Two? Really?

I’m not sure about you, but two hours of sleep is not enough.

Please forgive any crazy errors in this email, I’ll keep it short! I have all four first chapters of Your Soul to Keep for you today because tomorrow is release day!!!

I’m also so excited to highlight a lovely author friend of mine, Melanie Moreland, who has put together a beautiful initiative for our city.

100% of proceeds from the sale of this title are benefiting the Hamilton Food Share. To learn more, check out thttps://hamiltonfoodshare.org/how-you-can-help

Tropes:

• Snowed In

• Opposites attract

• Road Trip

• Small Town

• Instant Attraction

Christmas is a time for family.

It’s been years since Shane Foster was able to share the season with his.

So, an unexpected snowstorm, rerouted flights, and lost presents aren’t going to defeat him.

In a twist of fate, he ends up in a store run by a woman as alone as he is. She is sweet and warm, and he is captivated by her.

Unable to leave her alone, he convinces her to join him and his family for Christmas, somehow knowing she was meant to be his.

Could he be what she needs as well?

He wants to wrap her in love—not only for the holidays but forever.

Will she make his wishes come true?

Author's note: Enjoy a merry read while feeding the hungry. Proceeds from the sale of this title are benefiting the Hamilton Food Share.

And as promised, the first four chapters of Your Soul to Keep. These will not all fit in the email, but you can read on my SubStack page. There is no cost to read or join.

Release day is tomorrow! Click the button below to wake up with your copy.❤️

Please Note: This book carries a trigger warning for loss, grief, and infertility.

Thank you so much for sticking with me.❤️

Live messy, love madly!

Your Soul to Keep

Lace and Lipstick

With the passing of each day, she deflated a little more. By this point, she was barely more than a scrap of lace and a bad attitude.

Propped up against the headboard of the heavy, mahogany, sleigh bed and stripped of her legendary energy, she appeared even smaller. Hair that used to be as blond as my own settled around her wrinkled face like wisps of smoke. Even still, she was fiercer than I’d ever been.

Staring me down, she plucked and smoothed the lace cuffs of her nightgown.

She taught me a woman never leaves the house without her lipstick. Though confined to her bed, at the first hint of company, her lips blushed like a wild Irish rose. She was, in her words, ‘going out in style.’

She reminded me of this often, usually after making a disparaging remark about my favored uniform of jeans and t-shirts.

When her rant went on too long, I threatened to bury her in an open casket wearing her Kerry green ‘Proud to be Irish’ sweatshirt.

No lipstick.

She promised she’d haunt me.

I wasn’t completely opposed if it meant I wouldn’t have to let her go. She was all I had left in the world.

I shook my head as if to dislodge the thought. The time for facing the truth would come, but not today.

I smoothed the wedding ring quilt she painstakingly stitched together decades ago across her lap and tucked it around her legs.

Plants lined her windowsill, their trailing leaves arching toward a sun that was valiantly trying to usher in the spring.

One of the nightstands that bookended the head of her bed staggered under a huge stack of books. The other held an ever-growing collection of prescription bottles clustered around a China teacup and saucer that had served to hold her wedding band for as long as I could remember.

Candles flickered on the matching dresser, their light reflecting off the antique mirror attached to the back while rock music streamed through her speaker.

She was cherry lipstick and Carrickmacross lace, Galway crystal and the crashing waves of the stormy Irish sea, the pot of burnished gold at the end of every rainbow and all the sparkle of Christmas. Full of piss and vinegar with just enough honey to sweeten the harshest of truths, she held me through all my worst days.

What was I going to do without her?

I pulled her quilt up higher over her chest.

She patted my hand. “Muriel is on her way over for a visit. Would you put the kettle on for us?”

“Of course, Nan.”

She looked out the window, her lips compressed in a thin line. “I was sure I’d outlive that old bird.”

“Nan!” I laughed but she only rolled her eyes and grinned in response.

At the sound of the doorbell, I ran downstairs to open the door for Nan’s cantankerous neighbor. She proudly wore a prickly mantle of irritability and impatience, but the cackles of laughter coming from Nan’s bedroom whenever she visited told the truth.

“Tea, Mrs. Wemberly?”

She nodded as she hung her coat on the hook in the hall. “A splash of milk and a half teaspoon of sugar. And don’t skimp this time!”

I smiled. “Of course not.”

She carried an enormous carpet bag wherever she went. Like Mary Poppins but not nearly as spry.

Or smiley.

And she certainly didn’t sing.

“You can hang your bag up on the hook if you like.”

“I’ll be keeping my bag, thank you very much,” she retorted as she marched upstairs.

I snickered as I filled the kettle. The first time I made her a cup of tea, I followed her instructions to the letter. Twice she sent me back for more sugar. Now I dumped one and a half teaspoons in the cup and heard not a word of complaint.

But God help me if I accidentally added an extra drop of milk.

An hour later, her face drawn and deeply lined, she came downstairs to the kitchen where I sat staring into space with my own cup of tea gone cold. Without a word, she covered my hand with hers and bowed her head.

Her unexpected tenderness stole my voice and breached my defenses. I could do nothing but nod. I bit my bottom lip to distract my brain from facts I was wholly unready to face.

“Sometimes it flies, other times it crawls.” She sighed deeply. “Either way, Shae, life’s too short to muck about.”

With a gentle pat, she turned and left.

Swallowing the sob in my throat, I blew out a harsh breath and took myself back upstairs to Nan.

My voice barely quavered as I asked, “Did you enjoy your visit with Mrs. Wemberly?”

She twinkled. “I always do.” Wagging a finger, she continued, “Don’t let that old bat fool you. Mind in the gutter and a heart of solid gold.” Her brow furrowed. “Though she is a mite grumpy.”

“She makes you laugh.”

“Aye, that she does.” Her gnarled, arthritic finger traced the faded stitching of her quilt.

“Hard to believe these old hands were once capable of creating such beauty,” she murmured. “I made this for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, did you know that?”

I did know. It was that quilt that inspired me on my own journey.

Christmas of the year I moved in with her, she set a box filled with swaths of satin and the most beautiful array of silken threads I’d ever seen down in front of me.

Embroidery gave my mind something bright and beautiful to focus on when the darkness swallowed me.

It had been years since I’d picked up a needle.

Would it come back to me?

At the thought, my mind slammed shut as tight as the door to my rarely entered craft room. Because the last embroidery project I started lay folded and unfinished in a box under my bed.

She smiled. “Ach, but I loved the old fool. You know I had to hunt down his wallet and keys for him every single morning?”

I grinned. “I remember that, Nan.”

Her face softened as she stared into space, lost in the sweetest of memories. “I made this for him for our 25^th wedding anniversary.” She looked up at me, her eyes shiny. “I figured if he could put up with me for the first 25 years, I could trust him with the next.” She paused. “It wasn’t easy for me to trust him, but he earned it.” Her chin trembled. “That man knew me better than I knew myself.”

I swallowed hard and gave her my standard response which was the truth. “He was the best, Nan.”

Her eyelids fluttered as she dozed in and out.

I sat sentinel beside the bed, her fragile hand in mine.

An hour later her eyes popped open, and she continued without missing a beat.

Smiling into my eyes, she reminded me gently, “Two people shorten the road, pet.”

I ducked my head. “I know, Nan.”

Her deep sigh garnered my attention. I raised my head to find her eyebrows lowered as she looked me over appraisingly.

She clucked in disapproval. “You could show a wee bit of your bosoms you know.”

“Nan!” I barked out a laugh. “I don’t want a man who’s only interested in my,” I choked on my laughter as I spit out the word, “bosoms. I want a man who wants me.”

She smiled, the fading blue of her eyes twinkling. “So, you do fancy a fella of your own.”

I rolled my eyes.

She leaned forward, a hint of urgency in her tone. “Shae, darlin,’ marry a man willing to put in the work to know you.” Her eyes searched mine. “Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, pet.”

Her unexpected words pierced me deep. I dropped my gaze and nodded quietly. “I will, Nan.”

“Promise me, Shae,” she demanded. “No regrets.”

“No,” I cleared my throat, “no regrets, Nan.”

She nodded and leaned back, satisfied, then pursed her lips and shook her head before throwing up her hands. “Jesus, Mary, and St. Joseph, Shae, would it kill you to show a wee bit of leg?”

“I’ll roll up my jeans and flash my ankles,” I sassed.

“Ach, away with you,” she scowled, then reached for my hand. “What are you doing tonight?”

I eyed the dark circles under her eyes.

Early that morning I’d called her doctor to get the latest update, praying for a miracle. Instead, he confirmed the tomorrows Nan promised were numbered.

I was not ready.

“I thought I’d stay home tonight.”

“Not at all,” she snapped with a sharp shake of her head. “Standing here with your two arms the one length, what’s that going to do? You’ve only just reconnected with your Sage Ridge friends.” She patted the telephone that had sat on her night table for so long I wondered if they weren’t fused together. “I’ve got the phone if I need anything.” She tossed me a sly smile. “In any case, Rudolpho is coming over to sit with me.”

I laughed. “Nan, we must be the last house in Mistlevale with an actual house phone. We should get rid of it. And that man is an incorrigible flirt.”

Rudolpho was the head chef at Ayana’s, Nan’s restaurant. He was also thirty years younger than Nan and married for even longer to his high school sweetheart, Marlena.

Since her doctor had relegated Nan to bed rest the week before, there’d been a constant stream of visits from our Ayana’s family. Rudy and Marlena chief among them.

“I’m sure I will,” she sassed. “This phone never runs out of battery. And Rudy’s virtue is safe with me. He’s bringing Marlena, and she’s bringing her famous brownies.” She wagged her eyebrows. “And everybody knows chocolate is just as good as sex.” She cocked her head to the side. “At my age, it’s maybe better. But there was a time…”

I covered my ears and laughed as her feistiness loosened the knots in my chest. “No, Nan, no! I’ll never be old enough to hear about your sex life.”

She smiled slyly. “Let’s just say Ayana’s back office saw its share of action.”

I groaned. “The office where I do payroll and place orders?”

“The very same.” She guffawed, then her face softened as she remembered something else. “He left sunflower seeds all over the bloody place.”

“Why’d you keep buying them?”

She waved me away. “Saved him a trip.”

The half of me that was terrified of losing her, the half that knew her hours were numbered, yearned to stay home. Lock the door and keep everybody out. Curl up on the bed beside her. Fall asleep with her gentle fingers sweeping over my temple the way she used to, brushing my hair and my stress away and away and away.

The other half, the half that couldn’t handle what tomorrow might bring, yearned for the escape that awaited me in Sage Ridge. There sisterhood and laughter all but blocked out the ache building inside me, knowing my Nan was not long for this world.

Then I’d be truly, utterly, alone.

Feeling like the worst person on the planet, I asked, “You’re sure?”

“Positive.” She winked. “I won’t die tonight.”

I knew my lines and recited them with ease. “Tomorrow would be better?”

She grinned. “Infinitely.”

Marlena and Rudolpho walked in just as I grabbed my car keys. Reaching out a hand to clasp my shoulder, Rudolpho gruffly offered, “Take your time. We’ll be here until you get back.”

“Even if it’s in the morning,” Marlena teased.

Hanging his coat on the hook, he winced and grumbled, “Lena, I watched her grow up. She’s like a second daughter to me.”

“And you don’t think our daughter likes to get some?” Marlena handed him a plate of brownies and let her coat fall down her arms.

I caught it and hung it on the hook beside her husband’s.

“Dammit, woman, why do you have to say these things?” Pulling the saran wrap off the top, Rudolpho marched away.

Nan’s thin voice drifted down the stairs. “Don’t you eat my brownies, Rudy!”

“I’ll save you a bite,” he barked as he took the stairs, his long legs eating them up two at a time.

Marlena laughed and winked at me as she held up a sealed container. “I’ll leave these two in the fridge for you.” Her face sobered and she touched my cheek. “Have a good night.”

Guilt, anxiety, and yearning gnawed at my stomach. “You’re sure it’s okay?”

Opening her arms, she drew me in for a brief embrace. “It’s necessary.”

I hung on longer than I should have, closing my eyes and leaning into her warmth. “I’m so afraid something will happen if I’m gone.”

“Sweetheart, it’s going to happen whether you worry or not. You can’t live in the what if.” She rubbed a slow circle over my back. “We have to take each moment as it comes and live in it.” Releasing me, she prodded me toward the door. “Go. As your Nan says, we all have our own stories to live. I’ll lock up.”

The hour drive to Sage Ridge was not yet routine, but it was getting easier. Since Harley came into Ayana’s with Daire, she had pulled me back into the fold. Seeing her after all that time triggered all the memories, both bitter and sweet, that I had buried with my dad.

I drove past my old house, picturing my dad on the front porch.

On Main Street, I saw Quinn furiously peddling her bike in front of mine, trying to get home before the streetlights came on.

When I passed Hugh’s Hardware, I remembered the pup tent Dad bought for Quinn and me to have sleepovers in the backyard.

Everywhere else, I saw him.

The bridge we used to sneak over to Carousel Island after hours?

Him.

The signpost pointing to Hailey’s Falls?

Him.

The Beanery?

Him.

Everywhere I looked, I saw him.

Yet, there was no sign of him anywhere.

And I didn’t want to ask.

I needed to make new memories. Now, I had Harley, Noelle, Bridge, and sweet Wren. To a lesser extent, I also had Daire, Hawkley, and Max, most of whom I knew in some capacity back in high school before I moved to Mistlevale.

Moving and changing high schools in grade eleven did little to help my social life. Or my grades. Spiraling in my grief, I had to repeat the semester, putting me behind my peers and further isolating me.

Not that I’d been a straight A student or a social butterfly in Sage Ridge, but at least I had the swim team and my best friend Quinn.

And him.

Mistlevale had been my home base since my father passed, but Sage Ridge was my home.

I’d only returned twice in all the years since I left. Seeing him move on ensured I never looked back again.

Until now.

The first time I ventured out to Sage Ridge after running into Harley, I made it only as far as the stop sign leading into town.

Now, I rolled right through it, flicking the indicator toward good food, good friends, and the endless laughter that awaited me at Susie Q’s.

I smiled to myself.

Anticipation unfurled her lazy bones and stretched.

My girls were crazy-wonderful.

Who knew where the night might go?

Zero Chill

Bridge linked her arm through mine and barrelled down the sidewalk. “I’m fucking freezing,” she complained.

“Well, it’s fucking cold,” I answered.

Swinging the door open, we clambered through.

Bridge’s entire body convulsed with her shiver as she stomped the snow off her feet. “Is this ever going to melt?”

“It’s March. We’ve got at least a month. This far north, maybe two,” Susie answered, throwing her arm around Bridge and easing her away from the door. “Come away from the cold.”

Releasing her, Susie turned to me, taking both of my cold hands in hers. “It’s good to see you, Shae darlin’.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Mama S,” I murmured. “How is Quinn?”

“Oh, you know, keeping on keeping on. Do you ever hear from her?”

I shook my head. “No, but that’s my fault. I left everyone behind when I left Sage Ridge.”

Her face fell. “That wasn’t your fault, Shae darlin.’ Only so much a soul can take.” She looked over my shoulder before turning back to me. “Um—”

“Come on,” Bridge seized my hand. “I see Max. Let’s go say ‘hi’.”

Rolling my eyes, I smiled at Susie and allowed Bridge to guide me over to Max’s table.

“Hey, Max. Introduce me to your handsome friends.”

My head snapped up, my jaw dropped, and I stood, red-faced and mute, before the one who broke my heart.

The one whose heart I broke.

Immediately, I closed my eyes to shield myself from the ache. Was there ever a greater pain than your first broken heart?

We were just kids. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t my fault. And it was a lifetime ago.

I opened my eyes to find his gaze steady on mine. My eyes skittered away to wander over his face.

Laugh lines radiated out from the corners of his startling blue eyes. His skin, tan even in the dead of winter, gave a nod to his black Irish heritage. The perimeter of his full lips had firmed with time.

Would they still feel the same if he pressed them to mine?

His midnight black hair was shorter but still as messy as ever, his temples dusted with the barest hints of gray. I could almost feel its silky strands between my fingers, grasped in my greedy fists.

That sharp, stubborn jaw jutted forward. Did he still have that same competitive streak?

Was he married? My smile dropped as my eyes flew to his left hand.

Did he have children?

It didn’t bear thinking about.

I schooled my features though my voice shook. “Hello, Gabe. It’s been a while. How are you doing?”

His black eyebrows flew up like wings, his blue eyes sharpening on my face before adopting the cocky smirk that led me into more trouble than I was willing to remember. “Fine, thank you, Shae,” he teased. “Are you well?”

My face flushed. “I am.” I wasn’t. Not at all. “Thank you for asking.”

He snorted and leaned back. Tipping his chin up, he challenged, “Don’t act like you don’t know me.”

My jaw dropped before closing with an audible snap. “Well, it’s obvious you don’t know me anymore,” I retorted, “or you’d know I don’t like surprises.”

Julian leaned forward, using his body as a temporary barricade and side-eyed Gabe. “Did we not just discuss how to treat a woman?” he joked in the deepest voice I’d ever heard in my life.

Bridge touched my elbow, her eyes tight, before addressing Max. “We’re going to go find a table. We’ll catch up later?”

“No, please,” Gabe insisted. Half rising out of his seat, his mouth twisted to the side. “I’m being an asshole. Sit. I’ll behave.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” I muttered.

Bridge looked at me, her eyebrows hitting her hairline. “Do you want to sit?”

Julian turned to Gabe, his voice low, “What the fuck was that?”

Gabe shook his head. “A blast from the past I wasn’t expecting.”

Without answering Bridge, I grabbed a spare chair from the table next to us and pulled it up to the end of the booth, my eyes cast down to give myself time. The truth was, I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.

Not yet.

Julian retorted, “So, she’s not the only one who doesn’t like surprises.”

Gabe snorted. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Julian chuckled as Bridge eased around me and waved Max further into the booth. “I’ll just sit here,” she said slowly, her eyes wide.

Pinning me with those eyes that used to soften only for me, Gabe demanded, “So what brings you home? I thought you left us all behind for the Big Smoke.”

There was no avoiding this confrontation. Forward as always, he wouldn’t allow it. Trying not to eat him up with my eyes, I looked through him as I answered, “I moved back to Mistlevale a year ago.”

“Yeah? You bring your husband? Fiancé? Boyfriend?”

Julian huffed. “Man, you’ve got zero chill.”

Gabe laughed, the rumble I’d missed so much for so long touching me in all the places that had long grown cold. “I never did have any chill with Shae.”

I didn’t catch what Max said to Bridge but heard Julian chuckle before joining their conversation.

In a room full of people, there was only Gabe and me, the same now as it was then.

I surrounded myself with people and never once escaped the loneliness. Back in his presence for a couple of minutes, I came alive.

Picking up his beer bottle, he tipped it up to his mouth.

I watched his lips wrap around the bottle.

My mouth went dry.

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

I watched it, hungry, jealous to take the place of the bottle encased in his hand.

Tattoos peeked out from under the cuffs of his long sleeves. Those were new. But after more than twenty years, there probably wasn’t much of anything that wasn’t.

“She’s my Achilles heel.” His delayed answer was for my ears, not Julian’s.

My eyes snapped to meet his, catching the hint of a smile in his blue eyes.

There he was.

I smiled back. “Funny,” I murmured. “I always saw you as my black knight.”

Still

Easing her paper-thin hand from mine, I realigned my aching back and relaxed into the chair beside her bed. Selfishly, I prayed for more time as I watched her sleep.

The day Nan called to notify me of her diagnosis, I packed up the remnants of my life. The next day I quit my job, jammed what I couldn’t live without into the backseat of my car, and drove home.

At that time, she was only beginning to cut back on her hours at Ayana’s. As she worked less and less, I took on more of her duties. I floundered under the weight of her workload.

As weeks turned into months, I found my feet.

And Nan faltered on hers.

During opening hours, I helped man the hostess stand, circled around the tables to greet our patrons, and hid in the coat check when I desperately needed a break.

Over the years, I’d clocked hundreds of hours in that tiny space. After my mom passed, I spent many days at the restaurant with Nan and Grampy, playing with my baby dolls in this very corner as they ran the restaurant.

At one point, Grampy set up a miniature crib and highchair along with a tiny, velvet, tufted stool for me.

When I got older, the stool stayed but the dolls vanished only to make room for a small chest of drawers filled with drawing supplies and books.

It was in this corner Nan found me crying after we lost Grampy.

It was in this corner Nan cried with me when we lost my dad.

And it was in this corner I hid when Gabe stopped calling and moved on with someone else.

Every night, when I wasn’t needed on the floor, I poured over spreadsheets and order forms, struggling to understand how Nan had managed to make ends meet.

Slowly, I learned to do the same.

But every so often, a longing for something altogether different crept under my barriers and stole my focus.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Nan fell asleep early now and woke late.

Every night I sat beside her, sometimes lying down on the other side of her bed. She talked about my dad, my mom, and me as she drifted in and out of sleep, but she mostly told stories about my grandfather.

“I never got used to sleeping alone, pet,” she confessed, a soft smile on her thin lips. “Even the nights I was tempted to box his ears, I still slept with my foot on his.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How had she managed to carry on after losing so much?

It terrified me.

When she fell into a deep sleep, I slipped from her room to my own.

From one bed to another.

I climbed up on my bed, stuffed the pillows Nan quilted for me behind my back, and flipped through the offerings on TV.

The presence of that TV seared me to my soul. She bought it when she asked me to come home, trying to make things better for me, when she was the one who was dying.

Other than the new television, my room was much the same. Dove gray walls, dusty rose curtains pulled back to frame the large window overlooking the front yard, a cream and rose quilt on an ornate cherrywood bed, a matching dresser, the nightstand holding an additional housephone, and my vanity with its gold-framed mirror.

The piece de resistance was the delicate chandelier.

My room was an anomaly. Nan had wallpapered the rest of the house within an inch of its life. Despite that, the stained-glass window of the heavy front door complimented the original glass of the windows in the rest of the house. Ornate oakwood doorways, stairways, and trim emitted a sense of permanence.

This house was standing long before Nan and Grampy moved in, it witnessed them raising their family and would outlast them both.

It would outlast me as well.

The fact we are little more than a speck in time depressed and reassured me at once. It would be beyond difficult to screw up so colossally that it would register in the history of the world. We could afford to live without fear.

At least a little.

When the TV failed to distract me, I picked up my latest romance novel. After a few minutes, I tossed that aside as well.

I pulled up my knees, wrapped my arms around my legs, and allowed my mind to drift to Gabe. Seeing him thrilled and devastated me in equal measure.

Was he married?

He didn’t wear a ring, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d never been one to bow to convention.

Several times it crossed my mind to ask Max, but I chickened out. If Gabe had someone special, I didn’t want to know.

Besides, we were ancient history. He made that obvious when he left Susie Q’s after dinner with a casual, all-encompassing, “see you around.”

He didn’t say anything to me specifically.

Nor did he ask for my number.

And he didn’t look back.

I knew because I watched him until he was out of sight.

That was two weeks ago.

What did you think? He’d want to pick up where you left off? You left him with no explanation.

But we were just kids.

I closed my eyes and shook my head but the voice inside continued to berate me.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you were just kids on one hand and wonder why he didn’t ask for your number on the other.

The house phone rang, its shrill trill throwing open a door to the past.

In a flash, I was seventeen again, curled into a ball on my bed while Nan sat beside me, brushing my hair away from my face for hours without a word.

Day after day, I lay with tears streaming down my face, the coiled cord of the handset clenched in my fist as I listened to it ring.

Knowing it was him.

Unwilling to pick it up.

Refusing to allow Nan to turn off the ringer.

That final tether.

I didn’t answer.

Not once.

I shook away the memory and threw myself across the mattress to pick it up before it woke Nan. “Hello?”

“So, it does work.”

My heart sprouted great wings to beat against the walls of my chest. “W-what?” I stuttered.

He chuckled. “Who would have thought it would take twenty-two years for you to pick up the phone?”

“Gabe?” I asked stupidly.

“Shae, darlin’,” he chuckled. “You’re killing me.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Hello, Gabe.”

“Hello, Shae,” he mocked gently. “Why didn’t you get in touch?”

I blew out a breath. “Wow, you’re just going for it.”

“Yup. Your answer is going to determine what happens next.”

Two iron fists grabbed hold of my innards and twisted them in opposite directions. “What if my answer’s not good enough?” I asked quietly.

“Do you want it to be good enough?” he countered gently.

More than anything.

“Are you married?”

“No.” He paused, then demanded, “Meet me for coffee.”

I fisted my hands around the waistband of my big-girl panties and yanked them into place.

“When and where?”

Four days later, I scurried through Sage Ridge’s downtown furtively scanning the street like a runaway fugitive hoping against hope I wouldn’t run into one of the girls. I couldn’t bear it if they knew, and it turned out to be all for naught.

Steeling myself for what was to come, I stopped under the sign of a dancing coffee bean in a beret and pulled the heavy door open. Once inside The Beanery, I automatically headed for the far back corner that, a lifetime ago, was ours.

Sprawled in a chair with one arm hanging over the back, Gabe’s sharp eyes found and locked on mine. His long legs stretched out in front of him, those firm lips unsmiling as they toyed with a toothpick.

My steps slowed the closer I got.

Without breaking my gaze, he lifted his foot and pushed the nearest chair out for me.

Gingerly, I eased myself down and set my small purse on the table in front of me before folding my hands in my lap.

Leaning forward, he braced his forearms on the table as he scanned my face. “You all right?”

I swallowed. “Nervous.”

He nodded minutely. “I see that. What are you nervous about?”

I pressed my lips together then observed, “You’re not smiling.”

He shot back, “You haven’t given me anything to smile about yet.”

I sighed. “You’re mad.”

He twirled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth as he widened his eyes and huffed out a breath. “Yeah.”

He gave no quarter. He never had. I guessed I should take comfort in the fact that not everything had changed.

“Still?” I asked quietly.

His eyebrows flew up. “Have you given me a reason not to be?”

I dropped my gaze. Was this the reason I hadn’t sought him out? I didn’t want him to hate me, and I’d given him every reason to do just that. “No. I haven’t. But I am sorry.”

When the silence stretched too long between us, I hazarded a glance.

Eyes soft, he studied me. “I loved you, you know.”

Loved.

Past tense.

I almost gasped as his words pressed against a wound I thought healed. Regret wrapped her merciless fingers around my throat and squeezed.

Well, of course. What did you expect?

We. Were. Kids.

I opened my mouth, but my voice failed. Instead, I simply nodded and jabbed my index finger into my chest.

“You loved me, too,” he correctly interpreted.

“I did,” I choked out.

I do.

I gave my head a sharp shake. This was ridiculous. It was a million years ago.

You can’t have it both ways.

His deep voice interrupted my mental wrestling and brought my eyes back to his. “You surprised me the other night at Susie Q’s.”

God! Sitting here in front of him, his full attention lit me up like a campfire in the dark. How many nights had I lain awake yearning for exactly this?

I nodded quickly, and babbled, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I hadn’t seen you in all the times I’d come down to visit the girls, I was afraid to ask, and I didn’t want to—”

He cut me off. “What were you afraid of?”

I met his eyes with barely a flutter. “You being married.”

“I’m not.”

I nodded and sucked in a breath.

We were kids.

He tapped his fingertips on the table a few times, a sure sign he was nervous. “I’ve thought about you, a lot, over the years.”

I nodded again. How could we possibly navigate the years between then and now.

My hands shook in my lap. “I’ve thought about you, too.” I could give him this small truth.

“I want to see you,” he stated, “get to know you again.”

My stomach flipped and my betraying mouth opened. “I can’t. Not right now. Nan’s sick.” My breath came faster, lightning bolts of distress striking me from all sides. “I need to take care of her.”

He studied me steadily. “Still taking care of everybody else.”

My brows lowered. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Who’s taking care of you?”

Before I could answer, our server arrived at our table and delivered Gabe’s black coffee and my French vanilla cappuccino.

“Thank you.” I nodded toward our coffees and managed to smile. “That’s still my favorite. Not everything has changed.”

He dropped the front legs of his chair down on the floor with a thud. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Tomorrow

I left the nursing station with my heart in my hands.

The nurses marveled at Nan’s fire, astounded by her iron will. I loved to hear them talk about her, soaked it up like a parched sponge. But after a few minutes their awe gave way to compassion, and I turned my face away.

The tomorrows Nan promised me were coming to an end, I didn’t need to see the reminder in their eyes.

All the same, every night I prayed for just one more.

My heels clicked along the corridor toward her room, the staff members I’d gotten to know over the past six weeks calling out greetings and updating me on her morning shenanigans as I passed.

I swear the woman was half fae.

My Nan waited for no one’s validation, owned her role as heroine in her own story, and as legend told it, swept my grandfather clean off his feet.

She kept him on his toes every day after until his last.

And then she dropped like a stone in the deepest ocean.

For months, no one or nothing could penetrate her grief. I was too young at the time to truly understand her despair, but I never forgot what she said when she finally came back to herself.

Dad got a new job, one that required him to work one weekend a month. By that time, my grandfather had been gone over a year. Not wanting me left at loose ends, Dad sent me to Nan.

The first few weekends I was bored out of my mind. Then one Saturday morning she woke me up early, took me out for breakfast, then spoiled me rotten at the craft store. Up and down the aisles we walked. If I even looked sideways at something, she bought it.

When we came home, flushed with excitement, I followed her upstairs to her bedroom with my haul. Sitting cross-legged on the wedding ring quilt she had stitched by hand, I spread out my purchases and told her my plans. “What do you think, Nan?”

“You can do anything you set your mind to, pet.”

I looked up to find her sitting at her vanity, the one she’d long since given to me, with her head cocked to the side, studying her reflection.

And I studied her.

“Time to write a different story,” she murmured.

Leaning closer to the mirror, she smoothed her long-forgotten lipstick over a mouth that had taken on a decidedly downward turn over the past year and a half.

“Hm. This won’t do at all.” Straightening her spine, she smiled at herself in the mirror.

I giggled. “What are you doing, Nan?”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, the twinkle I’d missed flashing for just a moment. “I’m out of practice, pet. I seem to have lost a wee bit of my smile.”

I nodded sagely. “You’ve been sad.”

Her eyes glossed over as she looked through time. “Very sad, pet.”

“Are you better now, Nan?” I looked at her anxiously, my chest tight and achy. “Is your heart not broken anymore?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Sure, won’t it always be broken? That doesn’t mean I can’t write a new story.” She swallowed and ducked her head for a moment before meeting my eyes in the reflection. “A different kind of story.”

“With me, Nan?” I had just gotten her back, and selfishly, I didn’t want to lose her again.

“Ach, pet, you’ll be the star,” she assured me.

My chest puffed out but then I shook my head, feeling bad for her even as I confessed, “I don’t ever want to have a broken heart.”

Slowly spinning around on her little stool, she looked into my eyes and sighed. “Sure, that’s love, Shae darlin.’ Every love story ends with a broken heart.”

True to her word, she wrote herself into an entirely new book.

I was the star.

It was my heart breaking now.

But it was far from the first time.

Watching her waste away while keeping a smile pinned to my face cost me every ounce of energy. Checking her into hospice care was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but it gave me space to weep.

I stayed with her as many hours as I could every day, the thought of her dying alone haunting every waking minute away from her. At night, when I crawled home to bed, memories I thought long buried swam to the surface.

For the longest time, it had been Dad and me. My memories of my mother comprised of a fleeting sense of warmth and safety elicited by the fragrance of her perfume along with a thick mantle of sadness when winter gave birth to spring, where everything was new at the time when everything was lost.

Family photographs filled in the gaps.

Dad showed them to me so often I couldn’t tell where my real memories of my mother ended, and the photographs began. They told the story of a sweet love that changed a woman and a man into a bride and a groom then bestowed upon them a round, smiling baby that bore little resemblance to my current manifestation as an introverted ball of angst.

How different might I have been if my heart had not been so mercilessly bruised as a child?

When my dad first got sick, there was only me at home to help him. Nan and Grampy supported all of us when he lost the fight and could no longer work. All day they managed the restaurant in Mistlevale before one or both of them drove the hour to Sage Ridge late in the evening to sleep at our house.

At seventeen, I wanted nothing more than to spread my wings and fly, but I was bound to the house. Forced to watch my father fade away, an agony doubled by the loss of my mother.

It was only now, watching Nan do the same, that I understood what a privilege it was to see him through his final act.

Thoughts of my father inevitably led to memories of Gabe, and my colossal fuck-up when I walked away from him.

I didn’t give him a chance. Instead, I embraced the loss before it could sneak up on me.

Now a second chance dangled well within my reach. And I was still running.

I rounded the corner, rapped on her doorframe, and steeled myself. “Knock, knock, Nan.”

“Ach, hello pet,” she rasped. “What time is it?”

“Past time for you to get up, lazybones,” I teased as I crossed to her bed and kissed her sunken cheek. I smiled into her eyes and propped the pillows at her back before flopping into the chair beside her.

She tipped her chin up. “How was your smutty book club with the girls?”

“Interesting.”

“Oh?” She perked up.

I leaned back and stroked the delicate curl of a trailing vine. I’d tried to bring as many of the comforts of home as possible.

Plants from home lined her windowsill interspersed with dollar store LED candles flickering in the tiny Belleek pottery village of churches and lace pierced thatched cottages. Sea scented essential oils wafted from the diffuser to compensate for what the fake candles lacked.

It was a poor facsimile to the land of her youth.

“One of the girls is going through some stuff with her family. She’s been just as isolated as me but for different reasons,” I answered.

Nan listed to the side, unable to hold herself steady even with the pillows. I quickly grabbed two more and stuffed them under her arms.

“Better?”

“Grand.” She nodded toward the tiny village. “See those? I gave them to your mother when she married your dad. I kept them safe for her all these years. Now they’re yours.”

I sucked in a breath.

She was deteriorating by the hour. Guilt and panic churned in the hollow between my ribs. I shouldn’t have gone out.

She smirked. “I can read your mind, Shae. I don’t want you here every minute of every day, love.”

“And what if I want to be here with you?” I snapped.

“Sure, you’re here now, aren’t you?” She rolled her eyes. “Here’s me, standing at death’s door ‘til the balls of me legs turn to the front and you’re still giving me cheek.”

I laughed to cover my tears, a harsh bark grossly out of place in the quiet.

Nan patted my hand and reminisced of times long past and those who’d left her behind.

“Your da, now, he was a handful.” She laughed softly. “He was a good lad, gone far too soon. Ach, but he’s with your mum, now.”

She had rarely spoken of my father. When she said his name, tears threatened, and she clamped her mouth shut. Now? She didn’t hesitate.

As if she knew the grieving was near over.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and smiled while the little girl inside me wailed like a banshee. Lurching to my feet, I smoothed her wedding ring quilt across her lap and tucked it around her legs.

“He was here last night, him and your mum.”

My head whipped up to look at her.

She rolled her eyes. “Ach, don’t look so bloody surprised, sure you know it’s not the first time.”

“How did they look?” I breathed.

“Just like I remember,” she murmured then met my eyes. “Happy. Your grandfather will be here, too. I want you to know, I won’t be alone when the time comes.”

My jaw dropped. I had no words. Did she know that was my biggest fear?

Her thin, veiny hand patted mine before flitting over the stitching of the quilt as she continued, “You know yourself, no one ever really leaves.” Her gaze drifted into the past. “I made this for your grandfather. Did you know that? That man knew me better than I knew myself.”

The same stories, over and over.

Any day now it would be the last time I heard them.

“He was the best, Nan,” I whispered.

Would he be here? Would he come for her?

My memories of him were stronger than those I held of my mother.

Quiet and calm, the eye of Nan’s storm.

I closed my eyes. He would be here.

Like a dog with a bone, Nan returned to her favorite topic. “You need someone who sees you.” Her knowing gaze sank clear through to my soul, the twinkle present even still. “But you’ve never been willing to take on a man who has the balls to look.”

“Oh my gosh, Nan,” I choked. “Balls?”

She smirked. “Eyeballs.”

I rolled my own eyeballs and snickered.

There was only one man who had ever really seen me.

But what did we know about life or love at our age?

Perhaps the passage of time had romanticized our connection in my memory, turning us into something we weren’t, setting every subsequent relationship against a standard that didn’t exist.

No different than anyone else, I was a mix of dark and light, hot and cold, blessed and cursed. Over the years, I learned there were few who would accept the dark with the light.

For most, it proved to be too much.

Nan’s sigh interrupted my mental musings. “Go on home and get some rest, pet. I hate seeing you in this place.”

I snorted.

“This place” was the best palliative care money could buy.

There was not a single set of scrubs to be seen. Nurses and healthcare workers blended in with the visitors, only their nametags and the stethoscopes hanging around their necks differentiating them. That and the air of peace they carried in direct contrast to those who anxiously waited to say their final goodbyes.

With its wide oak floors, antique crown molding, and warm walls adorned with paintings donated by local artists, it looked more like an upscale bed and breakfast.

I’d brought so many of her things from her bedroom at home, I could no longer bear to go in. It was as if she was already gone.

Despite its beauty, Nan was right. It was still a place of death.

“You’re going to write yourself a beautiful story, pet, and from where I’m going? I’ll have a front row seat.”

I sniffed and swiped a finger under my nose like a child before grabbing a tissue.

“Away with you. A beautiful flower like you should be soaking up the sun.” Her eyes twinkled. “I won’t die tonight.”

I smiled weakly at her promise, a sheen of tears blurring her beloved face. Viciously tamping down the frozen ball of dread blocking my windpipe, I choked, “Tomorrow would be better?”

“Infinitely, my pet,” she assured me softly.

I almost succeeded in swallowing my sob.

I’d have sold my left leg to have an infinite number of tomorrows with her. Leaning forward, I brushed my lips across her petal soft cheek and pressed my forehead to hers. “I love you, Nan.”

She scoffed lightly as she closed her eyes and gently patted my cheek. “Go on with you and your blattin.”

I huffed out a laugh and straightened, nodding before spinning away on my heel. I was almost at the door when she called my name.

I twisted to look over my shoulder. Facing her head on would only reveal my tears. And we did not cry in my family.

“Yes, Nan?”

“I was wrong, pet.”

The uncustomary gravity in her voice slid through the crack in my armor and spun me around. I cocked my head to the side as I faced her fully. “Wrong about what, Nan?”

“You’re not a flower.” Stripped of all artifice, her love and grief for leaving me laid bare, she whispered, “You’re the sun.”

She held my gaze steadily as I stood frozen in the doorway with tears streaming down my face, lending me her strength even now.

“Sleep well, pet. May the dreams you hold dearest be those which come true.”

How many times over the years had she given me that blessing?

“Tomorrow,” I choked out.

“Yes, pet.” She smiled. “Tomorrow.”

When the phone rang at 1:00 AM, I knew.

Tomorrow had come.