Page 60 of What Remains of Grace

Some evenings, Jenna would come home from a bike ride or a walk with him and find Emmie waiting in the kitchen, arms crossed, trying and failing to hide her grin.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Jenna Bennett,” Emmie whispered theatrically, like sharing a forbidden secret.

Jenna covered her face. “You’re insufferable.”

But the teasing had softened something between them, widened the space where they could laugh together again, where grief didn’t swallow the entire room.

Jenna kept trying to tell herself that was all this was.

Sometimes, when he was talking to Travis or Emmie or some vendor on the phone, she’d catch herself watching him and wonder if friendship was supposed to feel like this, like a moth circling a flame and pretending not to see it, not to be drawn to it.

She knew better than to lean closer.

One wrong move and he’d remember she wasn’t meant to get attached to. One wrong confession and she’d have to admit she already was.

So she joked. She teased. She agreed to bike rides and beach pianos and sticky summer evenings downtown because the truth was she just wanted to be around him.

16

The Wall Between

Cole hadn’t meant to start staying late.

Interior work was supposed to be the easy part, the home stretch. Once the framing was solid, the roof patched, the soffit fixed, and the subfloor secure, the rest of it was detail work. Paint. Trim. Fixtures. The kinds of jobs he could usually hand off to his crew while he moved on to the next site.

But he found himself inventing reasons to linger, a last-minute adjustment on the bakery lighting. Another pass with the level on the shelves in Jenna’s office. Double-checking the caulk line on the kitchen window that didn’t actually need double-checking.

He told himself it was because this job mattered. Because too many people had history tangled up in these walls to risk sloppy work. Which was true.

It just wasn’t the whole truth.

He kept replaying that first bike ride more than he cared to admit.

The way she’d shown up at the trailhead, hair pulled back, cheeks still warm from rushing, helmet slightly crooked like she’d forgotten how it was supposed to fit.

He remembered pacing his breath to hers without letting her notice, keeping to her cadence even when she sped up on the Clearwater stretch like she had something to prove.

He remembered the sound of her laugh when Emmie’s country-music vendetta came up.

He remembered how easy it had been. Too easy.

And he’d made sure to drop her off well before the sun went down, like darkness itself was a line he couldn’t cross with her, at least not on personal time.

“Boss, you heading out or moving in?” Travis called one evening from the bakery door, wiping his hands on a rag.

Cole glanced at the clock. It was after seven-thirty. The sky outside had dimmed to the bruised blue of early evening, just before the streetlights flickered on.

“In a minute,” he said. “I want to make sure this dimmer switch isn’t going to buzz on you.”

Travis smirked. “Pretty sure the dimmer’s fine. You just like the view.”

Cole leveled him with a look. “What view?”

Travis only grinned wider and jerked his chin toward the side window that faced the house, where Jenna’s shape moved through the kitchen, just a blur of motion, hair up, phone tucked between shoulder and ear while she stacked takeout menus in a drawer.