Page 64 of The Pumpkin Spice Spell
“But that’s not going to happen,” he says, his eyes dropping to his hands. “Watching her walk through town with her new family like I don’t exist…I realized I’ve already lost her.”
His breath catches. “I mean, I probably neverreallyhad her, not in the way a kid should have their mother. But I thought that if I worked hard enough, stayed out of trouble, showed up for her… maybe she’d see me. Maybe she’d love me.”
He laughs bitterly, blinking fast. “But she doesn’t.”
I want to reach out, touch him, hold him, but I can feel how close he is to unraveling, and I don’t want to make him feel like he can’t talk to me right now. I can feel that he needs this.
“It’s like…” he continues with a whisper, “I’m mourning a mom who’s still alive.”
And just like that, I feel the depth of it and the grief he’s carried around for years with first his father, and now her. It’s an ache that doesn’t show up in loud sobs but in empty glances and tired shoulders and words he’s never said out loud.
And I hate she did this. She’s still alive, and she’s making her kid grieve her like she’s dead. I hate her for that.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can think to say without bursting into tears myself.
He finally looks at me, and there’s something so raw and real in his gaze, I almost can’t breathe.
“Don’t be,” he says. “You and your family are the only people who never made me feel like I had to earn love.”
And just like that, I know I’m done for.
Because Tate Holloway may be broken in places, but he’s not empty. He’s not disposable. He’severything.
And tonight? I think he finally sees it, too.
His eyes meet mine. Something flickers behind them again, softer this time.
“You don’t have to do that,” he murmurs.
“Do what?”
“Make me feel better.”
“Maybe Iwantto make you feel better,” I snap.
He blinks.
And suddenly the air between us is thick with something else entirely.
He sets down his muffin, steps a little closer. Just enough to make the hair on my arms stand up.
“You do?”
I swallow. Ishouldtell him I don’t care and that I was just being polite. That I made the muffins for Remy, and that I didn’t watch the way his shirt stuck to the muscles in his back while he fixed the bench. That my hand didn’t tingle where it brushed his.
But I don’t lie. Instead, I say, “Of course I do.” And it’s the truest thing I’ve said all day.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. Tate steps in, closing the space between us until the air feels charged, humming. His hand lifts slowly, hesitantly, like he’s about to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear… or cup my cheek, thumb grazing the corner of my mouth. My breath catches, my chest tight, waiting.
But just as his fingers hover close enough that I can feel their heat, the bell above the door jingles. We both startle, the soundsharp in the quiet. Tate’s hand falls back immediately, curling into a fist at his side, like he’s caught himself too close to a line he wasn’t ready to cross.
I watch him step back, putting space between us again, though the charged air lingers. My skin still tingles with the ghost of the touch that never came.
“I swear to the moon and stars, if one more person tells me to smile more…” Ivy bursts through the door, her braid unraveling in frizz, cheeks flushed with the brisk air. She drops her oversized bag with a dramatic sigh that rattles the bell above the door.
“Uh oh,” I say, leaning over a stack of new romance releases. “Let me guess, rough day?”
“I need coffee. Buckets of it. Maybe a vat of it I can swim in.” She kicks off one shoe, then the other, glaring at them like they personally offended her. “And definitely not in these ridiculous heels ever again. Whose idea was this? Certainly not mine.”
