Page 24 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
But me? I amanythingbut still.
I’m a mess of thoughts tangled like twine, each one fraying worse than the last. My apron’s wrinkled, my curls are halfway to war with gravity, and my chest feels too full with something that isn’t just panic—but hope, too. Which might be worse.
Because Drogath Thornhold didn’t just kiss me last night.
He didn’t just take me to pieces with those ruinous hands and make me feel like I was blooming right there in my own damn skin.
He made me feelsafe.
And that’s the part that truly undoes me.
I wake before the sun, tangled in quilts that still smell like woodsmoke and rosemary and him, and I reach across the mattress on instinct.
He’s not there.
For one long, heartbeat-skipping moment, my mind gallops straight to the worst—of course he left, of course it was a moment, a fever dream, a story I made up in the dark.
But then I smell it.
The faint curl of pine sap and ash and warm cedar. My hearth fire is going.
I sit up, heart thudding.
He lit a fire before dawn. In my hearth. Inmy home.
That’s… something.
I pad out into the kitchen, toes curling against the warm floorboards, and stop when I see it.
Sitting by the teacup I left out last night—right on the edge of the table, in the morning light that slants across my windowsill like a blessing—is a carved wooden acorn.
Another one.
Smaller than the last. Neater. More precise. It’s pale pine, smooth as anything, with a tiny swirl on the cap just like the one he gave me all those years ago.
I stare at it, my chest tightening, my fingers curling at my sides like I don’t trust them not to shake.
Then I slide it into the deep pocket of my apron—right next to the original—and press the fabric flat over my heart.
I don’t say a word.
I don’t have the breath for it.
By the time Tara shows up, I’ve already scalded the first round of syrup and dropped a jar of cardamom pods on the floor.
“Oh good,” she says, strolling in like a breeze that smells suspiciously of sass and strong opinions. “You look like someone just proposed with a dead squirrel.”
“I’mfine,” I say, too fast. “Totally fine. Peachy. Overflowing with composure.”
She leans her elbows on the prep table, chin in her hand, and grins. “You know what I love about that sentence? Every single word is a lie.”
I roll my eyes and start chopping apples with more force than necessary.
“You slept with him.”
“I didnot—” I begin, but she cuts me off with a bark of laughter.
“Oh honey, come on. You’re glowing. Your cheeks look like you blushed so hard it stained, and your curls are doing thatpost-storm satisfied heroinething.”
