CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DANI

The morning after my double pie hangover, I show up at the Oak Valley Inn ready to power-wash a decade of regret off the banister. The main area is a full-on disaster with ladders draped in drop cloths and empty coffee cups on every flat surface. I’m half through a chalk outline for a built-in bench. I want to pitch Ryan and Jake under the bay window when I hear the sound of anxiety shuffling its feet. “Hi Ryan.” I don’t even have to turn around to know it’s him, but I do.

He’s standing in the doorway, holding something to his chest. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there, knuckles white around a battered leather-bound journal that looks like it’s been rescued from three floods and a fire sale.

“Is… everything okay?”

He waits for a solid ten seconds before coming in. “Do you have a second?” His voice is raw.

I push myself up off the floor and toss the chalk into my tool pouch. “You want the captain’s seat or the throne of despair?” I ask, gesturing between the tarp covered step ladder and the short stack of boxes in the corner.

He picks neither, closing the distance between us in two steps and flipping the journal open. “I found this in the old safe. It was my grandpa Frank’s, from…” He trails off. I finish the sentence in my head, before you inherited a doomed business and an entire town’s hope that you’ll singlehandedly stop it from turning into another strip mall.

My fingers are literally itching to see what’s inside. “Was he an ax murderer?”

“What?” Ryan scoffs, shaking his head. “No.”

“A closet poet?”

“I don’t know…”

“What are we looking at then?” I ask, glancing up.

He slides the journal across the table, open to a page with a sketch that looks like it was drawn on a Greyhound at three a.m. It’s a lopsided wall, big block letters, and a parade of handprints crawling up and down the page. Underneath, in looping cursive, it reads, Every guest is part of the story. Every story is worth keeping.

“Hmm,” I say, studying the pages.

“Hmm?”

I glance up feeling my face smoosh together as I do. “What?”

“You’re not going to make a joke?” His eyes are steadier than usual, like he’s searching for something.

I want to. 

Not because the idea is bad. It’s not. It’s a beautiful sentiment actually. But because that’s just how I do things. If something feels too real or too big then I shut it down immediately with something unhinged. But the way he’s watching—eyebrows stitched together like he’s bracing for impact—makes me pause. “Was this his vision?” I ask, flipping the page. More handprints, this time smaller, overlapping one another. There’s a line that reads, Travel is temporary. Memories are forever.

Very inspirational refrigerator magnet quote worthy.

But also… kind of perfect.

Ryan perches on the edge of the boxes keeping his eyes locked on the journal. “He always talked about making the inn a place people remember. Not just for the rooms but for what they experienced while they were here.” He fumbles with the words. “It’s silly,” he says with a shrug. “Right?” he adds, glancing up and meeting my eyes. “It’s silly?”

I flip a few more pages. One is a scatterplot of names, dates, and notes in different handwriting. There’s a story about a kid who spent a summer building birdhouses with his dad, a couple on their honeymoon, someone who once got snowed in for three days and taught themselves to play the piano in the parlor.

I want to make a snide comment about group scrapbooking, but my throat sticks. “People want to be remembered.” 

I close the journal, slide it back across the table. “What’re you thinking?”

He shrugs again. “I don’t know.” He rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I thought maybe, with the renovations… it could be a thing.”

I study his expression, again. He’s still waiting for me to punch a hole in the idea, to call it a marketing stunt or a waste of wall space. I almost did. It would’ve been easy—and safe, for me—and exactly what everyone expects from me. But the thing is… “I kind of love it,” I admit. The hope inside of it. The way it makes the inn more a living thing instead of just a prop in the lives of those who stay here. A wall full of hands and stories, not just for the locals but for anyone who wanted proof they existed here, even for a second. “That’s it.” I say.

He blinks. “What?”

“Where would it go? The wall, the mural, whatever you want to call it. You want prime real estate, right? It’s gotta be the focal wall.”

Ryan stares at me like I just told him gravity is a conspiracy theory. “You… like it?”

“Like it? Ryan, this is good.” I tap the journal. “This is the kind of thing people drive three hours to post about on social media.”

His shoulders drop about two inches. Relief, maybe. Or disbelief. “I thought you’d say it was cheesy.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely cheesy,” I say, standing up and running right down the stairs to the lobby. “But it’s the good kind of cheesy,” I say over my shoulder when I reach the wall I’ve been fighting with since my first day on this job. “The kind that makes people cry at airport terminals and save concert ticket stubs in shoeboxes. What if we did the main wall here? It’s the first one every guest will see when they walk in?”

He moves closer, tilting his head like he’s studying the space with a new perspective. “Directly across from the clerestory window?”

“Exactly.” I’m talking faster now, the idea taking shape in my head. “We frame it. Make it elegant. Not some chaotic free-for-all but intentional. And we keep your grandpa Frank’s original vision in the center. Frame that page from the journal. Make it the heart of the whole thing.”

He’s quiet for a second, and when I look up, he’s staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just…” He shakes his head. “I didn’t expect you to get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why this matters.” He gestures at the journal. “Most people would say it’s impractical. That it’s going to be a maintenance nightmare or a liability issue or—”

“Ryan.” I cut him off. “Do you know why I’m still here? In Oak Valley?”

He blinks at the subject change. “I thought you were leaving.”

“I am. But I’m here right now because of stories like this.” I tap the journal again. “Because this town is full of people who remember things. Who hold onto things. It’s annoying as hell most of the time, but it’s also…” I trail off, looking for the right word. “It’s real. And your uncle knew that. He wanted people to be seen here. That’s not cheesy. That’s beautiful.”

Ryan’s looking at me like I just spoke another language. “You really think so?”

“I really think so.” I turn around and gasp at the wall. “We need track lighting.”

He laughs, but nods in agreement. “Warm temperature lighting to make it feel intimate instead of clinical.”

I nod, wildly. “And the frame around your uncle’s page should be wood.”

“We could repurpose some of the scraps Jake’s crews pulled out.”

I screech and clutch my chest with both hands. “Did you just suggest upcycling?”

He laughs loud enough it echoes through the building and makes my stomach flip in a very inconvenient way. 

We’re both leaning over the sketchbook now, hands almost touching as we throw ideas back and forth like we’ve been doing this for years.

“What about handprint placement?” he asks. “Do we have people sign up, or is it first-come-first-served?”

“I think it should be both. You could have reserved spots for special occasions but also leave space for spontaneous moments.”

I scan the page, reading Frank’s notes about the couple who got snowed in. The kid who learned piano. And a family who started a food fight in the dining room and got banned for life. My jaw falls open. “Did that actually happen?”

“According to the journal? Yes. 1987. The Hendersons. Banned with love. Come back when you learn to use utensils.”

I burst out laughing. “Okay, now I need to see the rest of this.”

He grins and flips through more pages, showing me stories and sketches and notes in his great grandfather’s handwriting. Some of them are funny, some are sweet, some are just mundane observations about the weather or what someone ordered for breakfast. But all of them are proof that people existed here. That they mattered.

“This is good, Ryan,” I say quietly. “Really good.”

He closes the journal, carefully, like it’s precious. “Thanks. For not laughing at me.”

“I was going to laugh at you,” I admit. “But then I read it and remembered you’re secretly a giant softie who wants people to feel like they belong somewhere.”

His ears turn slightly pink. “I’m not—”

“You are,” I interrupt. “And it’s fine. Your secret’s still safe with me.” I stand up, brushing construction dust off my jeans. “Now come on. We need to take measurements and figure out how much wall space we’re actually working with before Jake shows up and tries to talk us out of it.”

“Jake’s going to love this,” Ryan says, standing.

“Jake’s going to call us sentimental idiots and then help us do it anyway,” I correct.

“I was thinking maybe the special occasion handprints could be on the landing? At the top of the main stairs. People would see it when they go up to their rooms, and…” he hesitates, “Maybe it’d become something the guests would look for.”

I roll the idea around in my head. The landing is a bitch to paint—bad angles, weird lighting—but it’s the perfect spot for maximum psychological impact. “People are going to get messy. You want a paint that cleans up easily but also fades easily or do you want to let the chaos live?”

He meets my eyes, and for the first time, I see actual excitement there. “Let it live,” he says. “Definitely let it live.”

It’s like someone flipped a switch. All my resistance collapses and I feel the current of possibility, sharp and electric. I want to start right now, not even wait for lunch. I pick up the journal again, thumb the edge. “Do you mind if I use some of these sketches?”

“Take whatever you need.”

I tuck the journal under my arm, grab my backpack and start back up the stairs. I pause at the landing, glancing over my shoulder. “You coming, or is this a one-woman show?”

Ryan grins and jogs up the stairs after me.

We’re spread out on the landing with my sketchbook between us and the journal open beside it. It’s easy in a way that work hasn’t felt in a long time, maybe because it doesn’t feel like work anymore. It feels like something else. I’ve doing a very good job of not thinking about what that something else is, until now…

I look up and my brain does that stupid buffering thing it’s been doing since the night at Gus’s bar, because he’s closer than I thought and already watching me with an expression that has no business existing on a Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m glad you took the job,” he says.

Something warm moves through my chest that I immediately shove into a box in the corner of my brain and sit on.

“I figured Caleb would’ve tried to talk you out of it,” he adds, flipping to the next page of the journal. “He never really liked me or my family much.”

The pencil in my hand stops moving.

He’s still looking at the journal. Completely unbothered. Like he didn’t just reach into a filing cabinet I haven’t opened in a decade and pull out a name that has absolutely no business being in this room right now, on this landing, in the middle of what has been—and I cannot stress this enough—a perfectly functional afternoon.

“Caleb?”

“Mhm,” he mutters, still studying the pages of the journal.

Caleb Patterson, who I dated on and off for approximately two years in high school and who I have not thought about in so long that his last name just took me a full three seconds to produce. “Caleb?” I repeat, and I mean for it to come out neutral and it does not come out neutral. It comes out like a word that makes my skin crawl, because it does.

He looks up. “Yeah. I just figured—”

“What about Caleb?” The question comes out before I can stop it and now we’re both looking at each other and his expression has shifted into something guarded that I can’t read.

“I just meant—” He stops. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, clearly it does, because you just—” I shake my head and look back down at the sketchbook. “Forget it.”

He doesn’t say anything.

I draw a branch on a tree that’s slightly more aggressive than I intended.

The afternoon light is still coming through the window and the inn is still quiet around us and whatever the last thirty seconds were, we are both very professionally pretending they didn’t happen. But Caleb’s name is sitting in the middle of the landing between us like a splinter that’s going to be poking at me for the rest of the day. 

I hate that guy.

---

Town Square is empty at midnight except for the bugs doing laps around the streetlights and me, sitting cross-legged on top of a picnic table with my sketchbook and about seventeen colored pencils scattered around me. I’ve pulled my fair share of all-nighters—some fueled by deadline panic, some by the urge to bleach my brain with YouTube and avoid adult responsibilities, but tonight I’m obsessing over a mural that honors the vision of a man who’s been gone for decades. But here I am anyway, sketching out the fifth version of the handprint wall layout because the fourth version felt too chaotic and the third version felt too sterile and I can’t get my brain to shut up about negative space and color flow.

The gazebo looms behind me, all scrollwork and romantic lighting, judging my life choices.

My phone buzzes.

Sophie: Why is your location at the square?

Sophie: It’s midnight!!!

Sophie: Are you okay?

Me: I’m fine. Just working.

Sophie: On a picnic table? 

Me: Yes.

Sophie: In the dark? 

Me: Yep.

Sophie: That’s not working that’s obsessing

Me: Meh… same thing

Sophie: Dani

Me: SOPHIE

Me: I’m fine I promise. Just need to get this out of my head.

Sophie: I’m calling the non-emergency number and telling them to make sure they

do a drive-by to check on you every twenty minutes.

Me: Ugh. Please don’t.

I put my phone down and go back to sketching. I’m working on the details for what’ll surround the handprints and nothing feels right. It’s all just too pla—

“You know, most people sleep at night.”

“Ahhh!” I actually shriek. My limbs flail in all directions, sending colored pencils flying. One rolls off the table and disappears into the void. Another hits Ryan directly between the eyes, leaving a bright green spot on his skin.

“Jesus Christ, Ryan!” I screech, clutching my chest. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

A marked patrol car slows as it passes, and the window lowers. Deputy Hernandez leans out, resting his forearm against the window frame. “How’s it going tonight, Dani?”

“Oh,” I force myself to control my breath so my tone comes out even. “Just fine. Getting caught up on some work.” I hold up my sketchbook, waving it for him to see.

He glances at Ryan and gives him a quick once-over. “Is that guy giving you trouble?”

“Yes,” I laugh, shaking my head. “But not like that.”

Ryan turns to look at Deputy Hernandez, eyebrows raised. “Wait, I’m just ‘that guy’ now? I thought I was ‘the city boy.’”

“Maybe you’re both,” I say with a grin. “Multi-talented.” 

Deputy Hernandez tips his head at me. “Don’t stay out too late. You know your mom will call dispatch if you’re out past midnight.”

“I’m twenty-three years old,” I call back, but he’s right. And if she doesn’t call then Sophie will… again.

He laughs and settles back in behind the wheel. “Doesn’t change it,” he calls back as the car rolls forward following the roundabout surrounding the square.

I glance over at Ryan and he has the audacity to look amused.

“I called your name twice,” he says.

“Well, I didn’t hear you!” I say, reaching out to grab a handful of pencils rolling toward the edge of the table. “Normal people make noise when they walk. You move like a ghost with a vendetta.”

“I’m wearing sneakers,” he says, wiggling his foot for emphasis. “On gravel,” he adds with a smirk. “You were just that distracted.”

“Distracted?” I scoff. “More like focused.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, which catches me off guard. I glance up to see him standing at the edge of the table with his hands shoved in the pockets of his gray sweatpants looking annoyingly handsome for someone strolling in the park at midnight. “I thought you heard me coming.”

“It’s okay,” I press a hand to my chest, willing my heart to slow down. “What are you doing here anyway?”

He climbs up to sit on the picnic table next to me. “I needed to clear my head and decided to go for a walk. Saw your car over here and figured I’d see what you were up to.” He’s careful not to position himself too close, but he’s still close enough that I’m suddenly very aware of him. The way he settles onto the table. The warmth coming off him in the cool night air. How his presence somehow makes the entire town square feel smaller.

“What are you working on?”

I tilt the sketchbook toward him, and he leans in to look. Our shoulders are almost touching now. “Version five of the layout. I can’t get the flow right.”

“Version five?” There’s amusement in his voice. “What happened to versions one through four?”

“They sucked.” I flip back a few pages to show him. “This one was too rigid. This one was too chaotic. This one… I don’t even know what that was trying to be.”

“They don’t look that bad.”

“They’re terrible and you know it. Your face is doing that thing again.”

“What thing? I don’t have a thing.”

“You have a whole collection of things, Calloway.” I look up at him and immediately regret it because he’s closer than I thought and now his eyes… his mouth… right there.

I’m not doing this… I lean back to break the tension.

He clears his throat and looks back at the sketchbook. “So what’s wrong with version five?”

Right. 

Work. 

We’re talking about work. I force my brain back online. “The handprints need to feel organic, not forced, but also intentional, not random, and I keep second-guessing where the focal point should be—”

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” I call back, but he’s right. And if she doesn’t call then Sophie will… again.

He laughs and settles back in behind the wheel. “Doesn’t change it,” he calls back as the car rolls forward following the roundabout surrounding the square.

I glance over at Ryan and he has the audacity to look amused.

“I called your name twice,” he says.

“Well, I didn’t hear you!” I say, reaching out to grab a handful of pencils rolling toward the edge of the table. “Normal people make noise when they walk. You move like a ghost with a vendetta.”

“I’m wearing sneakers,” he says, wiggling his foot for emphasis. “On gravel,” he adds with a smirk. “You were just that distracted.”

“Distracted?” I scoff. “More like focused.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, which catches me off guard. I glance up to see him standing at the edge of the table with his hands shoved in the pockets of his gray sweatpants looking annoyingly handsome for someone strolling in the park at midnight. “I thought you heard me coming.”

“It’s okay,” I press a hand to my chest, willing my heart to slow down. “What are you doing here anyway?”

He climbs up to sit on the picnic table next to me. “I needed to clear my head and decided to go for a walk. Saw your car over here and figured I’d see what you were up to.” He’s careful not to position himself too close, but he’s still close enough that I’m suddenly very aware of him. The way he settles onto the table. The warmth coming off him in the cool night air. How his presence somehow makes the entire town square feel smaller.

“What are you working on?”

I tilt the sketchbook toward him, and he leans in to look. Our shoulders are almost touching now. “Version five of the layout. I can’t get the flow right.”

“Version five?” There’s amusement in his voice. “What happened to versions one through four?”

“They sucked.” I flip back a few pages to show him. “This one was too rigid. This one was too chaotic. This one… I don’t even know what that was trying to be.”

“They don’t look that bad.”

“They’re terrible and you know it. Your face is doing that thing again.”

“What thing? I don’t have a thing.”

“You have a whole collection of things, Calloway.” I look up at him and immediately regret it because he’s closer than I thought and now his eyes… his mouth… right there.

I’m not doing this… I lean back to break the tension.

He clears his throat and looks back at the sketchbook. “So what’s wrong with version five?”

Right. 

Work. 

We’re talking about work. I force my brain back online. “The handprints need to feel organic, not forced, but also intentional, not random, and I keep second-guessing where the focal point should be—”

“Dani.” His hand covers mine on the sketchbook. The touch is warm. His skin is slightly calloused. And now I’ve completely forgotten how breathing works.

Shit.

“Breathe.”

“I am,” I snap, sucking in a breath of air and letting it back out super dramatically. “See?”

“Aren’t you the one always saying it doesn’t have to be perfect?”

“Yeah, but I’m full of shit,” I snort. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

He bites back a laugh and drags one hand down his face. “I’ve picked up on that fact, yes. But, humor me. Please?”

“Ugh. Fine,” I groan. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be real,” I add, softly glancing up from the sketchbook and allowing myself to really look at him. He’s in joggers and a hoodie, hair freshly washed and messy. I’ve never seen his hair messy. It’s hot. Damn it, Dani! There’s something softer about him like this, without the armor of his work clothes and punch lists. “Why are you really here?” I ask quietly.

He’s quiet for a second, studying the sketches spread across the table. “Couldn’t sleep. Keep thinking about the presentation to the board next week.”

“Nervous?”

“Terrified,” he admits. “What if they hate it? What if they think it’s too sentimental, or too risky, or just… stupid?”

“It’s not stupid.”

“You said it was cheesy.”

“I said it was the good kind of cheesy.” I bump my shoulder against his. “There’s a difference.”

He huffs out something that might be a laugh. “I keep thinking about what my grandpa Frank would say. If he’d be proud or if he’d think I’m screwing it all up.”

“Ryan.” I wait until he looks at me. “He’d be proud. You’re not screwing anything up. You’re finishing something he started. That’s huge.”

His expression softens just enough that my heart flutters. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make me believe things might actually work out.”

My heart does some stupid acrobatic thing again. “It’s a gift. And a curse. Mostly a curse.”

He reaches for one of the sketches. “Can I see the other versions, again?”

“They’re terrible.”

“They’re not.”

Sigh. I flip back through the pages, showing him the evolution of the design. Version one was too literal. Version two was too abstract. Version three had the handprints going up the wall like they were climbing to heaven, which felt extremely funeral home. 

He studies each one carefully, asking questions about color placement and flow and why I chose certain elements. “What about this?” He pulls the leather journal out from one of his pockets and flips back to his uncle’s original sketch. The handprints, the quote, the whole vision of it. There’s something about the way he drew it, loose and hopeful, that makes my chest pull tight.

I stare at the sketch. Then at him. “That’s… actually brilliant.”

“I have my moments,” he says with a lopsided grin. “But… which part?” he glances at me with a quizzical expression tugging on his features.

I grab a pencil and start sketching out tiny wrens hidden in intertwining branches. “Using Frank’s notes to guide it. Like the one about the guest who spent three days watching birds from the breakfast room window. It feels important to include that somehow, to weave all these little stories into something bigger.”

He studies the drawing that’s coming to life on the page in front of us both. “It works. It really works. It makes everything that happens at the inn and with the guests feel important.”

“Yes,” I say, sketching faster now. “Yes, this is it. This is what it needed.” I’m so focused I don’t realize how close we’ve gotten until I look up and he’s right there, watching me with this expression I can’t quite read. “What?” I ask.

“Nothing. Just… you light up when you’re drawing. It’s…” He trails off.

“It’s what? Too much?” I chuckle. “I get that a lot.”

“No.” He clears his throat and looks away, dragging one hand down the back of his neck. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“What were you going to say, then?”

“It’s nice. Watching you work.”

Oh.

Oh no.

The air between us does that electric thing again and I really need it to stop because we’re sitting on a picnic table at midnight in an empty town square and this is starting to feel dangerously like a scene from one of those romance books we were looking at the other day. “Ryan—” I start, not sure where I’m going with it.

“I should go,” he says, already sliding off the table.

“Wait.” I grab his sleeve without thinking. “You…” Ah, hell. I’m already in this far. Might as well keep going. “You wouldn’t leave a girl alone in the middle of the square at midnight. That’s not safe.”

He looks down at my hand on his arm, then back up at me and raises one eyebrow slowly. “Something tells me that you can take care of yourself.”

Ouch. Okay, shot down. That’s fine. Shouldn’t have said that anyway. I let go of my grip on his hoodie. “Yeah, you’re right. I can.”

“Unless there’s another reason you want me to stay,” he adds, still looking at me with that half-cocked grin and those dark eyes that try to pull me in every time I look at them.

Shit.

SHit.

SHIT!

My brain short-circuits. Completely flatlines. Because Ryan Calloway—uptight, by-the-book, rules-obsessed Ryan Calloway—is flirting with me.

And I have absolutely no idea what to do with that information.

“I—” My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. I probably look like a fish gasping for air. “I just meant… I mean, you helped with the design. So… It would be rude to just… leave me sitting here. Alone. In the dark.”

“Rude,” he repeats, and his mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile.

“Very rude. Extremely rude.”

“Right.” He settles back onto the table, closer this time. Close enough that our knees almost touch. “Can’t have that.”

“Exactly.” My heart is doing something stupid in my chest and I need it to stop. Immediately. “Why did you mention Caleb today?” I didn’t plan to say it. It just came out, like my internal filter has developed a leak I can’t find the source of.

He goes still beside me.

“Earlier,” I add, like he needs clarification. He absolutely does not. “On the landing. You just dropped his name in there. I haven’t thought about him in… a decade.”

He’s quiet for long enough that I start to wish I hadn’t asked.

“I saw you two together,” he says, finally. “At prom.”

I turn to look at him. “What do you mean you saw us?”

“You were…” He stops himself and looks out at the square instead of me. “You looked happy.”

Happy?

What the actual f—

“Caleb kissed me,” I blurt out.

He scoffs and drags one hand down the back of his neck. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“No.” I shake my head and hold both hands out at my sides. “He was drunk and entitled and kissed me.”

Realization slowly creeps across his face. “Dani, I—”

I don’t let him finish. “I didn’t kiss him back. I didn’t want him to touch me. My brothers heard and came over to get him off me. The football team dragged him out before my brothers could finish him off.” I watch him absorb it. The exact moment it lands is written all over his jaw. “Is that what you saw?”

He’s quiet.

“Ryan.”

“I went to get drinks.” His voice wavers for the first time since he’s been back. “When I came back, he had you in his arms.” He exhales a long exasperated breath. “Shit, Dani. I thought you wanted him to.”

“I didn’t.”

He flings his arms out to the side. “I know that now.” He cups his face and drags both hands down his chin at once. “Dani, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I should’ve—”

“You could’ve known it then,” I say. “If you’d asked.”

“Yeah.” He looks at the oak tree. “I know.”

I shake my head and scoff, keeping my eyes on my black and white check sneakers. It might be time to get a new pair. The white is not white anymore.

“I thought you were happy.” His jaw goes tight, straining the muscles in his neck. “I knew you only agreed to go to prom with me because you two had just broken up. I thought you were finally happy,” he stops, finally turns to look me in the eyes and I can see the light reflecting in the corners, bouncing off of the emotions he can’t swallow down this time. “I didn’t want to mess that up for you.”

I pull my knees to my chest and curl myself in. All it took was a slip of the tongue and over a decade for Ryan Calloway to finally tell me why he left me standing there alone in the only fancy dress I’ve ever owned. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Something breaks open at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but almost. “Yeah…”

We sit there in silence for a moment, the kind that feels full instead of empty. The crickets are doing their thing trying to seduce one another by rubbing their wings together or whatever weird shit bugs do. I’m trying to focus on that instead of Ryan Calloway sitting next to me at midnight in the town square and that he’d decided from across a high school gymnasium that my happiness was more important than asking a single question. “That’s not why I said yes.”

“What?”

I keep my eyes on my sneakers. The left one has a scuff along the toe that wasn’t there last week. Probably happened when I tripped on the curb on my way to bother Rowdy at the store.

“Dani?” 

Fine. “I didn’t say yes to you just because Caleb and I had just broken up.”

His mouth pulls in a tight line as he leans forward, so close I can feel the warmth of his breath against my skin when he says, “Why’d you say yes, Dani?”

Idiot. “I said yes because I wanted to go with you.” I pick at a loose thread on the hem of my hoodie. “I’d been waiting for you to ask me for months.” The thread comes loose. I let it go. “You kept not asking and I kept waiting and when you finally did I thought—” I stop myself and let out a long sigh. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“It matters to me.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Dani.” His voice has that thing in it again. The thing it had on the dance floor. The thing that makes my insides go all weird and makes me feel gooey. “Look at me.”

Nope. I look at the oak tree instead. “So,” I say eventually, because I can’t handle the quiet and whatever the hell this is. “How do you think the board will take the change of design plans?”

He leans back and lets out a long breath before responding then he shrugs and goes back to flipping through the pages of Frank’s journal but there’s something softer in his expression now. “I guess we’ll find out together.”

Together, I repeat silently to myself. I hate that I like how that sounds.