“No,” she agrees. “But you don’t get to become something you’re not because of him.”
I let out a rough breath. “That line’s getting a little blurry these days.”
“You didn’t cross it,” she says quietly. “You stepped back.”
Because of you.
I don’t say that.
I probably should.
Instead, I shake my head slightly. “You keep doing that.”
“What?”
“Pulling me back from really bad decisions.”
She smiles, small but real. “You’re welcome.”
I huff a laugh.
“Come on,” she says, nudging me lightly. “I was promised jam and community bonding. Don’t ruin it.”
“No promises,” I mutter, but I let her pull me back toward the others.
And this time, I stay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Aurora
By the following week,Founders Day has taken over my life in the most aggressively wholesome way possible.
There are sign-up sheets on every flat surface in The Hollow. Community boards with handwritten notices and thumbtacks, and Dottie’s suspiciously decorative flyers. Wild Reverie posters in the windows. Food specials being tested in the kitchen. A running list behind the bar labeledTHINGS WE STILL NEEDthat somehow gets longer every time I look at it, which feels like a personal attack from office supplies.
The Hollow is busy in a way that feels different now.
Families come in during the day to ask about the music schedule. Local vendors stop by to see where they’re setting up. Beau Hartwell appears twice to ask if there will be an open mic segment for “spoken word that challenges capitalist narratives,” which is somehow both exactly what I expected from him and still a lot for a Wednesday.
Even the people who were wary at first seem to be softening.
A smile where there used to be suspicion.
A longer conversation at the bar.
A “let me know if you need help with tables” from someone who definitely would have crossed the street to avoid Ryder a month ago.
Benjamin Wren’s little campaign hasn’t exactly disappeared, but it’s starting to feel thinner at the edges. More desperate. Less like concern and more like a man realizing he may not actually get to control everything just because he wears expensive shoes and speaks in complex sentences.
And Founders Day is helping. Because apparently joy is harder to kill than fear, and Coyote Glen seems to take that as a challenge.
By noon, I’ve done approximately six hundred things, and none of them feel finished.
I’ve confirmed Wild Reverie’s set time with Sloane, rearranged the bake sale set-up twice because it needs more space than previously anticipated, and listened to Finn and Arlo argue for seven full minutes about whether “festival wings” should be a different thing than regular wings or just “wings with confidence.”
I’m carrying three poster tubes, a clipboard, and my rapidly thinning grip on reality when Zane catches the door for me with that quiet, automatic way he does things, like he’s always halfway through taking care of something before anyone notices it needs doing.
“You ate?” he asks.
