He shrugs lightly, though even that small movement looks deliberate.
“I needed to see you.”
He stops on the other side of the counter, his hands resting lightly on the wood.
“How areyou?” he asks.
The question carries more weight than the words themselves.
“I’m okay.”
He studies me for a moment, measuring the truth of it.
Then he nods.
His hand shifts slightly across the counter, stopping just short of mine.
He doesn’t reach further.
He leaves the choice with me.
I close the distance.
Our fingers fit together naturally, the contact warm and grounding.
Neither of us speaks.
We don’t need to.
The bell above the door rings.
I don’t let go of Phil’s hand immediately.
Charlotte steps inside, a cardboard box balanced carefully in her hands, several of her ceramic vases nestled inside. She pauses when she sees me, her expression shifting from mild distraction to something warmer.
“You're back,” she says. “Emma was beginning to make executive decisions.”
“I always make executive decisions,” Emma calls from the back room.
Charlotte smiles faintly, then her gaze moves past me.
She takes in Phil’s face. The bruising along his jaw. The careful way he holds himself.
Understanding settles quietly across her expression.
“I heard,” she says gently.
Of course she did.
Fellside doesn’t keep secrets. It absorbs them, turns them over, smooths their edges, and passes them from one person to the next until they become part of the landscape. Not maliciously. Not always. Just inevitably.
I had known this moment would come. The first conversation where someone outside our small circle acknowledged it openly. The first time it stopped being something contained between us and became something the village understood.
Charlotte sets the box down and steps around the counter.
She pulls me into a hug without asking, her arms firm and steady around me.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she says quietly.