Page 65 of Piece By Piece

And that felt like the difference between holding your breath and actually breathing.

It was almost 10 p.m. when Liza came downstairs.

Grant was sitting on the porch step between the shops. He was looking up at the fairy lights.

The square was empty.

Tomorrow it would be full of people and noise and children following clue cards to every corner of the island.

But tonight, right now, it was just the two of them, the sound of the ocean breathing off in the distance.

She sat down beside him, as close as she could, her shoulder against his, and he didn’t move.

“I told my mom,” she said.

He turned his head.

“Oh, about your job?”

“Yeah, everything, the panic attack, the lies, all of it.”

“How’d she take it?”

“She said that I don’t need to be impressive to be loved.” She smiled. “Moms are annoyingly wise sometimes.”

He nodded. “She’s right.”

They sat in the warm air, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the lights sway.

A gecko ran across the porch railing and then disappeared into the jasmine.

A porch light went off in the distance, and the sound of a screen door closing was the only thing Liza could hear.

She leaned into him slightly, just a gentle shift.

“This is the first place that’s felt like mine in such a long time,” she said.

Grant didn’t respond right away.

His jaw tightened a bit, the way it did when he was holding something back.

She’d been looking at him for weeks, so she knew exactly what it meant when his face looked that way.

But tonight, something finally gave.

Maybe it was the wine she could smell on her own breath.

Maybe it was the fairy lights.

Or maybe it was the fact that tomorrow was the festival and the world was going to get loud again.

He said very quietly, almost to himself, “When I look into your eyes, I know this is where I need to be.”

Liza suddenly went still.

The words settled over her like a warm blanket.

She didn’t look at him.