Page 26 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
He exhales. “I left her crying. That’s not talk.”
We step outside into the air cold enough to sting, and I don’t bother with civility.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I’m furious, voice snapping off frost. “That she cried?”
Brody rubs his jaw. “I didn’t think you gave a damn.”
“What did you think? That I’d toss her back into the wind like some apple core?”
“Something like that,” he says, voice rough. “Because you didn’t want to be seen.”
Maybe I didn't want to be seen.
He folds forward, hands braced against the counter. “She came to me after you told her no, years ago. She was sixteen, Garruk. She told me she thought she’d never breathe right again.”
My fists tighten, woodgrain in the porch railing imprinting lines in my palms.
“You broke her.”
Brody doesn’t flinch. “She told me she understood why. But she never got over it.”
I turn away, chest rattling. The orchard isn’t here—but I still feel it pulsing beneath the boards, beneath every root I’ve fenced and every sapling I’ve coaxed to life.
I spin back toward him. “So what, I—and I am quoting here—‘deserve to know’? That I’m human?”
Brody meets my stare. “You told her truth half-starved by fear. You let her build her life around a memory of you not caring.”
Shame moves in hot in my skin.
I look away, this time toward Orchard Hill, that ridge still stitched through with late blooms, whispers of root magichumming like a live thing beneath my feet. I feel her absence there.
Brody stands and slams the coffee cup into his palm. The porcelain cracks. Coffee spills across his hand, drips to the wood. He doesn’t flinch and doesn’t stop.
“You need to say you’re sorry,” he says. “Not because she demands it, but because she deserved better.”
His voice softens. “Not even the orchard can rewrite that. You can’t undo her scars, Garruk. But you can stop cutting deeper ones with silence.”
I stare at him. Older now. Taller. Brody still carries that urgency in his chest like a war cry—still pissed off, but maybe centered enough now to speak truth.
“Why tell me this now?” I ask, voice thicker than fog. “Why drag all that back out?”
“Because she’s hurting again,” he says. “And maybe because she needs you to stop making choices about her without telling her.”
I think about her name on my lips under the oak last night. About my promise. About petals drifting like confessions overhead.
Brody steps closer. “We weren’t friends. But I loved her like family.”
I nod, careful not to break.
“So—this is your life too,” Brody says. “Whether you like it or not, she’s wrapped around your roots. Tethered. And you’re damned if you act like that doesn’t scare you.”
I swallow. The morning light cracks through trees overhead, slicing down like blades. And for once it’s not violence I feel, it's roots—deep ones—backing me upright.
“You still here?” Brody asks.
I nod again. “Still standing.”
For a beat, we just stand.
