Cameron felt the full weight of it settle on him the second she started listing specifics.

The pie. The wine. The label. The button-down-but-don’t-look-like-you’re-running-for-office version of acceptable. The warning about her dad. The warning about her mom. The warning about chili, which somehow felt less like a joke the longer she talked.

And under all of it—

You’re really taking this seriously.

Yeah.

He was.

Probably more seriously than she even meant.

Because it wasn’t just dinner. Wasn’t just showing up with the right pie and the right bottle and the right level of shirt-button sincerity.

It was her parents.

Her house. Her table. Her life.

And once upon a time, he had been the guy who broke their daughter’s heart and left town with a scholarship and let everybody else deal with what he’d done in the place he’d done it.

There wasn’t really a version of that he got to forget.

So when she finished talking and the softest part of it landed last—They already did—something in him went still in a way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with memory.

He remembered her parents liking him.

Her dad letting him linger in the kitchen too long like he’d already half decided Cameron belonged there. Her mom asking if he was staying for dinner in that easy way that didn’t make it sound like charity. The way their house had once felt warm to walk into instead of earned on a technicality he still wasn’t sure he deserved.

And God, that stung a little.

Not because she’d said it to hurt him. Because she hadn’t.

Because it was true.

He took a slow breath through his nose and let it out carefully before he answered, like he was making sure the words he chose were the right size for what she’d just handed him.

“Okay,” he said.

Quiet. Real.

“Coconut cream pie from Mabel’s. Cream-label wine. Nice shirt, but not weirdly nice. No chili until invited into the topic.”

The corner of his mouth moved faintly.

“Very manageable rules for a man under pressure.”

That got a little warmth back into his face, but it didn’t hide the seriousness underneath it.

He looked at her then, really looked at her, the camera in her lap and the sunlight catching at the edge of her hair and that gentler expression she was trying not to make too obvious.

“I am taking it seriously,” he admitted.

No shrug. No joke over it this time.

His forearms rested on his thighs again, hands loose between them, posture grounded in a way that felt older than the boy he used to be.

“Because I know what I am walking into.”

A beat.

“And I know what I’m walking back into.”

That landed softer, but not less clearly.

He didn’t mean the house. Not just the house.

He meant the history. The fact that her parents had once liked him before he became somebody they had every right not to. The fact that stepping into their dining room now wouldn’t be neutral no matter how casual Lucy tried to make the invitation sound.

His mouth flattened slightly, then eased.

“I’m not worried about saying the wrong thing about wine,” he said. “I can follow directions.”

A faint breath of humor touched the words, but only faintly.

“I’m worried about being the guy who hurt their daughter showing up at their table and expecting that not to mean anything.”

There.

That was the center of it.

He let it sit there without softening it into something easier.

“Not because I think they’re gonna throw me out or give me some dramatic speech.” He tipped his head a little. “Honestly, that might be simpler.”

The corner of his mouth pulled, but not enough to count as a smile.

“I just know I don’t get to walk in there like I’m starting fresh.”

He could feel the truth of that all the way through him.

And weirdly, saying it didn’t make him feel smaller. Just clearer.

He looked out toward the street for a second, toward the slow-moving rhythm of Bedford Falls carrying on around them like this was just another bench, another morning, another ordinary conversation.

Then he looked back at her.

“But I’m not trying to be perfect,” he said.

That part mattered enough to say exactly.

“I’m trying to be better.”

A beat.

“Those aren’t the same thing.”

He hoped she knew that. Suspected she did. Suspected maybe that was part of why she’d asked him at all.

Because perfection would be slick. Suspicious. A little too polished to trust.

Better was quieter. Patchier. Real.

He rubbed one thumb against the heel of his opposite hand, almost absently.

“I already messed this up once,” he said. “I’m not coming into tonight casual about that.”

No self-pity. No dramatic flagellation.

Just truth stated by a man who had finally learned how expensive carelessness could be.

“And I’m not showing up to prove some big point either,” he added, glancing at her briefly. “I’m not trying to perform redemption over pie.”

That got the faintest bit of warmth back into the edges of him.

“Which feels like a sentence I should never have had to say out loud, but here we are.”

The bench creaked softly when he leaned back a fraction, letting the moment breathe before he pushed too hard on it.

When he spoke again, his voice had gentled.

“I want them to see that I’m not that kid anymore,” he said. “Not because I need applause for it.”

His eyes held hers.

“Because you shouldn’t be the only one who knows.”

That one came out truer than he’d planned.

Maybe truer than he meant to let it.

Still, he didn’t take it back.

A breeze shifted through the awning overhead, carrying the warm smell of bread from the bakery and the faint rustle of leaves from the courthouse lawn. Somewhere down the block, somebody laughed and a truck door slammed and the whole town kept being itself.

Cameron let that ordinariness sit around them.

Then, because he could only leave the moment so earnest before something in him started itching to give it a little air, he nodded once.

“So,” he said, lighter now, “to recap: I’m arriving with elite pie, correct wine, respectful shirt, no chili agenda, and the energy of a man who knows exactly how much damage decorative ceramic pumpkins can do.”

The corner of his mouth tipped.

“I think that’s a pretty decent start.”

He looked at her again, a little more warmth in his face now, a little more of that easy brightness back around the edges.

“And for the record, you telling me I don’t have to be perfect…” A small pause. “That helps.”

He didn’t overwork that. Didn’t force her to hold the full weight of what it meant to him.

Just gave it back cleanly.

Then he glanced down at the camera in her lap and back up at her.

“I can do normal,” he said. “I can do respectful. I can do dinner without turning it into a TED Talk about chili.”

A beat.

“I can definitely do not being the same idiot who left town thinking distance counted as growth.”

There was no sharpness in it. Just quiet certainty.

And then, finally, the softer, almost boyish edge of him returned again—warm enough to ease the air without breaking what had just settled between them.

“But if your dad starts in on me,” he added, “I’m gonna need you to at least look mildly sympathetic from across the table.”

His mouth pulled into a real smile then.

“Not enough to undermine your objectivity. Just enough to keep morale up.”

Lucy’s expression changed before she even realized it had.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

Enough that some of the teasing eased out of her face and something softer took its place when he started talking about her parents, about walking back into their house as the guy who had hurt her, as if that was still the only version of himself he was allowed to bring with him.

And maybe that was the thing that got her.

Not the guilt.

The fact that he still carried it like it belonged there.

Like he was bracing for it.

Like some part of him still thought he had to stand in the doorway of every good thing and introduce himself by his worst mistake before anyone else got the chance.

Lucy looked down at his hands where they rested loosely between his knees, at the way one thumb moved over the heel of the other like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

Then, before she could overthink it—

she reached for him.

Just simply.

Naturally.

Her hand slid over his and curled around it, warm and sure, and then she tugged lightly until his hand came with hers and rested in her lap.

Not dramatic.
Not a big, breathless thing.

Just Lucy, sitting on a bench in Bedford Falls with his hand in both of hers like it was the most normal thing in the world to do when someone was trying too hard not to unravel quietly in front of you.

And for a second, she just held it.

Her thumbs moved once over the back of his hand before she looked up at him.

Really looked at him.

And when she spoke, her voice had gone soft in a way it rarely did without her immediately trying to cover it.

“You do,” she said.

A beat.

“You do get to walk in there like you didn’t break my heart.”

That landed gently.

Not because she was pretending it hadn’t happened.

Because she wasn’t.

Her fingers tightened just slightly around his hand.

“This Cameron didn’t do that.”

There was no accusation in it.
No dramatic separation of old him and new him like she was trying to absolve him with one sentence.

Just the plainest version of what she meant.

The one sitting next to her now—the one who had listened all morning, who had stayed careful with her, who had let her be honest without trying to force more from it, who had taken dinner seriously because he understood what it meant—

that wasn’t the boy who had hurt her.

And maybe she needed him to hear that out loud as much as she needed to admit it to herself.

Lucy looked down at their hands for a second, then back up at him, still holding on.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here like this if I thought they were gonna be mean to you,” she said.

A beat.

“You wouldn’t have been invited.”

That part she gave him plainly, without softening it.

Because it was true.

She knew her parents.
Knew the shape of their kindness and the shape of their anger too.
And if she thought tonight would be some weird, passive-aggressive punishment dinner where everybody smiled too tightly and made him pay for history over pot roast and wine—

she never would’ve asked.

Her mouth tipped faintly then, the softness still there.

“Were they mad?” she asked.

Then answered it herself with a small breath of a laugh.

“Yeah.”

A beat.

“My dad said your full name like it was a federal offense for, like, six months.”

That earned the tiniest little smile out of her.

“My mom was more subtle, which was honestly worse.”

She looked at him then, warmer now, more open than she’d been all morning.

“But we got over it.”

That one sat there quietly.

Not because it wasn’t a big thing.

Because it didn’t need to be dressed up to be real.

Her fingers shifted against his hand again, absent and reassuring.

“People get older,” she said.

“They cool off. They stop acting like one bad thing means the whole story stays frozen there forever.”

A beat.

“Which, for the record, is very inconvenient for my personal commitment to holding grudges.”

That got just enough lightness back into it to let him breathe.

Then she softened again almost immediately.

“They’re gonna be okay with you being there,” she said.

And then, because she knew him well enough—even now, even after everything—to know he might still try to make himself smaller in the room than he needed to be, she added:

“You’re allowed to be comfortable.”

Her thumb brushed once across his knuckles.

“You don’t have to sit there acting like you’re on trial.”

That one she meant more than maybe either of them wanted to unpack on a bench before noon.

Because the truth was—

she didn’t want him showing up tonight looking like he was waiting to be punished.

She wanted him to come in and sit down and laugh and eat too much and let her parents see what she had been seeing all morning.

The steadier version.
The older one.
The one that had somehow come back looking too much like the boy she once knew and yet not acting like him at all.

And maybe that was scary.

But it was also real.

Lucy held his hand a second longer than she probably needed to.

Then another.

Her eyes dropped to it again, and when she spoke this time, her voice had gone softer still—almost absent with honesty.

“They liked you for a reason, you know.”

A beat.

“That part wasn’t fake either.”

The words came before she could stop them.

And once they were there, she didn’t pull them back.

Because that was true too.

Even then.
Even before.
Even when he’d been younger and louder and dumber and harder to trust with anything delicate.

There had still been something real in him.

Something people loved easily.

Something she had loved easily, maybe too easily, once.

Her throat tightened slightly at the edge of that thought, so naturally she did what Lucy Corbett always did when a moment got one inch too vulnerable.

She made it annoying.

“So if you embarrass me tonight,” she said, finally looking back up at him with the faintest, warmest edge of a warning in her expression, “I will take this back.”

A beat.

Her fingers squeezed his once.

“Not the hand thing,” she added, glancing down at where she was still holding it. “The emotional reassurance.”

And there it was again—that tiny bit of dry humor laid over something soft enough to matter.

Still Lucy.

Just… with her guard down enough now that he could probably see the truth through it anyway.

For a second, Cameron couldn’t feel anything except her hand.

Warm. Certain. Real.

It slid over his like it had every right to be there, like she hadn’t just reached straight through every careful, measured inch of distance they’d both been keeping all morning and done the one thing he had not let himself hope for.

And then she tugged.

Not hard. Not dramatic.

Just enough to bring his hand into her lap, where she held it in both of hers like this—this right here—wasn’t something fragile or accidental. Like she’d meant to do it the second she decided to stop overthinking it.

That hit him harder than the invitation to dinner had. Harder than the photograph. Harder, maybe, than the kiss had, because the kiss had been fast and breathless and gone before either of them had known what to do with it.

This wasn’t.

This was deliberate.

Her thumbs moved once over the back of his hand, and Cameron felt the whole world go still around that tiny motion.

Not literally. Main Street still moved. A car rolled past. Someone laughed too loudly somewhere near the courthouse. The awning overhead shifted in the breeze.

But inside him?

Still.

Then she looked at him and said it.

You do get to walk in there like you didn’t break my heart. This Cameron didn’t do that.

He didn’t answer right away.

Not because he didn’t have one. Because his throat had gone too tight for a quick response to make it through cleanly.

He looked at her instead.

At the softness in her face she still usually tried to cover. At the way she kept holding his hand while she said the hard parts. At the quiet certainty in her voice when she told him he wouldn’t have been invited if tonight was going to be some kind of punishment.

And all at once, something in him that had been braced for years without him fully realizing it eased.

Not all the way. Not enough to erase what he’d done or what it had cost.

But enough to hurt a little less.

When she said her dad had used his full name like a federal offense for six months, the corner of his mouth twitched despite everything. When she said her mom had been subtler and worse, a soft breath of something almost like laughter left him too.

Then she said they got over it.

People get older. They cool off. They stop acting like one bad thing means the whole story stays frozen there forever.

And God, he wanted to believe her.

More than that—he did.

Because Lucy wasn’t being generous in some vague, feel-better-about-yourself way. She was being specific. Grounded. Practical. The way she always was when she meant something.

Then—

You’re allowed to be comfortable. You don’t have to sit there acting like you’re on trial.

That one got him.

Not visibly, maybe. Not in a way anybody walking past the bench would have looked twice at.

But inside, yeah. That got him.

Cameron looked down at their hands for a second, at the way hers wrapped around his like she could feel the exact shape of what he’d been carrying and had simply decided, for one impossible and quiet minute, to take some of the weight herself.

He turned his hand just enough inside hers to hold back.

Not to take over. Not to shift the moment into something bigger.

Just enough that his fingers could curl lightly around the side of her hand, a gentle answer to what she’d given him.

When he finally spoke, his voice came low and rougher than usual.

“Okay,” he said.

It was a small word. Not enough for all of it.

So he tried again.

“Okay,” he repeated, softer this time, and looked up at her. “I hear you.”

That landed first.

Then, after a beat:

“And I believe you.”

He didn’t mean just about dinner. Not just about her parents. He meant all of it.

The version of him sitting beside her now. The fact that this Cameron wasn’t the boy who had hurt her. The part of him that still struggled to separate those things cleanly enough in his own head to breathe easy around them.

Her telling him he could? That he was allowed?

Yeah. He believed her.

The warmth in his hand, the warmth of hers, made it hard to feel like he was standing outside of his own life for once. Like maybe he didn’t have to walk into every room with his mistake already in front of him.

His thumb brushed once, barely there, against the side of her hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

That one came out quiet and plain and fuller than the words themselves.

Not because she was letting him off the hook. Because she wasn’t.

Because she was drawing a line between what he had done and who he had managed to become since, and maybe nobody had ever done that for him out loud before. Not like this. Not while holding his hand on a bench in Bedford Falls with the whole town moving around them like the morning hadn’t just shifted on its axis.

When she said people had liked him for a reason, his mouth tightened faintly.

Not from discomfort. From the weight of memory.

Because she was right.

Even then, there had been real things in him. Things that weren’t fake just because he’d been younger and worse at carrying them.

He had loved her badly, maybe. Immaturely. Incompletely. But not falsely.

And hearing her admit that—he felt that all the way through.

His eyes dropped once, then came back to hers.

“That part wasn’t fake for me either,” he said.

No flourish. No reaching.

Just true.

Then she did what she always did when a moment went one inch too soft.

She made it annoying.

And the second she said she’d take it back—not the hand thing, the emotional reassurance—the laugh that left him came low and helpless and warm enough to loosen everything that had tightened in him the last few minutes.

“There she is,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth pulling. “I was starting to get worried.”

The line was gentle. Affectionate in the quiet, unshowy way things had become with them this morning.

His fingers curled a little more securely around hers before easing again.

And when he looked at her this time, there was something steadier in his face than before. Not because the feeling had gone away. Because it had settled into something he could actually stand inside.

“I won’t embarrass you,” he said.

A beat.

“Not on purpose, anyway.”

That got just enough warmth into it to keep the moment from becoming too solemn again.

Then he glanced down pointedly at their hands, his mouth tipping once more.

“And for the record, I’m relieved the hand thing is safe.”

He looked back up at her, light in his eyes again now, but no less real for it.

“Would’ve been brutal to lose that and the reassurance in one sentence.”

The breeze moved through again, gentler now, stirring the end of the camera strap in her lap and shifting the awning shadow over their knees.

Cameron didn’t pull away.

Didn’t rush to stand up and keep the day moving just because staying still might mean feeling too much of it.

He stayed right there beside her on the bench with her hand in his, letting the quiet come back without hurrying to fill it.

And because he knew her well enough—even now, maybe especially now—to know she’d need the moment to stay survivable, he gave it one last nudge toward easier.

“So,” he said, voice softer now, almost casual, “I’m hearing I should come to dinner, bring the pie, bring the wine, wear the right shirt, respect the chili, and avoid public humiliation.”

A small pause.

His mouth pulled into the faintest grin.

“Which honestly sounds less like a meal and more like a very polite hostage negotiation.”

Then, quieter, the joke thinning just enough to let the truth show through it:

“I can do that.”

And he meant more than dinner.

He meant this. This version. This bench. This hand in his. This not running from what was real just because it scared him.

He could do that.

He was already doing it.

Lucy felt it the second it happened.

That tiny, almost imperceptible shift in him.

The part where he finally let it in.

Not just heard her.
Not just nodded like he understood what she was trying to say.

Actually believed her.

And for some reason, that hit her harder than she expected.

Maybe because she’d been watching him carry around the shape of old guilt all morning like it was still stitched into his skin. Maybe because some quieter part of her had wanted—needed—to know that if she handed him something gentle, he wouldn’t immediately drop it or talk himself out of deserving it.

But he didn’t.

He stayed with it.

And when he said I believe you, something in Lucy opened so suddenly and so softly that she couldn’t stop the smile that broke across her face.

Not the small one she’d been rationing out all morning.
Not the dry little half-smirks she kept hiding behind.

A real one.

Wide.
Warm.
Completely unguarded for one shining second.

And because she was still holding his hand in her lap when it happened, there was no real way to pretend it hadn’t.

Her eyes dropped briefly to their hands again, then lifted back to him, and the smile stayed there—easier now, softer, like some tight little knot in her had finally loosened without asking permission first.

It was a dangerous feeling.

Not in the sharp, panicked way she’d spent most of the morning bracing for.

In the opposite way.

In the way something dangerous sometimes became when it started feeling… safe.

And that was maybe the most unsettling part of all.

Because sitting here on a bench in the middle of Bedford Falls with his hand in hers and sunlight moving over the sidewalk and dinner plans suddenly existing like they weren’t completely insane—

she had hope.

Actual hope.

Quiet, stubborn, terrifying hope.

That maybe whatever this was between them—this weird, unfinished, still-careful thing that had somehow survived old hurt and bad timing and too many years of pretending not to think about each other—

might actually be going somewhere.

Not fast.
Not recklessly.
Not in some big dramatic movie way where everything magically fixed itself because they’d both finally admitted there was still something here.

Just…

somewhere real.

Somewhere comfortable.
Somewhere steady.
Somewhere maybe, eventually, safe enough to stop flinching around.

And the thing was—

as much as she had wanted not to feel that, she couldn’t make herself shut it down.

She had tried.
God, she had tried.

Tried to keep him in the box marked too late.
Tried to stay irritated.
Tried to keep every warm thing he said and every changed thing he did at arm’s length long enough that none of it could get in.

But it had.

And she was tired.

Tired of shoving it all away like refusing to touch it would somehow make it less true.

So maybe, for the first time since he’d come back, she just…

didn’t.

Didn’t push it away.
Didn’t pull her hand back.
Didn’t make a joke fast enough to ruin the softness of the moment before it had a chance to land.

She just sat there and let herself feel it.

Which was, frankly, deeply unlike her.

When he called dinner a polite hostage negotiation, Lucy laughed—soft and breathy and still smiling, her thumb brushing once more over the back of his hand almost absentmindedly.

“That’s pretty much exactly what it is,” she said.

A beat.

“You’re catching on fast.”

Her voice came out warmer than she meant it to.

Or maybe exactly as warm as she meant it to, and she was just finally too tired to keep pretending otherwise.

She held his hand one second longer.

Then another.

Then, with visible reluctance she did not bother disguising nearly as well as she should have, she let out a small breath and looked down the street toward Honey Bee like the town itself had just remembered to interrupt her life.

“Damn it,” she murmured.

A beat.

“I actually have to go be employed.”

That got laid over the moment lightly, but the softness stayed.

Lucy glanced back at him, smile still lingering at the edges of her mouth, and finally—finally—she eased her hands away from his, slow enough that it felt like a choice and not a retreat.

Then she shifted forward on the bench and stood, adjusting the strap of her bag over her shoulder and letting the camera settle back against her hip.

She looked down at him for half a second, sunlight catching in her hair, and the expression on her face had gone a little shy around the edges in a way she would deny under oath.

“I do have to get to the shop,” she said.

A beat.

Then, softer—

“But…”

Her fingers brushed lightly over the camera strap.

“You can walk me, if you want.”

It was such a small sentence.

Casual enough on paper.
Easy enough to brush off if either of them suddenly lost their nerve.

But standing there in front of him now, after all of this, it felt like exactly what it was:

another inch of the door opening.

Lucy’s mouth curved again, a little crooked this time.

“And before you get too excited,” she added, “that is not me being wildly romantic.”

A beat.

“That is me making sure you don’t get lost on the way to your own redemption dinner.”

The dry edge of it was there, but it couldn’t fully cover the softness underneath now.

Not anymore.

She shifted her weight and gave him a look that had gone gentler than she probably realized.

“Come on,” she said.

And even that sounded different now.

Lighter.
Less defended.
Like maybe she wasn’t just letting him walk beside her anymore.

Maybe she was starting to want him there.

The second she said it, something low and warm in Cameron’s chest settled into place.

Not the dinner. Not even the hand in his.

This.

The way she stood there in the sunlight with her bag on her shoulder and her camera at her hip and gave him one more piece of the morning without dressing it up into anything bigger than she could stand.

You can walk me, if you want.

It would have been easy—too easy—to smile like he’d won something.

He didn’t.

He just looked at her for a beat, really looked, taking in the slight crookedness of her smile, the softness she was still trying to cover with dry edges and practical excuses, the way she’d opened the door another inch and then immediately tried to make it sound logistical.

Of course she had.

Cameron pushed up from the bench in one smooth motion, the wood giving a faint creak behind him. He reached automatically for the sugar packet still tucked in his pocket and pressed it flatter against his jeans like he was making sure it was still there.

Then his eyes came back to hers, warm and easy.

“Yeah,” he said.

Simple. Steady.

Then, because she’d handed him that line about redemption dinner and the softer look in her face was making him feel a little too much all at once, the corner of his mouth pulled.

“I appreciate the concern,” he added. “Would be embarrassing to get lost in a town with one actual Main Street.”

That landed where it needed to—light enough to keep the moment breathable, not light enough to brush off what she’d offered.

He stepped into place beside her without crowding, letting her choose the pace of it. The sidewalk caught the heat of the late morning sun, warm through the soles of his boots, and Main Street moved around them in its same stubborn rhythm—doors opening, voices carrying, somebody wrestling a cardboard box out of a truck like it had personally offended them.

Lucy’s camera bumped softly against her hip every few steps.

Cameron noticed that too.

He noticed everything with her now. Not in a way that made him restless. In a way that made him careful.

For the first few seconds, he let the quiet stay exactly as it was.

Not empty. Not strained.

Just full of the bench they’d just left and the shape of her hand in his and the fact that she had looked almost shy when she asked him to come with her. He didn’t need to fill that immediately. He knew better now than to rush a moment just because it mattered.

So he walked.

Kept pace with her. Let the town move around them. Let the warmth of her invitation sit where it had landed without trying to pull it apart.

Then, after a little while, he glanced sideways at her and said, “For the record, I know that wasn’t wildly romantic.”

A beat.

His mouth tipped.

“But I’m still choosing to take it as a positive development for me personally.”

That got just enough warmth into his voice to make it a tease without making it a claim.

He looked ahead again, one hand falling into his pocket while the other swung loose at his side.

“And I think I can survive being escorted to your place of business without making it weird,” he added. “I’ve had a lot of practice at not ruining things before lunch.”

That one carried a little more boyish ease with it, a little bit of the brightness he seemed to wear naturally when he wasn’t trying too hard.

They crossed in front of the courthouse lawn, where the grass sat too green and too neatly cut to be trusted, and Cameron glanced toward Honey Bee down the block. The sign. The window display. The familiar shape of the place standing there like it had always belonged to the street.

He looked at it, then at her.

“You know,” he said, quieter this time, “I can actually see what you mean now.”

No big lead-in. No overworking it.

“About the shop still feeling like Honey Bee, just more alive.”

He let that sit between them for a second.

“The window changes are good.”

A beat.

“And that is me being very normal about your terrifying ceramic pumpkin era.”

The warmth was back in his voice by the end of it, but the truth underneath stayed intact. He meant it. He meant all of it. The shop looked like her in ways he probably wouldn’t have had words for years ago, but he had them now.

Or enough of them.

A breeze shifted through the street and caught a strand of her hair, lifting it across her cheek before it fell again. Cameron noticed the movement, noticed the way the sunlight hit the edge of her profile, noticed the part of himself that wanted to say too much about that and didn’t.

He kept it.

That was part of the walk too. Part of what this was.

Not swallowing everything important. Just knowing what needed to stay inside his own chest for a little while longer.

When they got closer to Honey Bee, he slowed half a fraction with her, easy and automatic, like he’d already fallen into her rhythm without needing to think about it.

Then, because the softness of the moment had gone just far enough that he knew it needed air again, he looked over at her and said, “I should warn you, though.”

His tone turned lighter on purpose.

“If I do survive tonight, I’m probably gonna get at least one unnecessary amount of confidence out of it.”

A beat.

“Nothing unbearable.”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Just enough to become a problem in a very polite shirt.”

That sat easy between them.

And beneath it, quieter, something steadier held its place: the fact that he was here, walking beside her because she’d asked him to. The fact that he was not treating that like a small thing. The fact that for once, he wasn’t interested in rushing any of it toward the next milestone just because he could feel one waiting somewhere down the road.

He was happy to take the sidewalk. The sunlight. The camera at her side. The ordinary shape of the next block.

By the time they reached the shop door, something in him had gone calm in the best possible way.

Not because the hard parts had disappeared.

Because they hadn’t.

Because she’d still asked him to walk her anyway.

Cameron stopped with her outside Honey Bee and looked up once at the window display before his eyes came back down to her face.

“I’ll let you go be employed,” he said.

Low. Warm. Easy.

Then the corner of his mouth pulled again.

“And for the record, I did not get lost.”

A beat.

“So I think we can officially call this a success.”

Lucy looked up at him when he said he hadn’t gotten lost, and the smile that found her this time came easier than any of the others had all morning.

Softer, too.

Less protected.

Like somewhere between the diner and the bench and the walk down Main Street, she’d finally stopped gripping the edges of herself so hard.

And maybe that should’ve scared her more than it did.

Maybe she should’ve felt the instinct to put some of it back. Pull the walls up again. Rebuild the version of herself that kept everything neat and dry and safely out of reach.

But standing there outside Honey Bee with the shop window warm behind her and Cameron looking at her like he was still trying very hard not to make too much of what she’d given him—

she just… didn’t.

Didn’t reach for distance.
Didn’t rush the goodbye.
Didn’t act like the whole morning hadn’t quietly changed shape.

Instead, she stood there with one hand curled around the strap of her bag and the other brushing lightly against the camera at her hip, and let herself look at him for one long, unhurried second.

Actually look at him.

At the sharper line of his jaw now.
At the light scruff shadowing it.
At the older, steadier version of him standing in front of her in a way that still felt a little surreal if she thought about it too hard.

So she didn’t.

She just smiled.

Small and pretty and real.

“I’ll see you at six,” she said.

Her voice came out soft enough that she could hear it herself.

And before he could answer—before the moment could tip too sentimental and make her regret having a central nervous system at all—Lucy’s brows lifted slightly like she’d just remembered something important.

“Oh.”

A beat.

“I never told you what to bring for me.”

That put the faintest trace of dry amusement back into her face, but it couldn’t fully cover the warmth underneath now.

She shifted her weight, eyes flicking briefly toward the flower bucket display outside the neighboring storefront before coming back to him.

“I like flowers,” she said.

Then, more specifically, with the quiet certainty of a woman correcting a potential disaster before it happened:

“Lilies.”

A beat.

“Not roses.”

Her nose wrinkled just slightly.

“They’re gross.”

That got accompanied by a small, matter-of-fact nod, like this was not only obvious but essential to his long-term survival.

Lucy watched the smile that would probably pull at his mouth before it even fully happened, and something in her chest gave the tiniest, warmest little ache.

Because this was ridiculous.

And nice.

And maybe a little dangerous.

And she was letting it happen anyway.

Her own smile deepened—just enough to soften the whole shape of her face—before she stepped a little closer.

Not enough to make a scene.
Not enough to turn the sidewalk into anything it didn’t need to be.

Just close enough.

And before she could overthink it—before she could hear her own brain gearing up to object, to stall, to remind her of every reason not to do something soft just because it felt right in the moment—

Lucy leaned up and pressed a quick, warm kiss to his cheek.

It was light.
Deliberate.
Gone almost the second it happened.

But not before she felt the warmth of his skin under it.
Not before she caught the faintest trace of whatever clean soap or cologne or just him still lingered there.
Not before her own stomach turned over in one deeply inconvenient, deeply girlish little flip she absolutely refused to examine in public.

When she pulled back, there was color in her face now that had nothing to do with the sun.

And because she still had at least some self-preservation left, she didn’t give either of them enough time to make it a thing.

She just looked at him once more, smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, eyes warmer than she would’ve been caught dead allowing a few hours ago.

Then she reached for the shop door handle and stepped backward toward it.

“Don’t be weird,” she said.

Softly.
Almost fondly.

A beat.

“And don’t let my dad bully you into a second bowl.”

Then, with one last little look—one she absolutely would not unpack later even though she knew she would—

Lucy slipped inside Honey Bee.

The little bell above the door chimed once as she disappeared into the warm, familiar light of the shop, leaving the scent of candles and old wood and vintage denim in her wake—

and Cameron standing outside with six o’clock, lilies, and her kiss still warm on his cheek.

Of course he stood there for a second after the door shut behind her.

The little bell above Honey Bee had barely stopped chiming, and he was still looking at the glass like maybe the shape of her would come back through it if he waited another heartbeat.

It didn’t.

The shop settled.
Main Street kept moving.
A truck rolled lazily through the square. Someone across the street laughed at something that had nothing to do with him. The striped shade from the neighboring awning shifted slightly in the breeze.

And Cameron Tate stayed exactly where she had left him, with her kiss still warm on his cheek and the absurd, helpless awareness that if he smiled any harder in the middle of town, somebody was going to call the paper.

He let out a slow breath through his nose and dragged a hand over the back of his neck, then up across the cheek she had kissed like maybe that would do anything at all to settle the heat still sitting there.

It did not.

“Don’t be weird,” he muttered under his breath.

That would’ve been a lot easier if she hadn’t leaned in close enough for him to catch the soft scent of her shampoo and candle wax and whatever else clung to Lucy Corbett when she’d been out in the sun all morning. It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t said lilies like she was correcting a man from making a grave tactical error. Easier if she hadn’t looked at him like that right before she stepped back into the shop.

But easier had apparently stopped being the point somewhere around breakfast.

His mouth pulled anyway.

Small at first.
Then wider.

He tipped his head once toward the shop window like some private, ridiculous acknowledgment of the fact that yes, this had happened, and no, he was not going to stand outside Honey Bee looking dazed until somebody from the diner spotted him and started a town-wide incident.

So he finally moved.

Not fast.
Not like he was trying to outrun it.

Just with the steadier rhythm of somebody letting the morning settle into his body one step at a time.

He walked past the window and caught the faintest reflection of himself in the glass—sun on one side of his face, something unmistakably different in his expression than when he’d first sat down with coffee and tried very hard to act like this was just another morning.

Yeah.

No one needed that reflection becoming public property.

He kept going down Main Street, one hand in his pocket, the other brushing once over the sugar packet still tucked there like proof that the whole day hadn’t been some heatstroke-induced fantasy.

Dinner at six.

Coconut cream pie from Mabel’s on Willow.
Cream-label white from Hawthorne Cellars.
Lilies.
Not roses.
No chili before invited.
No weirdly nice shirt.
No showing up late enough for her mother to be kind about it.

And under all of that, quieter but more important than any of it:

show up right.

Not polished.
Not performative.
Not trying to charm his way past the history of what he’d done.

Just right.

That part settled in him with a seriousness he didn’t have to force.

Because of course he was taking it seriously.

He had already fumbled her once.

Not in some small, recoverable way.
Not in a way that got sanded down by time into a lesson and a sigh and a better-luck-next-time story.

He had broken something precious and let distance do what distance always did—make it easier for the person who left and harder for the person who stayed.

He knew that.

Had known it for a long time, really.

What felt different now was that he wasn’t walking around inside that knowledge like it was his only defining feature anymore. It still mattered. It always would. But it wasn’t the whole of him now, and standing outside Honey Bee with her kiss still lingering against his skin, he felt that with a clarity that almost rattled him.

Lucy knew it too.

That was the part he couldn’t stop coming back to.

This Cameron didn’t do that.

He wasn’t naive enough to hear that as absolution.
Wasn’t careless enough to treat it like permission to forget.

But he did let himself stand inside it.

Just for a minute.

Long enough to admit that she had seen him—actually seen him—and what she’d seen had been enough to let him into dinner, enough to let him walk her to the shop, enough to earn a kiss on the cheek in broad daylight on Main Street.

That wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t small. And he wasn’t going to act like it was.