Page 16 of Strings Attached
Unfortunately, I can’t forget those things. In the decade I’ve lived and worked here, they’ve become part of me. A vine wound around a tree until it imprinted on it.
“Or maybe not.” Missy’s voice sounds almost insecure, but she shrugs it off. “Maybe grumpy gnomes are unknowable.”
I can’t help the smile that pushes my lips up. That ridiculous label shouldn’t draw me in deeper, and yet it does. Because in these teasing words, I hear something rare—someone who sees past the carefully constructed walls, past the stern authority, past the weight of magical responsibility. Everyone else in Magnolia Cove treats me like a living ward stone, necessary but cold, protective, and impersonal. But Missy… She looks at me and tries to see Dean.
Maybe that’s why I hear myself ask, “Isn’t it a bit early for Chopin, anyway?”
She traces a pattern on her cello case, her fingers moving like they’re playing invisible strings. “I’m out here trying toremember why I fell in love with music in the first place.” There’s a weight to her voice, a heaviness that pulls her shoulders and lips down.
“That surprises me.” She lifts her face as I speak. “Alex lights up every time she talks about her talented little sister. About how music isn’t just what you do, it’s who you are. She talks about it so much everyone in town now claims to know you, even if they’ve never listened to a single classical composition.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I know they’re wrong. Instead of grinning, her muscles tense, like bow strings pulled too taut, her smile flickering like a candle caught in the wind. I’ve seen that expression before—in mirrors, in memories, in moments when duty and desire wage their endless war. The look of someone drowning in others’ expectations.
A beat of silence stretches between us, potent with unspoken truths. She’s wearing a tan romper and pale blue cardigan and it’s like she’s fading into the sky and elements surrounding her. The wordangelcomes to my mind, then I immediately banish it.
I’m not a spiritual man. I trust magic I can touch, power I can trace through ward lines and protection spells. Looking at Missy, kissed by morning light, I wonder if touching her might make me believe in something more than magic. Something dangerous. Something real. My fingers flex in my pockets, brushing the familiar edge of the medallion.
“Jules fits perfectly in all of it,” she says suddenly, her voice as soft as the sun’s morning rays. “The touring, the spotlight, the constant motion. It’s like he was born for it.” She wraps her arms around her cello case, like it’s a shield she can hold against herself. “Can I tell you something? Something that stays between us?”
Her eyes have gone soft and large, seeking. I shouldn’t encourage confidence. Shouldn’t let her trust me. And yet I find myself saying, “Of course.”
“I’m terrified of disappointing Alex.” The words leave her like something she’s coughing up, raspy and painful. “She gave up everything for my dream. But what if it was never really my dream at all?”
I take a step forward. Stop. I was about to reach out for her, touch her. Before I can remember all the reasons I shouldn’t. I curl my fingers into fists, then let them fall. “Alex loves you.” The words feel inadequate, as obvious as the wards pulsing beneath our feet. Everyone on the island knows the depth of Alex Sinclair’s devotion to her sister.
“What does love mean, though?”
She’s looking up at me, sunlight brushing along her eyelashes and kissing her cheeks in ways I can’t. There’s a dusting of freckles across her nose like stars. The wards dance beneath me. I should shift my attention to them, to the magic they’re drawing off me. But I can’t look away from this woman standing before me.
Her question hangs in the morning quiet, dangerous as exposed magic. What does love mean? To sacrifice everything like Alex did for her? To walk away like I did for Nell? To stand here now, fighting the magnetic pull of honey-gold eyes while duty whispers its constant cautions?
“Love means…” My voice emerges rough, like I’ve forgotten how to shape words that matter. “I think it means seeing someone as they truly are and loving them exactly for that. And maybe it means doing what’s best for them, even when it’s difficult for you. And I think your sister has that for you, Missy.”
Her name on my lips feels like casting a spell—something powerful and precise and impossible to take back. Magic thrums around us, aching into my bones. I should have a headache from it, but I only feel an intense sense of clarity. The rising sun has turned her eyes to amber and her breath catches at my words, her gasp the only sound I can hear.
Dangerous, this honesty. More dangerous still, how much I want to keep offering it.
Her fingers ghost across Giuseppe’s case. “And what about you, Dean? Who sees you exactly as you are?”
The question strikes like lightning bypassing carefully constructed shields. In her gaze, I see past and present collide—the weight of Nell’s wedding invitation, the pressure of council expectations, the constant vigilance required of one of Magnolia Cove’s protectors.
And beneath it all, a treacherous whisper that maybe, just maybe, I’ve met someone who finally could see me for who I am, regardless.
She breaks the spell first, offering a smile that carries too many meanings to decipher. “Well, I suppose I should try the gazebo then. Don’t want to get a reprimand from the grumpy gnome council.” She smirks and shifts her cello case on her shoulder. “I’ll see you Tuesday, right?”
“Right,” I whisper, unable to form more words. She smiles anyway, and I feel caught under an enchantment, unable to move or breathe.
She turns, Giuseppe’s case swaying gently as she steps away. The sun has risen more during our conversation and it bathes her in gold. She pauses at the field’s edge and glances back over her shoulder. For a moment, she’s silhouetted against the dawn—half tangible, half dream.
Then she’s gone, leaving only the echo of her presence in the air. In the quiet that follows, I notice something else. The wards beneath my feet have settled, their usual chaotic hurricane of magical energy smoothed to gentle waves. Like a storm suddenly calmed, like magic finding its natural rhythm.
I crouch down and press a palm against the ground. The power pulses steadily into my fingertips, matching the rhythm of my heartbeat. While I’d spoken with Missy, the magic had pulledat me—not fought, not strained, but reached. Reached for me but also her, like I’d forced myself not to do.
The wards ripple beneath my touch, strong as heartwood. These are the same volatile boundaries I’d come to reinforce, the same weakened protections that should have taken hours of careful work to stabilize. Now they hum with renewed vitality, as if…
No. That’s impossible.
I trace my fingers down the grass where magic courses, searching for any sign of manipulation or external influence. But there’s only the pure, steady thrum of magic finding its natural rhythm. Like a symphony settling into its perfect harmony and?—
