Page 171 of Knot Baked Out For This

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"The inevitable one! I've already picked my dress!"

"We need to do the corn maze," Levi interrupts, bouncing on his toes. "It's tradition!"

"Since when?" I ask.

"Since right now!"

The corn maze looms before us, eight feet tall and professionally confusing. There's a couple at the entrance taking selfies, a group of teenagers daring each other to go in without phone flashlights, and one small child crying because "the corn has eyes."

"We should split up," Luca suggests. "Make it interesting."

"Absolutely not," I say immediately. "That's how people die in horror movies."

"In corn?"

"Especially in corn! Haven't you seen Children of the Corn?"

"That was about creepy kids, not corn itself."

"The corn was definitely complicit."

"Pairs then," Rowan decides. "Hazel with me, twins together."

"Why do you get Hazel?" Levi protests.

"Because I won't get her lost."

"I have an excellent sense of direction!"

"You got lost in your own barn last week."

"It was dark!"

"It was 2 PM!"

While they bicker, Rowan takes my hand and pulls me into the maze. The temperature drops immediately inside the corn walls, everything muffled and green-tinted from the filtered sunlight.

"This is creepy," I whisper.

"Why are you whispering?"

"The corn might hear us."

He laughs, tugging me down a left turn.

"The corn is not sentient."

"That's what they want you to think."

We walk deeper into the maze, taking turns at random—or what I think is random until I realize Rowan's navigating with purpose.

"You know where we're going."

"Maybe."

"How?"

He glances at me, something soft in his amber eyes. "Used to come here as a teenager. When pack expectations got too heavy. There's a spot in the middle where you can just... breathe."

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