Page 33 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
And me?
I’m stuck somewhere in between.
Caught between the man who carved an acorn for my tea tin and the one who kept his empire’s claws in the soil behind my shop.
I don’t know who he is anymore.
And the worst part?
Istillwant to believe he’s mine.
CHAPTER 16
DROGATH
The engine’s still ticking when I kill the headlights and sit in the dark, the windshield fogging from the breath I didn’t realize I’ve been holding for hours.
I should go inside.
I should explain.
But I know how this will go—she’ll look at me like she doesn’t recognize the man standing in front of her anymore, and I’ll say too little or too much, and none of it will make a damn bit of difference. Not with the truth chained up behind layers of caution and bad timing.
Instead, I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles pale, and I watch the golden light flicker through the shop window like it’s a lighthouse I don’t know how to reach anymore.
The developers callthemselves Kestrel Properties, but it’s a snake’s skin draped over a beast I’ve seen before—Lanton Greaves. City-slick bastard with teeth too white and contracts slicker than spring mud. He tried to poach one of my riverfront holdings five years ago, and I buried him under so much legal tangle he coughed up his wallet.
Now he’s sniffing around Maple Hollow like it’s easy prey. Offering twice market value for old barns, paying in quiet cash and promises made in backrooms. His pawns show up with fresh suits and friendly smiles and try to sweet-talk orchard widows into signing things they don’t understand.
I’ve been blocking him for weeks.
Using fronts. Quiet corporations. Outbidding him under false names to hold back the tide. It’s messy, and it’s not clean. But it’s working—barely.
And then he shifted.
I don’t know how he found the stretch near Tessa’s back garden, but he’s circling it now. I saw the drone footage pop up in his bid proposal yesterday. “Untapped edge potential,” he called it. “Perfect site for high-end cottages.”
Cottages. Right where the wild mint grows beside her rain barrels. Right where I carved our initials into a sugar maple the year before I left.
I crushed the copy of the bid in my fist.
Tara shows up at my temporary office above the old print shop, not bothering to knock. She never does. She barges in like a windstorm wrapped in auburn curls and opinions I didn’t ask for.
“She’s slipping,” she says, dropping a bag of pastries on my desk like it’s an offering or a bribe or both.
I grunt. “She’s scared.”
“She’s angry,” she corrects, flopping into the chair across from me. “And she’s not wrong. You’re making moves behind curtains again. You think you’re protecting her, but all she sees is the same old cycle—Drogath making decisions, alone in his cave, too noble to let anyone in.”
I say nothing.
Because I know she’s right.
And I hate it.
Tara sighs, softer this time. “You keep saying you want roots. You want to stay. Thenact like it.You can’t keep treating love like it’s some antique to dust off only when it’s safe.”
I glance out the window, where the leaves are thinning, and the trees are starting to show bone.
