Stella is not impressed. “Beckett.”
“I ran into her in town last night,” I explain. I leave out the part where I ran into her leaving the cafe, a box of contraband cookies tucked under my arm. I don’t know what Layla would do if she found out I’m sneaking baked goods from Ms. Beatrice on the side, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty. I like my face the way it is. “The bed and breakfast was full and she didn’t have anywhere else to stay.”
Layla gives me a critical look, one eyebrow notched high on her forehead. “So you invited her to stay with you?”
“I did.”
“For how long?”
I shrug and pick at the wrapper on my second muffin. They have chocolate chips in them, like Layla somehow knew I’d need the extra strength today. “I have no idea. She said something about this trip not being planned.” I leave out the part where she talked about Lovelight being the last place she was happy. That feels private, and I don’t want to share things that belong to her. “Jenny is ringing the phone tree today to find her someplace to stay longer term, I think.”
I ignore the thrum of discomfort that settles in my shoulders at that. It feels the same as when there’s too much noise around me, my teeth clenching down around it. I don’t like the idea of her anywhere else, and I’m well aware that makes me a fucking idiot. A glutton for punishment, probably. She made her intentions very clear as far as our relationship is concerned. I can’t imagine roommates with her one-night stand was in her plan when she decided to come out here.
She could have texted me, though. Given me a heads up. Did she think she wouldn’t have to see me? Is that what she was hoping for? I frown.
Stella and Layla busy themselves with another silent conversation while I focus on eating the rest of my breakfast. I drink my coffee and try to put everything back in order within myself. My brain keeps skipping back to Evelyn collapsing backwards into the bed in the spare room, one of the pillows tumbling down by her legs. Comet nudging under her chin with her nose. It’s been playing on repeat in my mind all morning and it leaves me feeling like I’ve been kicked down a hill in a barrel. That exposed wire thing again, my hair standing on end.
“Beck?” Stella’s looking at me, face etched with worry and her palms cupped gently around her mug. There’s a pine tree hanging from her desk light, and she knocks it with her elbow when she ducks her head to get a better look at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I am. I’m fine. Evelyn in my space isn’t anything I can’t handle. If being here is going to help her figure out her next steps or whatever it is that she’s doing, then I can suck it up. It’ll probably be like last time, where we circle each other and then settle. Share a baked good and move on.
This doesn’t have to mean anything.
Layla plucks another muffin out of the tin and hands it to me.
“Here,” she says. “You look like you need it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVELYN
It’s so quiet on the other end of the phone, I check several times to see if Josie accidentally hung up on me. Silence is not what I expected when I delivered the news. In fact, I was bracing myself for the opposite. Extended, obnoxious laughter. A cackle or two. A screaming shriek.
“Josie?”
“You’re staying at his house?” Her voice is pitched low and for once, I can’t hear a single thing in the background. Josie is constant motion, often sounding like she’s at a train station instead of her house. Right now she sounds like she’s in a closet.
“Yeah, I’m staying at his house.” He left a key next to the coffee machine this morning. A note with surprisingly neat handwriting with the code to the garage door.
“Does he—” she breathes out a shaky exhale. “Does he only have one bed?”
“What?” I give the waitress at the cafe a small smile, nodding my thanks when she places my latte carefully on the table in front of me. She takes a step back, but keeps looking at me, an over-bright smile on her young face. I know this look. I’ve seen it a thousand times before. I give her a little wave and turn slightly in my seat, lowering my voice. “What are you talking about? No, he has at least two beds that I know of.”
Probably more. I wasn’t kidding when I said he could run a bed and breakfast on the side. The inside of his cabin is huge. Surprisingly comfortable. An entire collection of throw blankets and cozy looking pillows in his living room.
Josie continues to breathe heavily into the phone. “What does he wear to sleep in? Is it sweatpants? Are they gray?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Please just answer the question, Evie.”
“I have no idea what he wears to bed,” I answer as quietly as possible, conscious of the fact that I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of the cafe in a town that loves to gossip. I peek over my shoulder at the table behind me, two of Inglewild’s firefighters on what looks like their third plate of cinnamon rolls. “I didn’t kick in his door to look, Josie.”
“Maybe you should have,” she hisses. “Okay, but seriously though—“
I sigh in relief.
“—I need you to tell me in excruciating detail. What is Mr. Beckett looking like these days? You never did share a picture and you were annoyingly vague. Does he have scruff?”
“What has gotten into you?”
“This whole situation is bananas and I’m trying to capitalize on the benefits. Have you at least snooped through all of his belongings like a reasonable human being?”
“I have not, though I haven’t ruled it out for this evening.”
I did notice a couple things. What looked like a celestial map taped to the front of the fridge, a circle drawn in red over a cluster of little specks with a date and time scrawled above. The corner of the living room with three oversized, soft-looking cat beds, a tiny blanket on each. Five different types of ground coffee on the kitchen counter, all half-used and neatly rolled shut.
It wasn’t what I expected.
Though to be fair, I didn’t let myself expect anything out of Beckett. Besides my game of picturing him in random places, perplexed by mint green succulent vases and fruit arrangements, I hardly let myself consider him at all. Remembering is a slippery slope into wanting, and I’ve built too much for myself to get distracted by a gorgeous man with tattoos and very large hands.
I suppose that doesn’t matter much now, though. I’m one big ball of distraction.
“Have you checked your accounts yet?”
A spike of anxiety turns my palms hot. “No. How bad is it?”
I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than four hours without posting, a compulsion to always be one step ahead. Josie hums and I hear the click of a mouse as she does something on her computer. “Not bad. You are causing quite the stir though. I saw a couple blogs asking where you were. You have a whole Where in the World is Evelyn St. James thing going for you right now.”