Page 22 of Hometown Heart

"Must be quite the air. You've been out here fifteen minutes."

I kicked at a patch of ice. "You timing me now?"

"Sarah asked me to check. Said something about you nearly jumping out of your skin when Jack's name came up in the morning gossip."

"Dottie needs new material."

"And you need to stop pretending this is about Cody." Rory's voice remained neutral, but his words struck home. "That's your new excuse, right? He's got a kid to think about, so he doesn't have time for you?"

"It's not an excuse if it's true."

"No? Then explain something to me." He pulled his hand back from the building. "How does pushing Jack away protect Cody? From where I stand, all it does is give you an out. It's a reason to run that sounds noble instead of scared."

The word scared burrowed its way under my skin. "Easy for you to say. You and Brooks, you're like some small-town fairy tale. The hockey star comes home, finds his high school sweetheart—"

"You think we didn't work for that?" Rory's laugh held no humor. "We spent two years trying to make distance work. Then, it fell apart, leaving massive scars. We almost lost everythingforever because we were both too stubborn to admit what we really wanted."

A truck rumbled past the end of the alley, its shadow momentarily darkening the space between us.

"That's different," I muttered.

"Why? Because we figured it out? Because it worked?" He stepped closer. "You know what the scariest moment was? It wasn't when we called it all off, and it wasn't when Brooks first came back to Whistleport. It was that first morning I woke up next to him and realized I could have him—for real. It was the terror of actually getting what I wanted. Knowing I was the only one who could screw it up. Is that what you're running from?"

I stared at my feet. "You don't understand."

"Then make me understand. All I see is my friend choosing loneliness over possibility."

I tried to form words. Staying silent was my comfort zone. I listened to others. They didn't listen to me. Rory waited patiently.

"Okay, he kissed me like he meant it." That was the first thing I could blurt out that tasted like the truth. My confession was barely audible over the sound of traffic on the street. "It was only seconds, but sometimes you know."

"And that's the problem, isn't it?"

I pushed off from the wall. "I need to get back inside."

"Si—"

"Sarah can't handle the rush alone." I yanked open the back door, letting it swing shut on Rory's sigh.

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to fall back into a normal routine, but it didn't work. I needed to get away to somewhere more private than the side alley.

Our little storage room, not much more than a closet, smelled of coffee and old wood, a decade of ground beans worked into every crack and crevice. I stood among the shelves,supposedly doing inventory but actually hiding from Rory and his well-intentioned words. Numbers blurred on my clipboard as unwanted memories surfaced.

The last time I'd seen Nico had been during finals week at culinary school. He'd caught me practicing latte art at midnight in the empty teaching kitchen. "You're getting too good at this," he'd said, watching me create a perfect rosetta. "Ready to take over the coffee world?"

We'd had it all planned out—a café in Boston's North End, combining his business sense with my recipes. Simple, elegant pastries. Coffee sourced directly from small farms. It would be the kind of place that would make critics take notice.

"Two weeks in Colombia immediately after graduation," he'd said that night, sketching possibilities in the steam on the espresso machine's sides. "Meeting suppliers, learning the trade from the source. Then we'll start looking at locations."

Two days later, his dorm room stood empty. No note. No call. Just an Instagram post months later showing him behind a coffee bar in Medellin, Colombia.

It's funny how running home to Whistleport was supposed to be temporary. It was just a visit to clear my head after graduation and the Nico disaster. Then, I saw the FOR SALE sign on the old bait shop, weathered and tilting in the spring wind. Something about the building's solid bones and harbor view called to me, promised something steadier and more rewarding than chasing dreams in Boston.

The storage room door creaked open. Sarah poked her head in. "Hey, boss? The Masons are here for their wedding cake tasting."

"That's not until—" I checked my watch. Two hours had evaporated while I'd been lost in the past. "Right. Thanks. I'll be right out."

She hesitated. "I can handle it if you need a minute."

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