CHAPTER NINETEEN
DANI

Maggie’s is quiet at six forty-five in a way that feels intentional, like the café knows the gossip table doesn’t fill until eight and is enjoying the peace while it lasts. I’ve got the corner booth, both hands around a coffee that’s actually hot for once, and a view of Main Street doing absolutely nothing interesting.

Which is actually perfect.

That feels weird to actually admit.

“How’s the inn coming along?” Maggie asks, sliding into the space across from me with the coffee pot.

“Good,” I say. “Really good, actually.”

She refills my cup even though it doesn’t need it.

“The east corridor’s almost done. We found the original wallpaper under three layers of —you don’t want to know—and we recreated it on linen. Original section’s behind glass.” I wrap both hands around the mug. “The clerestory window goes in on Thursday. The staircase finish came out better than I planned. The mural wall is—” I stop.

Maggie is looking at me with the expression she reserves for things she’s already figured out and is waiting politely for you to catch up.

“It’s a good project,” I say.

“It sounds like more than that.”

“It’s a job, Maggie.”

She gets up, goes behind the counter, comes back with a slice of pie I did not order and sets it in front of me without a word.

“Is that what you call it?”

I look at the pie. It’s apple. She knows I love her apple pie. She has always known this and she has never once used that information neutrally. I scowl at her but still eat the pie.

Outside Main Street starts doing the thing it does when Oak Valley wakes up — Rowdy pulling the hardware store gate up, Ray’s truck in the square parking lot, the first few cars moving through the roundabout on their way to work and school.

I pull up my phone. Nashville residency contact. The onboarding email I’ve read fourteen times sits there looking extremely nonchalant about all this. The start date is firm. We want to make sure everything is squared away well before then.

“I’ve already signed the paperwork.” I sigh. “I have to go.”

She leans forward letting her elbows rest on the tabletop. “You sure about that?”

I’ve been designing spaces for other people to feel at home in for eleven properties across four years and I have never once asked myself what home feels like for me. I have never let myself ask. Because asking means answering and I already know exactly what home feels like, but I haven’t let myself even think about it as a possibility in years.

I stab my fork into the last bite of pie.

Maggie slides out of the booth and stands just as the bell over the entrance goes off announcing her next customer of the day. “Don’t forget you get to have roots too.”

“Thanks for the pie,” I say.

“Anytime, honey.” She picks up the empty plate. “You know where to find me.”

I leave cash on the table and go to the inn.

---

By mid-morning, my hands are raw and my brain’s a metric ton of sawdust and dopamine. I’ve spent the last hour standing on a borrowed milk crate, and my hands are numb from the nail gun. Nothing fancy, just finish work on the crown molding in what will eventually be the honeymoon suite, but I lose myself in the rhythm—the whack, the click, the smell of wood when a nail sears through it. I almost let myself pretend this is my routine and that my entire life isn’t boxed up waiting for a moving van. I set down the nail gun and climb off the crate, flexing my fingers to get feeling back when I hear Jake’s voice. He sounds upset, so I poke my head out into the hallway to see what’s going on.

He’s standing in the hallway with his phone pressed to his ear, looking about as stressed as I’ve ever seen him. His jaw is clenched tight and he’s doing that thing where he rubs the back of his neck like he’s trying to manually reset his brain. “Yeah, I understand,” he says into the phone, voice strained. “No, I get it. Of course. Thanks for letting me know.” He hangs up and lets out a long sigh that turns into one of those dude-growls.

“Bad news?” I ask.

“That was Cole. He was supposed to come help me demo the old tile in the bathrooms today, but his kid woke up with a fever and is puking everywhere.” 

“Whoa,” I say, throwing both hands up. “Don’t need the gory details.”

“Sorry,” he chuckles, shoving his phone back into its holster on his belt loop. “He can’t make it in,” he adds, looking around like he’s taking inventory of all the things that could go sideways today. “We need that tile out by the end of day or Dale can’t run the plumbing in there tomorrow.”

“Can’t you get someone else?”

“I’m supposed to do site inspections today for a dozen other sites today. Everyone’s on other jobs and I can’t pull them off or we fall behind on the inspection timeline.” He pulls off his baseball cap, runs a hand through his hair, then jams the cap back on. “Ryan’s going to lose his mind when he gets back from his meeting.”

Meeting? I didn’t think the board meeting was until next week. I must’ve mixed up the dates. I look toward the bathroom wing. Demo work. Breaking up old tile, hauling it out, prepping the subfloor. “I could do it,” I say.

Jake looks at me like I just offered to donate a kidney. “You want to demo tile? In a bathroom?”

“Sure. Hit it with a sledgehammer until it breaks, right? Scrape up the thinset, haul the debris.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? You need bodies and I have a body. Plus arms. Very functional arms.” I flex dramatically. “I’m not saying they’re impressive, but they exist and they work.”

Jake snorts despite himself. “It’s going to be disgusting. That tile’s been there since the original build. God knows what’s under it.”

“Jake, I once cleaned out my college apartment after my roommate’s boyfriend tried to brew kombucha in the closet and forgot about it for four months. I can handle the gross stuff just fine.”

His eyebrows pinch together. “You’re serious?”

“Deadly.” I flex my arms again for funsies. “Just point me at the bathroom, give me a sledgehammer and go inspect your other crews.”

“Ryan’s not going to—”

“Ryan’s not going to what? Be mad that the work got done on schedule?” I’m already heading toward the storage area where I know Jake keeps the demo tools. “Look, either I smash some tile or you explain to Ryan why the plumber can’t start tomorrow and the whole timeline is shot. Your choice.”

He follows me, still looking skeptical but also relieved. “Alright. But you’re wearing safety glasses, gloves and a respirator. That dust is nasty.”

“Yes, dad.”

“I’m serious, Dani. And if you find mold or anything weird, you stop and call me.”

“I promise to be a reasonable demolition hero. Now show me which bathroom before I change my mind.”

I’m on my third bag of debris and my arms are screaming from swinging a hammer and using the crowbar to pry the tiles up when I hear Ryan’s voice through the wall. 

I’m not trying to listen.

Really.

But the walls are only half there and Ryan’s voice is deep so it carries easily anyway.

“I hear you, Mister Davis.” He lets out a long sigh. 

I should make noise. Drop something. Let him know the walls in this place have absolutely zero interest in anyone’s privacy. But I can’t get my hands to do that because my brain is currently very busy listening.

“Davis, I appreciate you bringing this to me. I do… No, I understand what you’re saying… Yes, it’s a strong offer… But you know why I can’t just—”

I set down my scraper quietly.

“No, I’m not dismissing it. I just—” He stops. I can hear him moving, pacing probably, the way he does when he’s working something out in his head. “What’s their timeline?”

Silence while whoever Davis is talks.

“Monday?” Ryan’s voice is flat. “The partner track makes sense. We both know it.”

I freeze.

“No, sir. I’m not saying I won’t come back. I’m saying I need the timeline to—” A pause long enough that whatever Davis says fills it. “Yes, sir. By the end of week.”

My chest does something complicated.

His voice gets quieter now, more careful. Like he’s choosing every word. “Yes. I do know what the smart financial decision is. No, sir. You do not have to walk me through it. I’ve been walking myself through it every night for the past ten years.” A pause. “I know.”

Whatever Davis says next makes Ryan go silent.

I don’t move. I’m sitting on the bathroom floor, a crowbar lying across my knees, tile dust settling around me like snow. And before I can talk myself out of it, before the sensible part of my brain can intervene, I say quietly, “Ryan.”

“Yeah?” 

“The walls in this place are basically tissue paper.”

He groans. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough.” I push myself up off the floor, brushing the dust off my jeans. 

He appears in the doorway a second later, phone still in his hand, looking at me with an expression I don’t have the bandwidth to decode right now.

“Dani—”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.” I pick up my scraper. “It’s your call. Literally.”

“It’s not what—”

“Partner track makes sense.” I crouch back down and work the edge of a tile that doesn’t want to come up. “You’ve been working toward it for years. Of course it makes sense.”

He doesn’t say anything.

The tile comes up but it shatters sending chips flying through the air. One pegs me right between the eyes. “Ow,” I deadpan.

“Are you okay?”

I assume he’s talking about the tile assaulting my face and not whatever this shit is that’s happening right now. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I’m already working on the next tile and neither of us says anything for long enough that I think maybe we’re going to just let it go, just move on, just be two professionals on a job site who heard a phone call through a half-finished wall and are mature enough to—

“It’s not what you think,” he says.

“Ryan—”

“Just let me—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.” The tile comes up hard and I have to throw my weight into the crowbar to get it. “We’re colleagues. What you do with your career is your business.”

“Dani.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you mean it.” He crouches down across from me, which puts him at eye level, which I did not consent to. “That’s not the same as it being true.”

I look at him.

He looks back.

“You want to know what’s actually—”

“No.” The word comes out fast. Faster than I intend. “I really don’t.” I sit back on my heels and push my hair off my face with the back of my wrist. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We both know that because I’m—” the words die in the back of my throat.

“Because you’re what?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

“Dani.” His voice has dropped into that register and I cannot deal with that register right now, I cannot. “Because you’re what?”

“Because I’m leaving too!” It comes out louder than I mean it to and bounces off the half-tiled walls and lands between us and now it’s just sitting there. “Okay? I signed the paperwork. I have a start date. So I don’t get to stand here in a bathroom full of broken tile and be upset that you’re doing the exact same thing I’m doing and I know that.” My throat does something inconvenient. “I know that.”

He’s very still.

“So.” I pick up the crowbar back up. “Can we just—”

The subfloor under the east wall lets out a sound like a gunshot.

We both freeze.

Then Dale’s voice comes through from the corridor, loud and profoundly unhappy. “Jake!”

Footsteps echo through the corridor. Fast ones. Jake appears in the doorway behind Ryan. “Ryan, I need you to come take a look at this.”

Ryan looks at me.

I look at the floor.

“Go,” I say.

He goes.

I sit in the bathroom with the crowbar across my knees and the tile dust settling and the sound of Dale and Jake and Ryan all talking over each other in the lobby as I press the heel of my hand against my temple like that’s going to do anything to hold the incoming headache at bay.

I’m leaving too.

I pick up the scraper and go back to work.