Page 10 of Fall Into Love

“It’s clear,” I call back. “Just a knocked-over can. Could’ve been a cat, or a dog, anything. Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

I shut the door and lock it. When I turn around, she’s right there. She followed me halfway down the hall despite everything, and now she’s close, flushed, eyes huge and bright with adrenaline and whatever’s left of that kiss. She’s looking up at me, trembling. And every cell in my body wants to finish what was just interrupted. I want to back her into the wall and kiss her until neither of us remembers stopping.

Which is exactly the problem.

How much I want her.

Not a little. Not manageably. The whole roaring size of it. And right on its heels comes my better judgment, sizing up the situation and telling me: You’ll wreck this. You want her too much and too fast; you already hurt her once today, and she forgave you. If you let her feel the whole weight of your feelings, you’ll do it again, and she’ll be gone.

I step back before I know I’m doing it.

“Sorry, I—” I clear my throat. “Sorry. That was—”

Say it, Foster. Tell her you want her too much not to ruin this.

But I’m so far into my own head, so busy white-knuckling the terror of getting this wrong again, that all that comes out is: “Just…give me a second.”

I watch her lips part, the flush drain from her cheeks. She steps back, too, arms wrapping around herself. “Right,” she says.

“It’s late.” I hear myself say. What the hell am I doing? “We’re both running on fumes, and I’ve got to be up in five hours for a delivery up north. We should go home, get some sleep.”

She nods. “Right, yeah. You’re right. Um, thank you. For coming. Really.”

I could fix this right now. I know I could, if I could unclench my jaw long enough to say how I’m feeling. But she doesn’t want me telling her how she ought to feel about me—so I don’t.

“Yeah,” I say, as gently as I can manage. “Let’s get you home.”

You. Not us. Even now, even having just lit the match myself, I can’t help how bad I want to fucking say us.

She locks up behind me, and I walk her the six blocks to Ivory Heights in silence.

Two for two, I think to myself.

And the worst part—the part that keeps me up long after her fourth-floor light finally goes dark—is that I know exactly how to fix it.

I just have to be brave enough to tell her the truth.

Help Wanted

Emma

“You have…how many jobs?”

Abby, a newer resident to Hemlock Point, beams a smile across from me, though despite her smile, her eyes tell me she’s exhausted. But she came highly recommended by Danny, so here we are. “Three, currently,” she tells me even as I stare at her resume between us. “All part-time, and totally manageable around the boutique hours, I swear—so don’t worry! Whatever you need, I’m your girl.”

“Abby.” I set the paper down. “I’ll be honest, just reading this makes me want to take a nap on your behalf.”

She laughs, bright and quick. “Oh, tired and I are old friends. I run better busy. Idle hands and all that.”

“Well, you did come highly recommended by Danny.”

“Danny’s a sweetheart.” Her whole face goes soft. “He knocked twenty bucks off my first month’s rent for helping him unload all those pumpkins for the lobby. Pretty sure he just wanted the company.”

That’s so exactly Danny that I feel a pang of affection for my beloved landlord. Even if his advice last week sent me into a whole new kind of spiral.

But I do need the help. I’ve spent months pretending otherwise, but the festival’s only a week away now, and last night I finally admitted while doing said festival’s inventory: I can’t do this alone.

I’ve been holding onto Marigold’s being mine so fiercely that I nearly missed the part where mine doesn’t have to mean by myself.