Page 13 of Scr*wed By the Minotaur in Hallow's Cove
I locked the door behind me, set out down Main, and promptly realized I had no idea where the hell to find a grocery store. There were a number of shops I could have stopped at—Cool Beans was open late, and the faun barista had already tried to set me up with a punch card and a social life. But I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. I took my coffee to-go instead, letting my feet lead the way, weaving through side streets and alleys until the houses began to thin and the air took on a different smell—cool, mossy, alive.
The park was on the edge of town, a long stretch of lawn bracketed by overgrown thickets and a lazy creek. I didn’t mean to end up there, but as soon as I saw the sign—HAWTHORNE PARK, in peeling blue paint—I made a beeline for the bench nearest the water and sat, shoving my hands deep in my pockets. The sun was dropping fast and the trees threw long, dramatic shadows over the grass. The creek made steady music, nothing like the chatter and grind of the city. Here, the quiet was deep and stubborn, and it left too much room for my thoughts.
I sat there for a while, breathing in the bright, green scent of evening, and let myself unravel. I tried to replay the morning with Rick like it was a funny story, something I’d tell Britt and she’d roll her eyes at my taste in men, but the humor kept fading away before it took purchase. All I could do was stare at the water and think about how easy it had been last night to let him in. How he’d felt like a home I didn’t realize I’d been missing. How I’d let myself hope, in the small, unguarded hours, that maybe, just this once, something good might last.
I’d spent my whole life pretending to be unbreakable, but it turned out that the only thing harder than being left was letting yourself be soft in the first place. How my mother had done that—year after year, heartbreak after heartbreak—was a mystery. Ididn’t have her patience or her faith. But sitting here, I realized I wanted to. Even if it meant looking like a fool sometimes.
A crisp wind picked up off the water, and I hunched my shoulders, pulling my knees to my chest. I tried to blink the tears away, but they kept coming—slow, embarrassing, but also weirdly relieving. I cried because somewhere in the marrow of myself, I already missed Rick, and I hated how easily that happened. I let myself cry until the sky went dark. I didn’t even hear anyone approach when a woman about my age appeared in front of me. She had curly red hair and large hazel eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked, brows raised.
I sniffed, embarrassed to be caught crying in public. “I’m fine.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m—” I broke off, then tried to smile. “I moved to town and nobody told me the pollen count in Hallow’s Cove was, uh, catastrophic.” I wiped my face on my shoulder, trying to play it cool.
The woman laughed, the laugh of someone who has definitely lied about allergies before. “Oh, that’s nothing. Wait until the sap spirits bloom. Last year, I cried for a week.” She plopped down at the far end of the bench, hands tucked between her knees. “I’m Maisie.”
The strange woman pulled a packet of tissues from her sweater pocket and handed it to me wordlessly. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose in a very unladylike fashion and took a big breath. The crying spell was done. I was still upset, but I was no longer on the verge of tears.
“Do you want to talk about it?” the woman asked.
I puffed out a breath of air, not sure what I wanted. But I knew I wasn’t ready to go grocery shopping or worse, head back to my new place and risk running into Rick again. Even his name made him sound like an ass. I should have known.
I tried to shrug it off. “Just guy trouble. Or monster trouble, I guess.” The words sounded ridiculous as soon as I said them, but Maisie just nodded.
“Don’t worry, it’s a town specialty.” She bumped my shoulder lightly with hers. “We’ve all had our tour of Hallow’s Cove heartbreak.”
I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. I pressed the tissue to my nose, wondering how much of my makeup was left after the crying jag.
Maisie’s mouth twitched in a smile she tried to hide. “So whose ass do I need to kick?”
I weighed the odds of opening up to a complete stranger versus pretending I was just fine and risking spontaneous combustion. In the end, my brain was too fried and my heart too stomped-on to keep playing it cool.
“It was a minotaur,” I muttered, staring at my shoes. “Seven feet tall, devastatingly hot, and emotionally stunted. We had a night. It was… I thought it was something. But then he just—” I snapped my fingers. “Poof. Gone before breakfast. Acted like nothing happened. Now I get to spend all week pretending I’m only here to gut a derelict storefront, not because he made me feel something for the first time in forever.”
Maisie let out a low whistle. “Ooof. Yeah, that tracks. There’s always at least one minotaur who thinks he’s being noble by ghosting a girl. Like they’re sparing us instead of just making it worse.” She grinned, but the kindness behind it took the sting out. “You’d think the horns would mean they know how to handle delicate things, but no. Always charging ahead, then surprised when things get messy.”
I snorted, half laugh, half sob. “He said it was just one night. But it didn’t feel like that.” My voice went small. “It felt like more.”
Maisie nodded, eyes soft and oddly ancient. “It always does, with the good ones. Doesn’t mean you’re crazy, just means you’re alive.” She stared out over the creek, legs swinging under the bench, like she’d done this before. “You know, you can always throw a rock through his window. No one would blame you.”
I smiled, a real one, the first since the morning. “Maybe if I get bored this week.” I brushed my hair out of my face. “I was actually on my way to find the local grocery store, before I decided to ugly cry in the park.”
Maisie hopped off the bench and offered me her hand like she’s just had an epiphany. “Come on. I’ll show you. If you’re going to stick it out in Hallow’s, you need food, and probably a decent bottle of wine. Also, the produce section is a prime spot for low-stakes people-watching. I’ll teach you the ropes.”
I hesitated, some tiny, stubborn part of me wanting to wallow a little longer. But the larger part—the part that remembered what it felt like to be cared for, even in small, unexpected ways—took her hand.
The walk to the market was short; Maisie kept up a commentary on the houses we passed: that one’s haunted, that one has a secret basement, the blue one with the porch swing is owned by a banshee who bakes cookies for every single funeral in town. I let her talk fill the empty places in my head, and by the time we passed the bakery and ducked into the small, bright market, I was almost convinced I could do this whole “new life” thing after all.
Maisie steered me straight to the produce aisle, somehow knowing exactly where the best fruit was hidden. She inspected a head of lettuce with the gravity of a surgeon, then turned to me with a sharp look.
“You want to know the secret to surviving here?” she said, voice low. “Don’t let anyone convince you that what you’refeeling is too much. This town is built on people who felt too much and did something about it.”
She piled mushrooms and snow peas into a paper bag, her deft hands moving with rhythmic certainty.
“So what brought you here?” I asked, curiosity finally outweighing my self-pity. “You sound like you’re a lifer.”
