Page 19 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
I initial it.
Then I set the pen down and stare at the paper until my eyes blur.
I don’t tell her.
Not yet.
I want her to know—feel—that I’m standing by her not because I hold something over her, but because I’d still be here even if I had nothing left to give but this stubborn heart and a pair of hands that only ever learned how to build or break.
Outside, the wind howls faintly, shaking the windows like old bones rattling secrets in the dark.
I lean back, close my eyes, and whisper into the room lit only by lamplight and embers, “Let her choose me. Or let her walk away. But let her know it’shersnow, either way.”
Then I reach for a fresh block of wood and my carving knife.
Because if I can’t sleep, I may as well make something with my hands that isn’t built from regret.
CHAPTER 9
TESSA
Itell myself it’s just the cider fumes. Or the stress. Or the eighty-three things I still have to do before the gala kicks off in three days. But none of those excuses explain why my hands are trembling like autumn leaves whenhewalks past me carrying a crate of sugar pumpkins like they weigh less than a basket of daisies.
He’s rolled his sleeves up again.
Which should be a minor detail. Innocuous. Irrelevant.
But it’s not.
Because now I’m staring at the striations on his forearms, the way his muscles flex with every step, how the veins along the backs of his hands catch the morning light like they’re just as carved as the signs he’s been making. I know those arms. I know what they feel like wrapped around me in the dark, what they sound like when they pin me gently to his chest and promise forever in the space between breaths.
I also know better than to get lost in that memory.
“Crates go by the cider press,” I say, trying to sound like someone who isn’t internally short-circuiting.
Drogath just grunts his acknowledgment and turns, boots crunching over the gravel path between the barn and the tasting tent.
He doesn’t look at me.
Not right away.
But the moment he sets the crate down and turns back, his gaze catches mine like a hook in the gut, and I knowhe feels it too.The pull. The way we keep orbiting each other like we forgot how to stay apart.
I pivot quickly and pretend to reorganize the garlands that donotneed reorganizing.
“Table three needs a replacement,” Bramley calls from across the lawn, waving a clipboard like it insulted him. “Top’s wobblier than my knees in a frost snap!”
“On it!” I call, and Drogath is already moving beside me before I can protest.
“I’ll carry it,” he says, already reaching for the rickety table.
“You know, thereareother villagers with working arms,” I snap, though my tone comes out more flustered than firm.
His brow arches, just slightly. “But none this efficient.”
“You’resucha show-off.”
He shrugs. “You noticed.”
