Page 11 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
“Then whatareyou doing?”
“I’ve been trying to do right by you,” he says. “Even when I was gone.”
“By disappearing?”
“No,” he growls, frustrated. “Byprotectingyou.”
I blink, caught off guard. “What?”
“I own the deed to this shop’s land,” he says. Flat. Simple. But it might as well be a lightning bolt straight to the chest.
My world tilts.
“Youwhat?”
“I’ve had it since the year after I left. Bought it through a shell company so no one else could touch it. I kept the taxes paid, kept the title safe. No one evenlookedat this street unless I allowed it.”
“You’ve been… you’ve beenowningmy shop without telling me?”
“Not to control it. To protect it. To protectyou.”
I reel back, vision going white at the edges. “So all this time, you’ve been making decisions about my life behind my back? And I’m just what—too fragile to handle the truth?”
“That’s not what I?—”
“You don’t get tochoosewhat’s best for me, Drogath!” My voice cracks, full and furious now. “That’s not love. That’s control. That’s the same damn thing that broke us in the first place.”
His face hardens like stone, but his eyes… his eyes are raw. Wounded. Wide.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says, quiet now. “I thought if I built enough walls around you, no one could hurt you. Not even me.”
“Well, newsflash,” I snap. “You still did.”
I don’t wait for his response. I storm into the back room, heart thudding like a war drum, the scent of dried apple and crushed rosemary thick in the air behind me.
And in the silence that follows, I think I hear something break.
Maybe it’s just the thread.
But it feels like something far more fragile.
Something I used to believe in.
CHAPTER 6
DROGATH
Idon’t follow her.
Every muscle in me screams to go after Tessa, to storm through that swinging backroom door and tell her everything I’ve never had the guts to say. But I don’t. Because chasing her right now wouldn’t be protecting her—it’d be charging at a wound with dirty hands.
So I stand in the shop like a stranger who doesn’t recognize his own wreckage. The smell of cinnamon and bruised rosemary clings to the air like it’s trying to hold me back, but there’s nothing soft left in this room—not with the echo of her voice still slicing through the silence.
That’s not love. That’s control.
Godsdamn.
I feel it in my ribs like a punch from a man twice my size.
