Page 59 of Stitch & Steel
Twenty-One
BELLA
Summer faded like a slow-burning candle.
The air was crisper now, the sun setting earlier behind the mountains, casting long golden streaks through the trees. I pulled my sleeves down more often. Wore socks around the cabin. Lit candles at dusk that smelled like cinnamon and home.
The storm that had swallowed our lives—the danger, the tension, the long nights of fear—had finally passed. The MC rooted out the threat. Whatever had stirred up the rival club died with the last ride they took out of town.
Now, everything felt quieter.
Too quiet sometimes.
I didn’t talk much about resigning my job in Charlotte. Just filled out the paperwork one morning and never looked back. I didn’t even cry. It felt like stepping out of one life and into another—one that fit me better, like I’d finally stopped pretending to wear someone else’s shoes.
Kasey showed up the following weekend, her little SUV packed to the brim with everything I’d left behind. She didn’t judge. Just hugged me hard, looked around the mountain cabin with tears in her eyes, and said, “God, you really are happy here.”
I was.
Even if part of that happiness came with a layer of ache I hadn’t expected.
Gran went to bed earlier now. Woke up later. The pill bottles on her nightstand had multiplied like rabbits. Sometimes she repeated stories. Other times she just sat in the sun with Scout curled against her legs, silent, peaceful, as if trying to memorize the trees and sky before they vanished from memory.
Scout wouldn’t leave her side.
He used to sleep at the foot of my bed. Now he guarded Gran like she was his only purpose on earth. I think he knew. I think animals sense what we pretend not to.
We hired help. Quiet, competent aides who came during the day and made sure Gran was never alone when Logan and I needed to leave. I started teaching at a small school farther down the mountain. The pay wasn’t great, but the benefits were solid, and the view from my classroom window was better than any skyline I’d ever known.
Logan still took me on motorcycle rides, sometimes to the lake, sometimes to nowhere in particular. He held my hand in public. Made me laugh when the nights grew long. We went to the movies, real ones, with popcorn and sticky floors and whispering in the dark. Other times, we stayed home, playing cards with Gran or slow-dancing barefoot in the kitchen while a pot of chili simmered on the stove.
Our life wasn’t glamorous. But it was full.
The nights were still high with passion—Logan had a way of making every slow kiss feel like a promise and every touch feel like the start of something we’d never finish. We weren’t pregnant, and maybe that was for the best. We needed this time, these quiet months, to figure out what it meant to really build something—not just fall into it.
But time kept moving.
The leaves began to turn.
I tried not to notice the way Gran’s hands sometimes trembled more than usual or how she paused mid-thought like her brain had lost its grip on the next word. I kissed her cheek and made her tea. I tucked her in and whispered goodnight like I was the grandmother and she was the child.
I wanted to stop time. Trap it in amber and hold it up to the light.
I wanted to stay here, in the space between late summer and early fall, where the world was still warm and golden and Logan smiled like he already knew our future.
But the days were getting shorter.
And I could feel winter coming.
There’s something about the mountains at night. The way the stars blanket the sky like diamonds tossed over black velvet. The way the pine trees whisper secrets to the wind. It wraps around you, slow and warm, like falling in love with your whole life.
The fire crackled in the pit. Bear strummed his guitar with a lazy rhythm that matched the crackle and pop of the logs. Scout lay curled at Gran’s feet—she’d been wheeled out earlier in her blanket-lined chair, eyes bright as she sang softly along to an old song only she seemed to remember. The air smelled like roasted marshmallows, woodsmoke, and happiness.
I never thought this would be enough.
No champagne bars, no skyline views, no fancy brunches with overpriced mimosas.
And yet…
