and the nearness makes my entire frame go taut, every muscle coiled with an anxiety I haven’t felt in years.

“While being emotionally incompetent and terrible at reading social cues,” I add, my voice scraping out rougher than it should. The sound betrays me—too raw, too revealing.

“Speak for yourself. I’m only mostly emotionally incompetent with occasional flashes of brilliant insight.” Her smile turns wicked, and my chest clenches in a way that’s almost painful. “Like right now, for instance.”

I drag in a breath, but it catches halfway.

My heart’s pounding like I’m back on the soccer field in high school, except this feels ten times riskier.

“What situation? We’re lying on the floor of your coffee shop after hours discussing municipal planning while having what might be the most honest conversation of my adult life. ”

“So... not a relationship.”

But her eyes tell a different story. And the space between us feels electric, dangerous.

My body knows it before my brain can issue a warning: this is the closest I’ve let myself come to wanting a relationship since Miranda.

And the sheer intensity of it terrifies me almost as much as it makes me want to close the distance and find out what happens if I do.

“Definitely not a relationship or anything resembling romantic development.” She shifts slightly, and the movement sends heat racing through my bloodstream like wildfire. “Just two people who can’t seem to focus on committee work and apparently can’t be trusted around basic furniture.”

“Very unprofessional and completely inappropriate behavior,” I agree, but my thumb is tracing circles on her hip bone, and she’s not stopping me.

“The mayor would be scandalized and possibly require therapy.”

“Scott would probably fire me and ban me from future municipal projects.”

“Jessica would demand all the details and take extensive notes for future blackmail material and wedding planning.”

We’re both grinning now, caught up in the absurdity of our situation and the tension crackling between us like live wire.

Committee members who can’t stop flirting while discussing the destruction of one person’s livelihood.

It should be tragic. Instead, it feels like the beginning of something that could be incredible if the timing weren’t so terrible.

But then Michelle shifts again, and suddenly her mouth is so close to mine that I can feel her breath against my lips, and every rational thought in my head evaporates like morning mist.

“So what do we do?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I have absolutely no idea,” she admits, but her hand comes up to trace my jawline with fingertips that leave fire in their wake. “But I vote we figure it out tomorrow and pretend to be responsible adults.”

“Tomorrow we should probably focus on actual committee work instead of emotional breakthroughs and furniture disasters.”

“Should,” she says, but she’s smiling in a way that suggests tomorrow night will be exactly like tonight—professional obligations abandoned in favor of the conversation we should have had years ago and the attraction we should have acknowledged before it reached critical mass.

“Same time tomorrow?” I ask, knowing I should let her up, knowing I should restore some professional distance, knowing I should do a dozen responsible things that will keep us from making a mistake that could destroy everything.

Instead, I tighten my grip on her waist just slightly, just enough to keep her exactly where she is for another few seconds.

“Same time tomorrow,” she agrees, and when she finally pushes herself up and away from me, the loss of contact feels like physical pain.

I help her turn off the lights and lock up, hyperaware of every casual touch, every shared glance, every moment when she moves just close enough to remind me how perfectly she felt pressed against me. Walking to our cars in the empty parking lot, everything has changed and nothing has changed.

Tomorrow we’ll still be on opposite sides of this development. Tomorrow Scott will still expect progress reports, and the town will still expect results, and we’ll still be two people whose timing couldn’t be worse if we’d planned it deliberately.

But tonight I learned that Michelle has been falling for me while I’ve been falling for her, and that vulnerability doesn’t have to mean complete destruction. Tonight I learned that maybe I’m not as broken as I thought—maybe I just needed a girl who made falling like flying.

“Grayson?” Michelle calls as I reach my truck, her voice carrying on the autumn breeze like a siren song.

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad we finally had this conversation. Even if we’re both making terrible decisions that will probably destroy us.”

“Me too,” I say, meaning it with an intensity that should probably alarm me. “Sweet dreams, Michelle.”

“Sweet dreams.”

I drive home through the quiet streets of Twin Waves, thinking about sparkly looks and imaginary weddings and how falling for someone you can’t have might be the most honest thing I’ve done in years. Tomorrow we’ll go back to being enemies engaged in professional warfare.

Tonight, with the taste of possibility still lingering on my lips and the memory of her weight against me burned into my skin, I’m not afraid of what that means anymore. I’m terrified of it—and I’ve never wanted anything more.