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Back Love at First Save as PDF
Chapters (28)
  1. Praise
  2. Also by
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Prologue
  7. Chapter 1
  8. Chapter 2
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Chapter 4
  11. Chapter 5
  12. Chapter 6
  13. Chapter 7
  14. Chapter 8
  15. Chapter 9
  16. Chapter 10
  17. Chapter 11
  18. Chapter 12
  19. Chapter 13
  20. Chapter 14
  21. Chapter 15
  22. Chapter 16
  23. Chapter 17
  24. Chapter 18
  25. Chapter 19
  26. Epilogue
  27. Acknowledgments
  28. Teaser Chapter

For a second, she felt fully like she’d already won the evening—her smile, her snark, her surprise poetry reading. No fish-hiding necessary. He’d been caught completely off guard, and Deepa had been exactly right—she hadn’t needed to tell him what this building was all about in the day-to-day. She’d needed to show him. This wasn’t the kind of place some weekender could find peace in. This wasn’t the kind of place where people came and went.

But then he lifted the scroll of paper he held in one hand and slowly—meaningfully, teasingly, she thought—tapped the edge of it against the palm of his other hand. His dark gaze locked on to her, the corner of his mouth crooking up to match the tilt of his laurel wreath.

She wanted to snatch the poem back. She wanted to cut her own hand off, for all she could feel it vibrating with the memory of touching his.

He took a step back, the curve of his smile widening. Like he knew exactly what she’d been thinking—about his poem, about his palm and hers.

“I’d better get over there and see it for myself, then,” he said.

And when he turned to walk away, to weave his way into the crowd, she had the strangest feeling.

She had the feeling that Nonna’s plans for this night weren’t so simple after all.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Maybe she thought he wouldn’t be good in a crowd.

But he was great in a crowd.

Under the lights of colorful paper lanterns he kept having to duck beneath, Will stood with his poem tucked into his back pocket and a beer in his hand, nodding along to a story one of Marian Goodnight’s former students (he knew she was a teacher; no one could fake a voice like that) was telling him about the time he’d gotten caught sticking gum underneath his desk in her classroom. Will laughed at all the funny parts, asked all the right follow-up questions, same as he had through what by now felt like dozens of similar stories—not only about Marian, but about everyone at this party. Who they knew, where they worked, what neighborhood they grew up in, why they were at a backyard poetry reading on a Saturday night.