Page 6 of Fall Into Love

I sleep restlessly, my mind a whirl of worst-case scenarios, until 6:40 AM the next morning.

That’s when I unlock Marigold’s, flip on the lights, and find the sweater rack tipped over again, alongside a fresh trail of glitter leading to the back window I know I shut last night.

This time, I call him.

Mayor Nosey

Caleb

My phone rings at 6:44 AM, and I have never moved so fast for anything in my life.

I’m in the garage when it goes off, elbow-deep in Camaro parts. I’ve got the radio low and my hands full when Emma’s name lights up the screen, and I know why before I even answer. A woman like that doesn’t call at a quarter to seven unless something’s wrong.

“Emma.”

“It happened again.” Her voice is tight, wound so carefully I can hear exactly how close it is to snapping. “The rack’s over. The window’s open. I shut that window last night, Caleb. I checked it twice, and there’s glitter all over the—I can’t—”

“I’m on my way.” I’m already moving. Wiping my hands, grabbing my keys, and out the side door before she finishes that sentence. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

It’s ninety seconds, actually. But I don’t tell her that I ran the stop sign I defended in a town hall meeting a few months ago.

She’s standing in the middle of Marigold’s when I come through the door, arms wrapped around herself. The shop’s only half-wrecked this time. One rack down, a scatter of clips, that same curious trail of sparkle leading to the back.

Small potatoes compared to yesterday. But her face isn’t reacting to the size of the mess. Her face is reacting to the pattern. To the fact that it happened, and now it’s happened again, and things like this that repeat have intent behind them.

“He came back,” she says, and she doesn’t have to say who she’s referring to.

I want, very badly, to agree with her. I want to be the guy who nods and squares up and points at the horizon and says I’ll handle it, beautiful. God knows every cell in my body is standing at attention, ready to fuckin’ handle this for her. But I’ve been chewing on this since yesterday, and the more I look, the less it fits.

I crouch by the window. Same smudges on the sill, small and spaced wrong for a boot or a hand. The latch is a cheap slide-bolt, the kind you could work loose from outside with enough patience. And the glitter trail runs out, toward the alley, not in.

But I don’t lead with any of that. Because there’s a version of this where I list all the reasons she’s wrong and she just feels stupid on top of scared, and I’d rather eat a fender than make her feel either of those things.

“The bakery cam,” I grunt. “Molly said she couldn’t see anything on the footage from the previous night, but maybe there’s something she missed.”

Emma’s worried gaze holds mine as she steps closer, nodding, “Right. Okay.”

Molly’s got the footage cued on a tablet in the back of the bakery ten minutes later, all three of us crowded around it over a tray of cooling muffins. The camera sits over her front door and covers the entire sidewalk and nearly all of the street out front. Marigold’s storefront is on the right, lit up under the streetlights.

We scrub through the night at speed via the motion alerts. Nothing. Nobody. The occasional stray cat. A few early AM delivery trucks, but no cars pulling up or even stopping. No figure crosses the frame toward Emma’s door, not once.

“So he didn’t come up the street,” Emma says slowly. “Which means he came around the back. Through the alley. He knows there’s a window back there.”

Or, I think, nobody came up the street because whatever did this has four legs and took the fence line. But she’s spiraling, and I’m not going to shove logic at a person mid-spiral, so I just say, gently, “It may not be him, darlin’.”

The words are barely out before I know I’ve overstepped.

Her cheeks redden, and she takes a half-step back from me, the tablet, from the whole conversation. “Right,” she says politely. “No, you’re probably right.”

And I hate it. I hate the you’re probably right more than I’d hate her yelling at me, because she doesn’t mean it. She’s just agreeing with me to make the moment end. I don’t know what I stepped on, but I stepped on something, and every instinct I’ve got starts scrambling to take it back.

“I didn’t mean…” I drag a hand through my hair, flustered. “I just meant we don’t have to assume the worst-case scenario here, that’s all. Not that you’re wrong. I mean, you might be. And I get that you’re scared. I just…damn it. I’m sorry, darlin’, that came out sideways.”

I can see I’m making it worse in real time, her polite little nod getting politer, the shutters coming down one by one, and I’d give a year off my life to know what she actually heard, because it sure as hell wasn’t what I meant to say.

“I should get back,” she says. “I’ve got to clean up and do a quick inventory before I call Dale and give him an update. I can’t afford to close two days in a row.” She’s already halfway to the door. “Thank you for the footage, Molly.”

My voice is strained. How did I fuck this up so royally? “Emma—”