It looked like the kind of place where people trusted their neighbors, where they baked cookies for newcomers and helped each other shovel driveways, where everything seemed warm and safe even in the cold.
A place that did not exist in the world I knew.
A place that was far too perfect for someone like me.
Sienna saw the way I looked at the lakefront and raised an eyebrow. “What? Shocked, we are not a frozen tundra wasteland?”
“It is very charming,” I admitted.
She laughed softly. “Careful. If the town hears you say that, you will be forced into community events.”
I kept my gaze on the road. “I am not here for community.”
“You are here for what exactly?”
“Work. Solitude. The usual.”
Her expression shifted to curious. Unsettled, and maybe something else.
“You really do not like people, do you?” she asked.
“I like some people.”
“Which ones?”
I glanced at her. “I do not know you well enough to say.”
She blinked. “So I am undecided.”
“Undetermined,” I said.
“Well,” she muttered, looking back out the window, “that makes two of us.”
I almost smiled again. Almost.
We drove deeper into town where string lights hung across the main street, and a hardware store sign gently swung in the breeze. A small café with frosted windows advertised peppermint mochas and fresh scones. A bookstore with a carved wooden sign sat beside a florist shop that looked like it was pulled from a postcard.
Every inch of it felt like a world manufactured to be safe.
Cozy.
Unreachably optimistic.
I felt something pinch inside me. A reminder of how very temporary my presence here would be. How this place would remain just as perfect after I left.
Sienna shifted beside me.
“Well,” she said, “welcome to Buttercup Lake. Try to look miserable so the locals don’t get suspicious.”
I nodded once. “Noted.”
“And for the record,” she added, staring resolutely ahead, “I really do not fantasize about caves.”
I let the quiet stretch a moment longer than necessary.
“Of course not. That would be strange.”
She made a strangled noise. “Please stop talking forever.”
