Page 57 of Sparks Fly

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Things make sense in the shop. If I mess something up, I can fix it. If I need to start over, I start over.”

I watched her for a moment. “Where did you learn to weld?”

Something shifted in her expression, not sadness exactly, but something quieter. “My Poppa taught me.” She glanced down at the table before continuing. “After my sister died, I was kind of a mess.”

My chest tightened.

“Sawyer…”

She shrugged lightly. “I was fifteen. She was seventeen. Everything felt different after that.”

The courtyard noise seemed to fade into the background while I listened.

“My parents were grieving too. Nobody really knew what to do with any of it.” “My mom hit the bottle hard, my dad just kind of checked out.” She smiled faintly. “Poppa started taking me to the shop after school. He’d hand me a helmet and put me to work.”

“That probably saved you.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know it did.”

For a moment neither of us spoke. Then Sawyer reached across the table and took my hand. “You know,” she said, running her thumb lightly across my knuckles, “you don’t have to have everything figured out with me.”

I looked down at our hands before meeting her eyes again. “I know.”

“No, I mean it. You don’t have to know where this is going. You don’t have to have all the answers.”

Something inside me loosened. “I’m trying.”

Her smile softened. “I know you are.”

By the time the evening settled into quiet conversation and shared smiles, I realized I wasn’t balancing between two worlds or pretending to be someone else. I was simply exactly where I was supposed to be.

* * *

19

Sawyer

The ride back to Addison’s place felt charged in a way I couldn’t quite explain.

The city blurred past in streaks of gold and navy while cool air slipped under my jacket, threaded with late summer and asphalt. My focus stayed on her, on the way her hands tightened when I accelerated and on the steady rhythm of her breath against my neck. It felt natural to have her like this, trusting me and holding on.

When I pulled up outside her building, she slid the helmet off, and her hair spilled loose as she climbed off the bike and turned to face me. “You want to come up for a little while?” she asked, her voice low and steady, not tentative but not careless either.

I didn’t pause. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

She smiled like she already knew I would and took my hand like it was obvious before leading me inside. Her condo was dim and quiet, lit by a single lamp that turned everything soft gold.

I kicked off my boots and set my helmet next to hers on the table while she padded across the floor barefoot with her blouse untucked and her hair still windblown from the ride. She looked relaxed and open, like she had shed something on the way home.

“You want a drink?” she asked while heading for the kitchen.

I shook my head and dragged a hand through my hair. “I should stick to water. Still gotta get home later.”

She opened the fridge and glanced over her shoulder. “Still or sparkling?”

“You have sparkling water?”