Beau Carter had been sitting at the little outdoor café table for a solid twenty minutes, but he wouldn’t’ve known it if the sun itself reached down and tapped his shoulder to remind him.

Time wasn’t real. Not when you were about to meet the person he'd been thinking about nonstop.

He kept checking his phone, not because he was impatient, but because he was trying to remember how apps worked. “Did they say five-thirty or six? Or was that when they were leavin’ their place? Or... wait, was it Eastern time?” He stared at the screen like it owed him an answer and, failing that, shoved it back in his jeans.

The soft clink of plates, the hiss of the espresso machine, the distant strum of a guitar from a street performer—none of it registered. The world was background noise. Beau’s whole brain was full of them. The picture on their profile, the way they messaged all sweet-like, that little smile they sent in a selfie that damn near knocked the air outta his lungs.

His boots tapped out an anxious little beat against the café's tiled patio. He wasn’t nervous, exactly. He was just thinking. Real hard. The kinda thinking that turned his eyebrows into a little squiggle and made his lips press into a soft pout.

Was his shirt okay? Should he’ve worn the green one instead—the one Dixie said made his arms look “less like ham hocks”? No, no. This one had pearl snaps. They liked those. Fancy. Classic. Solid pick.

He reached up, adjusted his cowboy hat for the ninth time, then leaned his big forearms on the table, folding his hands like he was about to say grace. He didn’t notice he’d been holding his breath ‘til he let it out with a quiet little “huhhh.”

What if they were outta his league?

Like, what if they took one look at him and realized they deserved someone who could read books without movin’ their lips or knew what “artisanal” meant without Googlin’ it? Or worse... what if they were real polite the whole time and then ghosted him afterward, like that one gal from Oklahoma who said he was “endearing” but “too sincere.” Whatever that meant.

He tugged at his belt buckle, a nervous little tic, and muttered under his breath, “C’mon, Beau. Just be yourself. You practiced your greetin’ six times in the mirror. You smell nice. You only sweated through one shirt today. You got this, big guy.”

And right then—just as a breeze picked up and rustled the leaves of the café’s patio umbrella—he felt a presence near the table. Not a sound, not a shadow. Just a feeling in his chest like gravity hiccuped.

But he didn’t look up. Not right away.

He was still thinkin’.

And boy, was that about to bite him right in the ass.