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She got in the shower. Washed her hair. Did her makeup. Picked a deliberately normal outfit — black leggings and a soft oversized cardigan and a tank top — and looked at herself again in the bathroom mirror and tried to arrange her face into something resembling casual.
The girl in the mirror looked at her.
The girl in the mirror had the just-fucked, just-loved, just-shattered-and-rebuilt glow of a woman whose entire body had been thoroughly rewired in the last twelve hours and could not be reasonably hidden under any combination of cosmetics. Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes were huge. Her lips were too red. Her skin was glowing in that lit-from-within way she had spent her whole life thinking was a myth invented by women’s magazines.
She tried to scowl at herself.
Her face would not scowl. Her face was grinning.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
The mirror grinned wider.
She sighed. Gave up. Pulled the cardigan tighter and headed for the stairs.
If this is how I look after third base, then a home run is going to be impossible, she thought with a wicked grin.
Cant wait!
SAGE
The smell hit her halfway down the stairs.
Bacon. Pancakes. Hash browns. Something rich, buttery, and expensive. Fresh coffee. Bright, sharp grapefruit. Hot chocolate. The scents layered together in the warm cabin air and her stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl.
The music grew louder as she descended.
“You said you’re going to Austin…”
She rounded the landing and took in the great room: Brutus sprawled like a furry mountain in front of the crackling fireplace, Lily Townsend star fished happily on top of him. Tommy and Ethan were deep in some elaborate action-figure battle on the rug with Michael excitedly participating. Mary Sue sat at the breakfast nook with her coffee, glasses pushed up into her hair, scrolling through her phone. Probably checking in with the cook at the diner, making sure the breakfast rush hadn’t burned the place down without her. Annie lounged on the couch, mug in hand, smiling faintly toward the kitchen. And in the kitchen—
Sage stopped on the bottom step.
Cal was barefoot in dark jeans and a charcoal Henley pushed up to his elbows, hair was still damp at the ends from whatever absurd ex-Navy-SEAL ice-cold plunge ritual he’d done before dawn. His broad back was to her, shoulders flexing as he worked the stove — one big hand whisking something in a copper saucepan, the other flipping pancakes on the griddle without even looking. The counter behind him was a full production of sliced grapefruit, poached eggs keeping warm, a salmon platter, and glass pitchers of juice catching the morning light.
The radio played and Cal was humming along with the bridge of Blake Shelton’s “Austin,” low and content. As she watched, he laughed quietly to himself at some private thought, then turned to grab the cream from the fridge.
He saw her.
And he grinned — that rare, boyish, heart-melting grin that always undid her. His eyes, God, his eyes. The gray she’d spent weeks cataloguing — gunmetal, slate, storm-cloud, the cold steady gray of a man who’d walked into too many rooms to ever be surprised — was suddenly gold-shot and warm. The corners crinkled. His whole face lit up from somewhere behind it, like someone had finally turned a lamp on inside his chest.
Sage started crying. Silent, helpless tears that arrived before she even felt them coming. She didn’t wipe them away. She just stood there on the bottom step, hand on the banister, makeup already doomed, and looked at him.
Oh, baby. There you are. There. Oh my love…
Cal set the cream down. He crossed the kitchen in three long strides and was at the foot of the stairs before she could move. His warm, stove-heated hands cupped her face, thumbs gently sweeping under her eyes. He didn’t say a word. He just held her and looked at her, steady and sure.
“Hi,” she whispered, smiling through the tears.
“Hey, princess.”
“You’re—” Her voice cracked. “You’re happy.”
His mouth twitched in that corner-of-the-mouth way he did when words were too small. He bent and kissed her forehead, slow and lingering, lips pressed there for two full breaths.
“Yeah, Baby girl.”
“You’re happy.”
