Page 158 of Your Place or Mine

This place, with its unpredictable beauty and raw edges, had seeped into my bones. And sitting there with the rush of the river in my ears and the sun on my skin, I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

We walked a little ways and I spotted a blanket already spread on the grass, a cooler beside it, and, God help me, a small bouquet of dandelions stuck in an old mason jar.

“Okay,” I said slowly, turning to him. “Who are you, and what have you done with Callum Benedict?”

He pulled the cooler open and handed me a bottle of sweet tea. “He’s still here. He’s just been influenced by a meddling woman with opinions about aesthetics and a design degree. I’ve learned that details matter.”

I laughed, taking the tea. “Is that what I am? A meddling woman?”

“You’re a menace,” he said, digging out sandwiches wrapped in brown paper. “And apparently, my favorite one.”

That made my heart lurch in the best possible way.

We sat on the blanket, knees brushing, eating in the quiet that had become so natural between us.

Eventually, I leaned back, hands behind me in the grass.

“You know,” I said, eyes on the trees, “this whole picnic thing? Ten out of ten.”

He gave a soft grunt. “Even with the bugs?”

“They haven’t attacked me yet. I’m giving you credit until further notice.”

He shifted, lying back beside me and resting a hand on my thigh. “I thought it’d be nice. Just us. No paintbrushes. No ceiling tiles. No laundromat washers trying to seduce you.”

I burst out laughing. “That wasyouridea.”

“I still stand by it.”

I looked at him as sunlight cut across his jaw, that familiar spark in his eyes, and felt something fierce rise up in my chest.

It had been months.

And yet it still felt like the beginning.

The kind you didn’t want to end.

He looked over and caught me staring. “What?”

I shrugged, trying not to look too dreamy. “Nothing. Just… wondering how I got here.”

“Bug spray. Sandwiches. Sheer, reckless charm,” he said, biting into the last triangle of turkey and cheese like he wasn’t proposing the theory of gravity.

I laughed. “Reckless charm? That what we’re calling it now?”

“You’re in my town, at my river. Eating my sandwich,” he said, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Sounds like a pretty effective tactic.”

I tilted my head. “And here I thought it was my idea to stay.”

His smile softened, eyes drifting toward the water. The river was louder now, rushing past us with the kind of untamed power that always made me feel small in the best way. Like the world was big enough for second chances. New beginnings. Even the broken parts.

We sat in the quiet for a moment, just listening. Birds calling in the trees. Water over stone. The occasional creak of a pine bough swaying overhead.

Callum sat up straighter.

I noticed his hands first. He’d stashed them in his lap, fidgeting slightly. His thumb rubbed a pattern across his palm like he was working up to something. I watched him closely, my breath catching as he cleared his throat.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

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