Page 71 of Piece By Piece

Place where the fairy lights survived the storm, eight letters. Sidewalk.

Sound that travels through shared walls, five letters. Music.

Then she reached the theme answers.

There were four long phrases stacked in the center of the grid.

She solved them one at a time, her pencil slowing as the meaning started to come into focus.

The first letter of each theme answer, read top to bottom, would spell a single word.

STAY.

She stared at it.

The pencil shook a bit in her hand.

She read it again to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.

But the letters were laid out right before her.

He hadn’t written her a note.

He hadn’t given a speech.

He had built a crossword and hidden the only word that mattered inside of it.

She looked up at him.

The light was now hitting his face.

For once, there was no wall, no half-smile, no keeping her at a safe distance.

He was just there, waiting.

“Stay,” she whispered.

“Stay,” he said.

She stepped forward, and he didn’t step back.

She reached up and put her hand on the side of his face. His skin was warm from the sun and rough along the jaw.

He closed his eyes at the touch, like nothing had happened to him this way in a very long time.

When he opened his eyes, she was right there.

He kissed her.

It was soft and uncertain, the kind of kiss that arrives at the end of a long, slow sentence.

It was something they’d been building toward since the day she’d walked into his shop with a plate of cookies and a plan he hadn’t asked for.

His hand came up to the small of her back. Her fingers curled around the collar of his navy blue shirt. And the marsh stretched out behind them as an egret took flight.

When they pulled apart, she was smiling.

“For the record,” she said, “that was worth the slow burn.”