We keep walking—the library where the librarian asks if I'm "Holt's girl" and I don't correct her because what would I even say, the post office where there's apparently a package waiting for me—
"Wait," I say, stopping. "I don't get mail here. Nobody knows I'm here."
The clerk—older woman, glasses on a chain, the kind of person who looks like she's been working here since mail was invented—smiles. "It's addressed to Scout Adler, care of Ward and Weller Auto. Came in yesterday."
She hands me a box. Small, brown paper, my name written in handwriting that makes my chest tight. Neat. Precise. Familiar.
Holt's handwriting.
"I'm gonna—" I gesture vaguely. "I'll be right back."
I step outside, find a bench in the shade, and open the box.
Work boots.
Not fancy. Not new. But good quality, sturdy, exactly my size. The kind that'll last, that'll protect my feet, that cost more than I can afford right now.
There's a note. Small, tucked inside, written in that same careful hand:
Yours are falling apart. These'll last longer.
—H
That's it. No explanation. No grand gesture. Just: your shoes are dying, here are new ones. I noticed, I fixed it.
My throat goes tight.
My eyes burn and I blink hard because I'm not crying over work boots in the middle of town on a Saturday morning.
I'm not.
Except I am.
A little, because nobody has noticed my shoes before. Nobody's cared that they're held together with duct tape. Nobody's just—fixed something without being asked.
He saw.
He noticed.
He cared enough to do something about it.
I sit there on that bench with a box of boots in my lap and something cracks open in my chest. Not breaking. Opening. Like a door I'd nailed shut is creaking back open, letting light in.
“You okay?” Maeve appears, hovering. “You disappeared and I thought maybe you’d melted or been kidnapped or—what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I wipe my eyes. “Nothing’s wrong. Holt sent me boots.”
“Oh.” She sits next to me, looks at the box. “Oh. Yeah. That’s… very him.”
“He noticed my shoes were falling apart.”
“He notices everything. He just doesn’t say anything about it.” She nudges my shoulder lightly. “Probably a leftover habit from the military.”
I blink. “Holt was in the military?”
“Yeah. Him and Finn.” Maeve’s tone shifts, careful. “But that story isn’t mine to tell.”
I look down at the boots, the weight of them warm in my arms. “I don’t know how to—” The words snag. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
