“After my mother. I thought if I worked long enough, hard enough, I could shut it out. But anger was all I had left for a while. Anger’s easy. It feels clean. Like you’re doing something, even when you’re just…burning.”
Her heart gave a traitorous twist. “And now?”
His voice was so low, quiet enough that she almost missed it. “Now I’m still angry. But it’s notallI am anymore. That’s the trick. It doesn’t leave you. It just…stops being the only thing in the room. Eventually, I realized anger wasn’t keeping her with me. It was only keeping me from living without her.”
The words landed like a stone in Maude’s chest, reverberating through the hollow space she tried so hard to keep locked. Herthroat tightened. She looked away, but the fire blurred.Damn him, she thought fiercely.Trust him to ruin a perfectly good sulk with logic.
The silence stretched again, but it felt different now—less like suffocation, more like shared weight. He offered her food after a while: bread crisped over the fire, sprinkled with herbs. When she bit into it, the warmth spread down her chest, steadying.
“Not bad,” she muttered.
His brows shot up. “From you, that’s practically a standing ovation.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He grinned, quick, then let it fade back into the quiet.
When the pan was scraped clean, Wesley lay back on the ground, folding his arms under his head. Maude hesitated, then unrolled her coat and stretched out beside him, far enough that their elbows wouldn’t touch. The sky opened above them—ink-black, spattered with stars like shards of glass. For a long time, they only listened to the crackle of the fire and the sigh of wind through the trees.
Then Wesley asked, “What did you love most about it?”
She blinked at him. “About what?”
“Working with Bailey. The thing that made you keep going after he was gone.”
Her chest tightened, air catching on the question. She turned away so she wouldn’t have to see him watching her, fixing her gaze on the star-pierced sky instead. Easier to speak to the night than to his face.
“I loved…” Her voice snagged, and she swallowed. “I loved the way he turned everything into a lesson without making it feel like one. How he’d drag me out to the Wilds in the middle of the night just because he’d spotted glowcaps blooming and thought I should see them before they burned out.” A brittle laugh caught in her throat. “Or how he insisted every festival needed a prank—once, he hexed the mayor’s wig to scream obscenities until sunrise. Claimed it was ‘for morale.’”
Her lips curved, then flattened. “He taught me how to climb cliffs without breaking my neck, how to haggle until merchants cried uncle, how to dance badly enough no one could accuse me of trying.” She exhaled shakily. “He gave me all these pieces of a life I didn’t think I’d get to have. But most of all… he never made me feel like I was in the way. He made space for me in everything. Even when I got it wrong, he’d laugh and make it part of the lesson. He made me feel like I wasn’t just…some stray he’d dragged out of the woods. Like I mattered.”
The last word cracked, and she bit it back, furious with herself.
Wesley adjusted himself, leaning on his side to face her. “That doesn’t die just because he did. The way someone sees you—that’s the piece that stays.”
Her vision blurred again, traitorous, and she shut her eyes tight like a lock on a door. “And you?” she asked, forcing the words out. “What do you love most about baking?”
His chuckle was low, almost self-conscious. “The way that it’s the opposite of healing.”
She frowned, peeking at him. “That’s a strange way to say it.”
Firelight carved shadows along his jaw. “Everyone thought I’d become a healer. Maybe I could’ve. But healing’s about fixing what’s already broken. Baking’s about making something that didn’t exist five minutes ago. Both take care of people. One’s just…sweeter.”
His gaze tracked the stars, distant, thoughtful. “I like how a meal slows down time. A bite forces a pause. People sit. They breathe. For a moment, they’re just…there.” He glanced at her then, eyes catching firelight. “No one cheers when you balance the town books. No one sings when you mend a roof. But a tray of fresh rolls?” His mouth curved faintly. “Suddenly the whole street’s smiling. I like that. That joy you don’t have to bargain for.”
The embers spit sparks, lifting like fireflies into the night. He leaned back on his elbows, eyes closing briefly. “Maybesomeday I’ll open a stall at the docks—give free bread to the night workers. Or teach kids to bake. Something small, something good.” He exhaled, long and even, and the sound carried like a promise into the cold air.
Maude’s throat worked, words pushing up and tangling before they could form. She opened her mouth—closed it again. All that came out was a thin breath, frayed, as if her chest had forgotten how to hold anything gentler.
The night pressed close, cold and vast, but for the first time in six months, the ache in her chest didn’t feel unbearable.
Not gone—she wasn’t naïve enough to think it ever would be. Grief wasn’t something you misplaced and forgot about. It was bone-deep, a permanent tenant. But, after speaking of him—Bailey—the good parts, the stupid little memories that had stitched their days together…it felt different. Different than saying the words to Oli or Selene, no matter how much they loved her, no matter how desperately they wanted to help.
Wesley hadn’t pitied her. He hadn’t hurried to soothe or fix. He’d just…listened. And somehow, that left her lighter.
Sleep crept in like fog off the Peaks. Her body yielded inch by inch, her breath falling into step with Wesley’s, both moving to the quiet crackle of the fire.
Twelve
