Page 6 of Unlucky in Love
Watching her. Teasing her.
Laughing with her like nothing had ever happened between them.
When everything was finally in order, she slung her bag over her shoulder and flipped off the lights. The café plunged into darkness, only the soft glow of the streetlamps filtering inthrough the glass. She locked the front door, double-checking it out of habit, then stepped out into the night.
The air was cool against her cheeks, carrying the faint scent of pine and the distant hum of traffic from the highway. The small town had already tucked itself in for the night. Windows were dark, streets quiet, only a stray cat darting across the road to break the stillness.
Taylor pulled her jacket tighter and started down the familiar two-block stretch toward her apartment. Her footsteps echoed softly on the sidewalk, a rhythm she knew by heart.
Halfway down the block, a chill rippled across her skin.
She paused, glancing over her shoulder. The street was empty. Nothing but shadows stretching long beneath the streetlamps.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling. Like eyes on the back of her neck. Like someone was there, just out of sight.
Taylor forced a laugh under her breath. “You are imagining things.”
She adjusted her bag, quickened her pace.
But the unease lingered, curling low in her stomach, following her all the way home.
Chapter 2
Ryan
Ryan lingered outside the café longer than he meant to. The night air was cool against his face, carrying the smell of roasted beans and the faint vanilla syrup that seemed to cling to the café walls. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, glancing back through the glass as Taylor flicked off the lights inside.
She hadn’t changed. Not really. She still moved with that brisk determination, still smiled at people like she meant it, even when he could see exhaustion at the corners of her eyes.
But she had changed too.
There was a weight about her now, a quiet resilience that hadn’t been there when she was seventeen. She carried herself like someone who had been holding up the world alone for far too long.
And that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He told himself to walk away. To head home, let her lock up, mind his own business. She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t need him.
Except the thought of her walking alone through dark streets gnawed at him. Maybe it was the job still clinging to his bones. Maybe it was the failure that never left him, the one that had sent him back to this small town in the first place. He had sworn not to let anyone else slip through his fingers.
Taylor’s voice echoed in his head. My mom has been gone a long time. I’ve been on my own since then.
He hadn’t known that. Not the full truth of it, anyway. He remembered her mom vaguely, remembered polite conversations when he picked Emma up, remembered a woman who smiled brightly in public. He hadn’t realized Taylor had been left to fend for herself so completely.
That knowledge sat in his chest like a stone.
The café door opened. Taylor stepped out, jacket pulled tight around her, bag slung over her shoulder. She locked the door with quick, practiced movements and turned down the street.
Ryan followed at a distance. Not close enough for her to notice, not close enough for her to accuse him of smothering her, but close enough that if something happened, he could close the space in seconds.
Her stride was steady, confident, but he saw the way her shoulders stiffened halfway down the block. She glanced back, scanning the shadows, her hand tightening on her bag strap. For a moment, Ryan thought she had spotted him.
But she shook her head and kept walking, muttering something he couldn’t hear.
He stayed until her apartment door clicked shut behind her, the light flicking on in the window. Only then did he let himself exhale.
Ryan waited until the light in Taylor’s apartment blinked off before turning away. The night had grown colder, the air sharp against his lungs as he shoved his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and started the walk back to his rental.
The small apartment sat above a hardware store on Main Street. It smelled faintly of sawdust and mothballs, the kind of scent that clung to old buildings with drafty windows and too-thin walls. Not home, but serviceable. Temporary. That was all he needed.
