Page 80 of Jack

Magic.

No, not magic. A mistake. A terrible mistake that could have hurt him. Because technically, she had still been in high school and, yes, been too young for him.

No wonder he’d run from her. Boo’s words wound through her.“For you, it isn’t over. Maybe for him it isn’t over either.”

She stared at the crackling fire.“Don’t let him walk away unless you want him to.”

But maybe it wasn’t up to her. Like the saying went—if he was into her, she’d know.

She opened a new document, watched the cursor blink, but she had no words.

Instead, she opened her email, attached the little blurb about today’s bachelorette party, sent it off to Clarice.

Closed her computer.

The door behind her opened and she turned.

The guys, coming back from the bachelor party. Doyle, laughing, and then Steinbeck, pulling off his shoes and heading upstairs. Shep, and behind him, Jack.

Shep also headed upstairs, behind Doyle.

Jack, however, glanced her direction. The firelight caught his expression, a small flicker of something in his blue eyes, pulled out a few russet tones in his dark whiskers. He’d tugged off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door, then removed his shoes, and now he came walking over to her in his stocking feet, wearing jeans and a thermal shirt that outlined his amazing shoulders.

Sheesh,she didn’t know who she liked better—the Jack of her beach memories, or this one, so much older, his edges a little softened, but still fierce and determined and possessing the ability to sweep her heart from her chest.

“You’re still up.”

She nodded, not sure what to say.

“Good.” He sat down on the chair. “Because I think I found a lead. Wanna do some tracking?” Then he smiled, and all she could think was . . .

“And then you live happily ever after.”

NINE

“Penelope had a death threat.”Jack set down his coffee, recently brewed and steaming, and sat on the chair next to Harper, who had pulled up thePenny for Your Thoughtspodcast.

Harper wore her pajama bottoms and an oversized white-and-maroon University of Minnesota sweatshirt, her short hair tousled, no makeup. Sweet. Simple.

Honest.

Twenty-eight.Noteighteen. His brain had finally sort of settled on that fact, so no, he wasn’t going to run. In fact, when he’d arrived home from the bachelor party and spotted her sitting in front of the crackling hearth, he’d thought?—

Two days.

She’d walk out of his life in two days. And he didn’t know what to do with the punch that landed in his gut, then swept his breath out.

It hadn’t helped that he couldn’t take his mind off her all evening, even as he’d hung out in the steaming hot tub and watched the Blue Ox game on a massive theater screen at Declan Stone’s impressive lake home. He’d finally suggested going over to the Lumberjack’s Table to throw axes.

Stein had agreed, apparently itching to leave, and they’d walked in right as Harper was singing the Adele song, and didn’t that take a piece out of him?“Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”She’d had a soulful longing in her voice, and if it hadn’t been for Steinbeck tugging him to the pool tables in the back, he’d have found a chair, kept listening.

Maybe come up to her and said . . .

What?Because he couldn’t have dated a high-schooler. Even if she had been eighteen years old.

Now, however . . . well, the math felt different today, sitting with her at the kitchen table, the night pressing against the windows, the bracing scent of fresh-brewed coffee in the air. She kept playing with a bracelet she wore, running the charm over the chain, clearly a thinking habit as she read through the comments from the most recent episode.

“Most of these are just people speculating on who killed Sarah Livingston,” she said.

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