Page 58 of Kellan & Emmett
“Goddamn,” he whispered against my mouth. “You’re mine.”
I collapsed into him, laughter shaky, my body trembling. We cleaned ourselves clumsily, still kissing between wipes of a towel, and then curled under the sheets, skin to skin, legs tangled. His hand stayed on my chest, steady as a heartbeat.
And I knew—this wasn’t just sex. It was love. Had always been love. I didn’t want LA. Didn’t want the empty apartment, the cold nights. I wanted this. Him. Us.
For the first time in decades, the future didn’t scare me half as much as the thought of losing Emmett again.
Daily To-Do List
Pick up produce from farmers’ market
Fix porch swing chain before guests notice
Prep lemonade stand for festival crowd
Tell Kellan I love him
Chapter 30
Emmett
A week had passed since whipped cream and devotion, since Kellan’s mouth had rewritten every memory I’d carried of him into something living, present, here. The days since fell into a rhythm so steady it startled me — morning chores, breakfast with the guests, afternoons stolen in glances and brushes, nights tangled together until dawn crept too close.
And then came festival day. Gomillion had pulled out all its small-town stops: bunting strung across Main Street, kids with sticky cotton-candy hands racing between stalls, the smell of funnel cakes and fried pickles curling in the air. A fiddler screeched cheerfully on the main stage, and Miss Cole’s voice echoed in my memory —you can’t call it summer until you’ve had pie under the gazebo, boy.
Now it was me bringing guests for “local color,” but this year felt different. This year I walked those streets with Kellan Hayes at my side. His tan had deepened from wrangling kids at camp, his hair lightened at the edges, his smile looser, freer.
And God help me, he looked like he belonged here. He looked like he belonged with me.[33]
Everywhere we turned, someone stopped him. Mr. Whitaker from the hardware store clapped him on the back. Parents of campers called out thanks, waving like he’d saved their summers. Kellan laughed, shrugged it off, but the glow in his face betrayed him. He fit right in, like the twenty years between had never happened.
Then Paige Turner cut through the chatter, as blunt as she’d always been. “So, Kellan Hayes,” she said, folding her arms. “You sticking around for good, or heading back to the big city?”
The air thinned around us. My chest tightened.
Kellan smiled, but not all the way. “Haven’t decided yet.”
Just four words. And still, they landed like a hammer.
Hope flared sharp because he hadn’t said no. But fear rushed in right after, because not saying no wasn’t the same as yes.[34]
I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, smiling politely at the next person who waved like nothing inside me had just cracked open. I’d run this inn for fifteen years — I knew how to keep a calm face while something twisted underneath.
But Kellan’s “Haven’t decided yet” replayed on a loop, beating in time with the fiddle and the drum of my own pulse.
Tell him I love him.
Four words I’d written on my list that morning, same as tightening shutters or calling the produce guy. Ordinary tasks, but this one? This one had teeth.
Because if I said it now, would he hear it as truth, or would he hear it as a chain? Would he think I was trying to anchor him here out of guilt, out of obligation? I couldn’t do that to him. Not again.
And the truth was uglier: the last time I’d handed him my heart, I’d lost him for twenty years. I’d spent too many nights coming back empty-handed from that creek, hoping for something that never came. I wasn’t sure I could survive hearing silence again.
