CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DANI

I have a theory that small towns are basically black holes in disguise. They look harmless from a distance. Charming, even. You think you’re just passing through, but somewhere along the way the pull gets stronger and suddenly you’re sucked in. Today’s version is Oak Valley’s Summer Fair, which smells like funnel cakes and optimism with a shelf life of about three hours. I didn’t want to go, but Sophie insisted and is already steering me toward the ferris wheel.

“You’re gonna have fun,” she lies, marching me past the Rotary Club’s “Dunk the Pastor” booth. The man of the hour—grinning, hair still dripping—waves at us from inside the cage.

I dig my heels in. “Remind me how this is better than finishing the guest bathrooms at the inn?”

“It’s Sunday!” Sophie rolls her eyes. “And you were making googly eyes at a crowbar and muttering about thinset when I found you. You need sunshine, carbs and an event that doesn’t end in sawdust or insulation.” She’s wearing her full social armor. A breezy dress, watermelon-pink lipstick, hair in a complicated braid that would’ve required a three-day planning session if I were to attempt it. She looks every bit a local girl, even though she just moved here last year. I, however, stick out like a sore thumb even though I’ve lived here my whole life.

“I get plenty of sunshine,” I say, “and even more carbs. I just don’t get the appeal of spending my day off watching toddlers vomit on a merry-go-round.” I say this while walking directly toward the carnival zone, because resistance is futile and I do love cotton candy. “Did the whole town show up today?” I ask, holding one hand up to block the sun.

The fairgrounds are alive, every inch jammed with white tents and folding tables. East Divide songs blare from the speakers under the live music gazebo where the band will play later tonight. The air is thick with the smell of kettle corn, sugar and grilled meat. We skirt the edge of the crowd, Sophie offering little waves and chirpy hellos to everyone from the ice cream vendor to Mayor Hammond’s wife. I keep my hands jammed in my pockets, my left thumb worrying at the rough edge of the inside hem.

“Don’t look now,” Sophie stage-whispers, “but Mrs. Voss’s minions spotted you.” She tilts her head at a pair of middle-aged women by the pie booth. Both are pretending to inspect the latticework on a cherry pie, but I caught them staring. “Probably trying to get next week’s edition of the neighborhood watch ready for Oak Valley’s inboxes,” she says, trying to stifle a laugh but failing miserably. 

“I guess I better give them a good shot then.” I flash a grin and make a show of licking my index finger and pinky, then using them to swipe along my eyebrows. They both turn back to their pies, flustered.

Sophie grins. “You are a menace.”

“I learned from the best,” I say, elbowing her. “So what’s the plan? Are we just here to be seen or what?”

“We,” she says, “are going to do normal people things.”

“Things that you think will convince me to stay in Oak Valley?”

She ignores that. “We’re going to eat questionable but very greasy food, play games and maybe buy a raffle ticket to support the school. And then,” she adds, glancing around like she’s scanning the fairgrounds, “we’ll just see what happens.”

Hmph.

She doesn’t respond, just snorts out a laugh through her nose and loops her arm through mine. We weave through the booths and pass a used book table run by the library volunteers, mostly older paperbacks and donated hardcovers, Ray’s selling his homemade hot sauce with labels that look like they were hand drawn and Maggie’s fudge already has a line forming around it because she only makes lemon fudge for the fair and it’s legitimately worth the wait.

“So,” Sophie says, steadying me by the elbow and steering us toward the games. “How’s it going with you and Ryan?”

I snort. “I mean, it’s going… The last time we spoke, I think I compared his uncle’s dream to Maggie’s soggy pie crust.”

Sophie gives me a blank stare. “Try again.”

“I accidentally overheard a phone call where he was negotiating a job offer back in the city.”

She stops walking. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Hey!” I say, holding up both hands in surrender. “Don’t blame me. The walls are basically cardboard.”

She shakes her head. “Dani,” she sighs, pulling me away from the flow of foot traffic. “Start from the beginning.”

“And you spent your day off smashing tile to help him?”

“I was helping Jake—”

She holds both hands up in exasperation. “You were helping Ryan.” She points at me.

“I was helping your husband meet his deadlines.”

“Dani,” she deadpans.

“Sophie,” I deadpan right back at her.

“Have you told him you’re leaving?”

My throat runs dry and my tongue feels like it’s stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Why would I tell him that?”

“Because you two are getting close and maybe he should know you have an expiration date.”

Guilt twists in my stomach. “It’s not like that. It’s just work.”

“Right. Work. That’s why you look like someone just kicked your dog whenever I mention the move.” She softens her tone a little as she wraps one arm around my shoulders. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I just don’t want you to—”

“Sophie!”

We turn to see Jake weaving through the crowd, carrying a giant smoked turkey leg and Ryan trailing right behind him with a footlong corndog.

He’s in jeans and a dark green baseball tee with the sleeves pushed up, and I can’t stop staring at his forearms. Which is insane. They’re just forearms. Except they’re not, because now I’m thinking about the way his hands felt when he wiped chalk away from my face and I need to stop thinking about that immediately.

Sophie’s arm tightens around my shoulders. “Incoming,” she mutters under her breath.

“Be cool,” I mutter back more at myself than her but I don’t let her know that.

“I’m always cool. You’re the one who looks like you’re about to—”

“Hey.” Ryan stops in front of us.

“Hey.”

His eyes meet mine and hold for a second longer than they need to. The fair is loud—kids screaming, carnival music, someone’s crying toddler—but it all kind of fades to background noise.

“Didn’t know you’d be here,” he says.

“It’s the county fair. Everyone’s here.” 

“Fair point.” His mouth twitches. “No pun intended.”

Sophie clears her throat. Loudly.

Jake groans through a mouthful of turkey leg. “That was painful, man.”

“It was,” Sophie agrees, grinning at me. 

She drops her arm from my shoulders and extends her hand to Ryan. “I don’t think we’ve officially met. Sophie Carter. Dani’s best friend and the person who knows all her secrets.”

“All of them?” Ryan shakes her hand, letting his eyes cut back to me just long enough I notice and now my heart is doing something annoying in my chest because he’s still standing too close for me to ignore the warmth rolling off of him. 

I want to wrap myself in it.

What?

Shut up!

I need to make an appointment to get my bloodwork tested. My hormones must be going wild.

Is this perimenopause?

Aren’t I too young for that though?

Maybe not.

I should get tested.

“Yep,” Sophie says cheerfully. “”Every single one.”

I want to strangle her.

“Fascinating,” Ryan says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even though I’m refusing to look at him. “I’d love to hear some of those sometime.”

“Oh, I bet you would.” Sophie’s grin gets wider. “Did you know that in seventh grade, Dani—”

“Okay!” I say loudly, stepping between them. “That’s enough of that. Ryan doesn’t need my entire embarrassing origin story.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I say quickly.

“Pretty sure I would.”

“They’re boring. Very boring. Extremely boring stories about a boring person living a boring life.”

“You’re a lot of things, Dani,” he says, and the way he says my name does something to my nervous system that should probably concern me. “But boring isn’t one of them.”

Sophie makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a squeal strangled in her throat.

I shoot her a look that says, I will end you.

She shoots back one that says, you’re welcome.

“So anyway!” I say, way too loud, pivoting to face Jake. “What brings you guys to the fair? Besides questionable fried food and even more questionable entertainment?”

Jake points at his wife with one hand while taking another bite of turkey leg.

I turn slowly to look at Sophie, who’s suddenly very interested in something happening three booths over.

“Sophie,” I say slowly.

“Hmm?” She doesn’t look at me.

“Did you and Jake plan this?”

“Plan what?” She’s still not making eye contact. “We’re just here enjoying the fair. Like normal people. Living our normal lives.”

“Sophie.”

“Okay, fine!” She throws her hands up. “Maybe Jake mentioned Ryan was coming and maybe I suggested we should all accidentally run into each other and maybe—”

“You set us up,” I say flatly.

“I prefer the term, created an opportunity for organic social interaction.”

Ryan turns to Jake. “You were in on this?”

Jake takes another bite of turkey leg. “Sophie’s very convincing.”

“You lasted three seconds before throwing me under the bus,” Sophie says.

“You were already under the bus,” Jake says, defensively. “I just confirmed its location.”

Ryan and I look at each other. His ears are pink and I’m probably doing something equally embarrassing with my face.

“This is—” I start.

“Kind of fun,” Ryan interrupts.

I blink at him. “You’re not… weird about this?”

“Oh, I’m definitely weird about it.” He takes a bite of his corndog. “But they’re going to be insufferable either way, so we might as well have some fun with it too, right?”

Despite everything, I feel my mouth twitch. “That’s surprisingly pragmatic.”

“I contain multitudes.”

“Did you just quote Whitman?” I ask, mouth gaping.

He shrugs, looking slightly sheepish. “Maybe.”

“The uptight city boy quotes Walt Whitman?”

He scoffs and takes another bite of corndog. “I’m not that uptight,” he says with his mouthful as if to accentuate his point.

“You color-code your project notes,” I remind him.

“That’s called organization, not uptightness.”

“You have opinions about grout.”

“Everyone should have opinions about grout,” Jake says, interrupting our bickering. “It’s important.”

Sophie makes a noise that’s half-laugh, half-squeal.

“Oh, look at that,” Jake says, grabbing her arm. “It’s time for us to go check on that thing.”

“What thing?” Sophie asks.

“The thing. At the other end of the fair. That we definitely need to check on right now.”

“Oh! Right. The thing.” She grins at me. “We’ll catch up with you guys later!”

“Sophie—” I start.

But they’re already gone, weaving through the crowd with suspicious speed.

I turn back to Ryan. “I’m going to kill her.”

“I’m learning a lot about foundations and concrete.” He takes another bite of the corndog. “Just saying.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. “Did you just offer to help me hide the body?”

“I offered construction expertise.” He shrugs. “What you do with that information is your business.”

We start walking, and the silence that settles between us isn’t awkward exactly, just… a lot.

“So,” Ryan says after a minute. “Lemon fudge?”

“If Maggie hasn’t sold out yet, yeah.”

We head toward her stand, and I’m trying to catalogue the last ten minutes in a way that makes sense. Ryan Calloway quotes poetry. He also just said being set up with me was “kind of fun.” He is also currently walking next to me like this is totally normal and I’m spiraling about it.

What the hell does that mean?

My brain is having a hard time processing any of it, okay?

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, why?”

“You’ve been quiet for like thirty seconds. That might be a record.”

I elbow him, playfully. “I’m just thinking.”

“About?”

“About how Sophie’s going to pay for this.”

“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “You know…”

“What?” I cut my eyes at him, bracing for impact.

“You only heard part of the conversation. The other day… at the inn.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I know,” he says, reaching out to take my hand. “I want to, though.”

We’re almost to Maggie’s stand when Mayor Hendricks’ voice booms across the fairgrounds. “It’s time for the pie eating contest! Contestants please come to the stage.” He starts naming off all the contestants then I hear, “Dani Wright.”

I freeze. “Did he just…”

Ryan looks at me. “You signed up for a pie eating contest?”

“I absolutely did not—” I stop. Close my eyes. “Sophie!” I screech at the top of my lungs. 

---

We’re standing too close. When did we get this close? The woodsy scent that I’ve always associated with him surrounds me.  it’s completely unfair that he smells good at a fair where everyone else smells like fried food and sunscreen.

“So,” Jake says, breaking the moment by waving his turkey leg between us. “We doing this pie eating contest or what?”

“We are not,” I say firmly.

“You have to,” Ryan says. “Mayor Hendricks already announced your name. Sounded like you’re competing in the adult division. Against—” he checks his phone, “—eight other people, including Mrs. Voss.”

“Mrs. Voss is seventy.”

“Mrs. Voss is competitive,” Sophie corrects. “She won last year.”

“By disqualification,” Jake adds. “Someone accused her of using her hands and they had to review the footage.”

“There’s footage?” I ask weakly.

“Oh yeah,” Sophie says. “The whole thing’s livestreamed. The high school AV club runs it. Very professional production.”

I look at Ryan. He’s trying not to laugh.

“You think this is funny,” I say.

“I think it’s hilarious.”

“I could just not show up.”

“You could,” he agrees. “But then Mrs. Voss wins by default and you’ll never hear the end of it.”

He’s not wrong. Mrs. Voss would absolutely bring it up in her newsletter. Probably with photos.

“Fine,” I say. “But if I get sick, someone’s holding my hair back.”

“I volunteer Ryan,” Sophie says immediately.

“What? No—” I start.

“Sure,” Ryan says at the same time, and we both stop and look at each other.

“You don’t have to—” I begin.

“I know.” He takes a bite of his corndog, completely casual, like he didn’t just agree to potentially hold my hair while I vomit pie. “But I want to see how this plays out.”

“Sadist,” I mutter.

“Supporter,” he corrects. “There’s a difference.”

Jake and Sophie exchange a look that I pretend not to see.

“Come on,” Jake says, already walking toward the stage. “They’re setting up now. We need to get you registered.”

Sophie loops her arm through mine again and leans in as we follow. “He’s staying to watch you eat pie,” she whispers. “That’s either true love or a really weird kink.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Shut. Up.”

Ryan falls into step on my other side, close enough that our arms almost brush. “Nervous?” he asks.

“Terrified,” I admit. “I have a sensitive gag reflex and this is going to be a disaster.”

“Probably,” he agrees. “But at least it’ll be an entertaining disaster.”

“Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m being realistic.” But he’s smiling again, and when our eyes meet, something passes between us. Something warm and electric and way too significant for a conversation about pie eating contests.

“You know,” I say, looking away before I do something stupid, “you could compete instead of me. Take my place.”

“And rob Oak Valley of watching you go head to head with Mrs. Voss? Never.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“I really am.”

We reach the stage where Mayor Hendricks is setting up rows of pies—apple, from the looks of it—and microphone testing with the enthusiasm of someone who peaked in high school theater.

Mrs. Voss is already there, stretching her neck like she’s about to run a marathon. She sees me and grins.

“Dani Hart,” she calls out. “Ready to lose?”

“Ready to give you a run for your money, Mrs. Voss.”

“That’s the spirit!” She looks at Ryan, then back at me, then at Ryan again. Her grin widens. “Is this your young man?”

My face goes hot. “He’s not—we’re not—”

“We work together,” Ryan says smoothly, but I catch the faint color on his ears.

“Mm-hmm,” Mrs. Voss says, in a tone that suggests she doesn’t believe a word of it. “Well, good luck, dear. You’re going to need it.”

She walks away, and I turn to Ryan. “Please tell me you didn’t hear that.”

“I heard it.”

“And?”

“And nothing.” But his mouth is doing that twitching thing again. “Though for the record, I wouldn’t mind being called your young man.”

My brain short-circuits. “What?”

“Get up there, Dani!” Mayor Hendricks calls from the stage. “We’re starting in two minutes!”

Sophie physically pushes me toward the stairs. “Go! We’ll be right here cheering!”

I stumble up onto the stage, take my place at one of the pie stations, and look out at the crowd that’s gathering.

Ryan’s right in front, standing next to Sophie and Jake. His arms are crossed and he’s watching me with this expression that’s half-amused, half-something else I can’t quite read.

When our eyes meet, he mouths: “You’ve got this.”

My stomach flips.

This is fine. Everything is fine. I’m just going to eat pie in front of the entire town while the guy I definitely don’t have feelings for watches and my best friend knows I’m leaving in two months and haven’t told him yet.

Completely fine.

“Contestants ready?” Mayor Hendricks booms into the microphone.

Mrs. Voss cracks her knuckles.

I’m so screwed.

“Contestants ready?” Mayor Hendricks booms into the microphone as we take our places on the stage.

Mrs. Voss cracks her knuckles.

I’m staring down a pie tin the size of a hubcap when Ryan appears at the side of the stage. He’s got both hands in his pockets but staring at me.
Mayor Hendricks taps the microphone. “We’ll begin in sixty seconds—”

Ryan holds my gaze.

“On your marks!” Mayor Hendricks booms.

“I can’t do this,” I mutter more to myself than anyone else, turning back to the pie tin.

Mrs. Voss leans over from the next station. “Boyfriend trouble?” she asks pleasantly.

“He’s not my—”

“Get set!”

I lean over my pie.

“Go!”

The thing about a pie eating contest is that it requires your full and complete attention or you end up with apple filling in places apple filling has no business being. I know this now. I know this because I spent the first forty-five seconds distracted by the fact that Ryan Calloway is standing in the front of the crowd with his arms crossed watching me eat pie with my hands behind my back like a dignified adult while his words spiral in my brain.

Mrs. Voss, for the record, is an absolute menace. She’s got her face fully committed to that tin and she is not thinking about anything except winning, which is the correct approach and the one I should be taking.

I put my face in the pie.

The crowd is loud. Sophie is the loudest. I can hear her from here, which means she is doing something embarrassing and I can’t look up to see what she’s doing.

I eat faster.

“Thirty seconds!” Mayor Hendricks announces.

I eat faster.

“Ten! Nine! Eight—”

Mrs. Voss makes a sound beside me that sounds like a belch.

“Three! Two! One! Hands up!”

I sit up.

Apple filling everywhere. My face, my hair, the front of my shirt.

Mayor Hendricks moves down the row with the measured energy of a man who takes this very seriously as he counts our tins.

The crowd goes quiet.

“We have a winner.” He points at me. “Dani Wright!”

Sophie screams.

Jake pumps his fist.

Ryan is laughing.

Not the almost-laugh he usually catches and swallows before it gets anywhere. The one where it reaches his eyes and his head tucks to his chest. Just another average day in Oak Valley. There’s apple filling in my eyebrow and I just beat a seventy year old woman in a pie eating contest in front of the entire town and Ryan Calloway is laughing like he forgot he wasn’t supposed to and I can’t look away from it.

Mrs. Voss leans over. “You’re staring,” she says pleasantly.

“I’m not—” I look at my pie tin. “I won.”

“You sure did honey.” She pats my arm.

“Thank you,” I say, not looking up because I’m smiling into my pie tin like an idiot and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Ryan meets me at the bottom of the steps with a fistful of paper towels and absolutely no business looking that pleased with himself.

“Not a word,” I say.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were absolutely going to say something.”

“I was going to say congratulations.” He hands me the paper towels. “And that Mrs. Voss looks like she’s already planning her comeback.”

I take the paper towels and do what I can with my face, which is not much. “How bad is it?”

He looks at me for a second. “You’ve got some—” He reaches over and gets a spot near my temple that I missed, the same easy way he did with the chalk, like it’s just a thing he does now, like we’re people who do that. “There.”

I look at the paper towel instead of him.

Rowdy appears out of the crowd and holds his hand up for a high-five. “Good job, sis!”

“Thanks, Rowdy.”

He looks past me at Ryan. “Heard you’re opening a branch out in Crossroads.”

Ryan blinks. “Where did you hear that?”

Rowdy tilts his head slightly. “Jake mentioned it.”

Ryan looks over his shoulder to where Jake is very focused on finishing his turkey leg and not making eye contact with anyone. “Of course he did.”

“That’s a good location,” Rowdy says, glancing between me and Ryan. He pulls a card out of his shirt pocket and holds it out to Ryan. “I do contractor rates for local businesses. You’re going to need lumber and I’d rather keep the money in Oak Valley.”

Ryan takes the card and glances at it. “Thanks Rowdy.”

Rowdy nods once then looks back at me with a smug smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I knew you’d win. Can never get a piece of Maggie’s pie when you’re around,” he laughs and holds both arms up crossed in front of him to block the wad of paper towels I throw at his face. He laughs again as the paper ball falls to the ground, picks it up, tosses it in the trash and walks away still laughing.

I turn to Ryan.

He’s looking back at me with his lips in a tight line like he’s fighting back a laugh of his own.

“Crossroads?” I ask.

“Mhm,” he grunts, nodding slowly.

“That’s what you were negotiating on the phone the other day?” It’s not a question. The pieces are assembling themselves whether I want them to or not. “A branch office twenty minutes from Oak Valley. That’s what I didn’t hear?”

“Yeah.” He slides the card into his back pocket. “That’s what you didn’t hear.”

“You should’ve said something,” I say. “At the inn. When I—”

“I tried.”

Damn. “I wasn’t listening, was I?”

“No,” he snorts. “Not really. But I get it.”

The fair is loud around us. Someone’s kid is winning something at the ring toss. East Divide is doing a sound check on the main stage, Deck’s voice is carrying over the whole fairground on a single chord.

“I need to go clean up,” I say, because I have apple filling in my hair and this conversation is too big for me to handle right now.

“I know,” he says. “I’ll be here.”

---

Sophie finds me at the bathroom mirror trying to restore my face to something resembling its original condition. She doesn’t say anything. She just takes the wet paper towel out of my hand, tips my chin up, and fixes the situation. I love her.

“Crossroads,” I say.

“I heard.”

“He’s not going back.”

“I heard that too.” She works on a particularly stubborn patch of filling near my hairline. “And what’s that mean for you?”

I look at my own face in the mirror for a second. At the version of me that signed Nashville paperwork and booked a moving truck and told herself she knew how to leave the only home she’s ever known. “I… I don’t know,” I admit.

Sophie’s hands go still. “You sure that’s the issue? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you know exactly what that means.” She looks at me in the mirror for what feels like forever, but in reality it was probably only a couple of seconds. “Dani?”

I shake my head and force the only words out that will come. “I already signed the contract, Soph.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to go,” she says with a shrug as she tosses the wet paper towel into the trash.

I brace myself with both hands gripping the counter. “Contracts are binding.”

“People quit their jobs every single day and I can’t remember the last time I heard about it in the news.” Sophie leans against the door, waiting for me to catch up. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” She pushes it open and we walk out together, letting the fair hit us both at once.

“I have a moving truck booked.”

She steers me around a kid with a funnel cake on a collision course with my shirt. “I know.” 

“The residency is an incredible opportunity,” I add. “And I worked really hard to get it and I want to go.”

Sophie doesn’t say anything as she’s standing on her tiptoes trying to see over heads in the crowd, looking for Jake and Ryan.

“I wanted to go,” I admit.

“Wanted is a past tense word,” she says.

Of course she caught that. “I just used past tense,” I say more to myself than to her.

“I noticed,” she cackles.

“That’s a problem,” I groan, freezing and burying my face in her shoulder.

“Is it?” She wobbles trying to avoid falling on a toddler because I stopped her mid-step. “Or is it information?”

“It’s terrifying is what it is.” 

She glances back at the crowd gathering in front of the main stage and sees Jake. He’s holding one hand up waving a souvenir cup with spiral bendy straw filled with what looks like margarita. “Sometimes everything you’ve ever wanted in on the other side of the biggest fear you’ve ever faced.”

My nose wrinkles and my entire face pulls together. “And sometimes it’s everything you were afraid was going to happen.”

“Sometimes,” she says with a soft smile as she reaches out to pluck a stray hair that’s latched itself to my lip gloss. “I don’t think this is one of those times, Dani.”

I pull at a loose thread on my sleeve. “I don’t know how to want to stay somewhere, Sophie. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Sure you do.” She nods toward the stage. “You’ve been doing it for years because you knew what you wanted would find you here all along. You just didn’t call it that.”

East Divide shifts into something slow and the whole crowd moves with it like it’s gravity.

“He’s right there,” she says.

I look and sure enough Ryan is leaning against the tent’s posts next to Jake with his hands in his pockets.

“Do you want to go over there?” she asks. “Jake’s waiting.” She wraps her arm through mine and leans into me, already putting one front in front of the other. “Looks like Ryan’s waiting too.” I let her pull me along because my feet have apparently unionized and are refusing to make independent decisions tonight.

Jake sees us coming and raises the margarita cup. “Winner!” he announces, loud enough that two strangers turn to look at me and I point at Sophie like she did it.

Ryan pushes off the tent post and I don’t mean to do a full inventory but my brain does one anyway—the jaw that could cut glass, the forearms that I’ve thought too often about having wrapped around my waist, the curl of dark hair doing something soft at his temple that I have absolutely no business noticing, the way all six feet of him moves like he’s got nowhere to be and all night to get there—and the thing is, the deeply inconvenient thing is, I have seen this man covered in drywall dust and arguing about grout and eating a corndog at a county fair and somehow every single version of him keeps hitting me like the first time. “Hey,” he says.

Sophie unhooks her arm from mine and finds Jake’s hand and that’s just it, she’s gone, they’re both gone, melted back into the crowd like they were never there and I am standing in front of Ryan Calloway and East Divide playing something slow and deliberate that Deck probably wrote for Aria but it feels like it’s just for us. “Hey,” I say back. Good job, Dani. Very classy.

“Dani.”

I look up at him and immediately regret the angle because the twinkly little string lights are doing that thing to his face again, the thing I don’t have a name for, the thing that’s been making my chest do complicated things since approximately seventh grade. “You’re opening a branch in Crossroads?”

“Yeah,” he says, holding one hand out and waiting for me to take it.

“What’s the firm?” I ask, realizing as he leads me to the makeshift dance floor that I’ve never asked who he works for now. I never really had a reason to know, but now… It feels important.

“Meridian Properties,” he says, moving to stand in front of me and curving his elbow to fit perfectly around my waist. “I’ve been stationed at the Nashville office for the last few years. Why?”

My feet stop moving. Not metaphorically. They actually stop. It’s that unionized thing again because now I’m frozen in place with Ryan’s hand on my waist and Deck singing something devastating twelve feet away.

“Meridian,” I say, again.

Meridian.

Meridian Properties.

Meridian Properties, whose Nashville office has a creative residency program partnered with a record label property management firm that I signed a contract with a few days ago.

“Yeah.”

“Meridian Properties.” My brain is doing the thing where it pulls every tab open at once. “Nashville.”

“Dani—”

“The residency.” My voice comes out fast and garbled, even to me. “The creative residency.” I look up at him. “That’s your firm.”

He stops moving. He’s doing the math. I can see it happening in real time behind his eyes. “I didn’t know,” he says.

“I didn’t know!” My voice comes out louder than I intend. “If you’re opening a Crossroads branch—” The math is assembling itself faster than I can keep up with it. “The residency. Could it transfer? To the Crossroads office? Would Meridian let me—”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But we can find out.” His hand on my waist hasn’t moved. “Dani.” His voice is very quiet.

My heart pounds in my chest when his eyes lock with mine. 

“Dance with me,” he says, pulling me closer. “We can figure the rest out after.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

He pulls me in the rest of the way as his hand presses against the small of my back. I lean into his touch, letting my head rest against his shoulder. 

The song is slow and easy.

Familiar.

That’s the thing. That’s the terrifyingly specific thing. This feeling isn’t new. It’s familiar. Like something I’ve been missing for so long that I forgot what it felt like to have it. Now it’s here again and I don’t know what to do with that except stay in it for exactly as long as this song lasts.

I let out a breath.

“Are you okay?”

I nod, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes. “Yeah, I’m exactly where I want to be.” And I’m going to figure out the rest Monday morning.

Right now there’s just this moment and the way he’s looking at me as we’re surrounded by our friends and family. People we’ve known our entire lives but I maybe haven’t ever seen fully until tonight.

Oak Valley has a way of pulling people into its orbit, until they decide they want to stay. That’s what I’ve been fighting for the last ten years.

But tonight, I stop fighting it because I realize that I’ve always wanted to stay.