Page 6 of Second Chance Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings #5)

His inbox filled with messages—some earnest, some unhinged, most from women with strong opinions about what a “hot pastor” should or should not do with his time and body.

It was funny at first. Then it was overwhelming.

Then frustrating. Then a little scary. Then frustrating, again.

Then, gradually, it just became part of the job.

Hope Falls had always been a tourist town, but Caleb had never, in his wildest imagination, thought he would be one of the attractions.

He was turned into an overnight pseudo-celebrity, but he was hoping that the attention had died down somewhat.

He was ready for things to be normal again.

Maybe then he could concentrate on his personal life.

He wanted a family more than anything. To do that, he’d need to date. To date, he’d need privacy.

Caleb was lost in the tempo of his feet hitting the pavement in a steady rhythm when he heard psychedelic trance music.

He lifted his head and saw Art Gardine barefoot in distressed baggy jeans with his patterned shirt unbuttoned, sitting on the grassy slope beside the riverfront in a cross-legged yoga position next to a Beats Pill Speaker, which he assumed was where the stoner concert was coming from.

Art taught history at the high school for as long as Caleb could remember.

He was a self-proclaimed hippie who caught Caleb and Josh smoking weed behind the equipment building when they were fifteen, and he never said a word to anyone.

Caleb was scared at the time, but looking back, he realized the only reason Mr. Gardine caught them was that he was going back there to smoke himself.

As Caleb got closer, Mr. Gardine must have heard him because he opened his eyes. Caleb grinned and said, “Morning.”

Mr. Gardine’s response was a silent namaste bow as he placed his palms together in front of his heart and dipped his head forward.

Caleb continued past Mr. Gardine, jogging up the stone stairs to Main Street, which ran parallel with the Riverside Recreation Area.

Residents and tourists were starting to populate the sleepy downtown district.

As Caleb continued his run, he took a moment to appreciate the wooden sidewalks, black lampposts, string lights, colorful awnings of mom-and-pop shops, and window boxes filled with seasonal flowers blooming.

People often remarked that the town looked like a movie set.

He never wanted to take it for granted just because he’d grown up there.

When he reached the four-way stop, Coach Neal, who coached Caleb in Little League, pulled up in his red Ford pickup truck and leaned out the driver’s side window. “How’s your folks doin’?”

“Good.” Caleb nodded.

“When are they gonna be back?”

“A couple of weeks.” Caleb didn’t actually know the exact date.

His parents were gone more than they were home.

It was hard to keep track of them. They left a few days ago for a three-week Southeast Asian cruise.

They’d gone on a lot of cruises: Alaska, the Bahamas, Greece, the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands, the Baltic Sea, Norway, and Australia.

Every time they came home, they had their next destination planned.

Since retiring, they’d already filled up one passport and had to get a new one.

Caleb’s legs were really starting to burn when he saw Sue Ann’s Café, which sat on the south corner and anchored the town.

The staple landmark was only a few blocks from his house, which meant he was nearly finished with his ten-mile run.

He dug deep and pushed himself for the final stretch.

As he rounded the corner of his block, he nearly had a head-on collision with Sean and Rosalie Maguire out on their morning walk wearing matching blue tracksuits and knit beanies on their heads.

The couple had been members of Hope Falls Community Church longer than he’d been alive.

“Woah there, stall the ball, son.” Mr. Maguire smiled, raising his thermos. Caleb wasn’t a betting man, but if he was, he’d let it all ride that inside Sean’s thermos was an Irish coffee, not regular brew.

Caleb ‘stalled the ball’ or slowed down to a stop in front of them. “Morning!”

“Morning, Caleb!” Mrs. Maguire reached up and patted his sweaty face, something she’d done since he was a boy, but at least she didn’t call him pastor.

It was strange for him to have people who knew him his entire life calling him pastor .

Caleb spent a lot of time at the Maguire’s house when he was growing up because he was friends with their youngest son, Jake, who was now the fire captain.

He loved being at the Maguire’s because their home was full of laughter and music, and Mrs. Maguire was always cooking something delicious.

Jake had two sisters and a brother. Jake loved to pull pranks on them when they were kids, but they were all very close now. Eric, who was the chief of police; Nikki, who ran a non-profit; and Amy, a schoolteacher.

The Maguire siblings were exhibits A-D of people around him falling in love.

All four of the siblings were married and starting families of their own.

They weren’t the only ones. Their cousins, Gabe and Glenn, who had both relocated to Hope Falls, also met and fell in love with their forevers and started beautiful families.

That didn’t even scratch the surface of couples who had each found their happily ever after in Hope Falls.

Caleb performed twenty-two weddings in the past year alone.

People joked that there was something in the water. Others said it was the Hope Falls Effect?. Caleb had no idea what it was; he just wished he weren’t immune to it.

This morning, in a little over an hour, he was going to get up in front of a couple hundred people and talk about…

wait for it…love. That was what this morning’s sermon was about.

All week, he’d worked on different things, trying to change the topic at least a dozen times, but he couldn’t.

For some reason, he felt like he had to speak on this subject, with which he had little to no experience.

That wasn’t entirely true; there were different kinds of love, and he could speak from personal experience on most of them.

But there was one he couldn’t, the elephant in the room: romantic love.

When it came to that, he was flying blind.

The love that people thought of when they said the word, he’d never experienced.

The closest he got was a girl he met when he was twenty-one, and he didn’t even know her last name.