Page 131 of The Goat Next Door

In the passenger seat, Ember is staring out the side window. She isn’t rigid anymore—the sharp, defensive posture she held all week at the bakery has softened into something resembling a truce—but she isn’t leaning across the console either.

I tap the steering wheel, the leather cold under my grip.

“Sophie’s going to be impossible to wake up for school tomorrow,” I say, trying to break the heavy silence. “She’s got this thing about not wanting to put her socks on.”

Ember glances over, then back to the window. “She just needs a deal. Tell her if she wears the socks, she gets to pick the song in the truck.”

“I tried that. She picked the same song for three days straight. My brain is turning into bubblegum.”

Ember lets out a short, airy laugh. “At least it’s not the one about the singing squirrels.”

For a second, things feel almost normal. Not fixed. Definitely not fixed. But familiar enough that my chest loosens a little.

I glance over at her at the next stop sign. “You know she’s doing it on purpose now, right?”

Ember finally looks at me. “Doing what?”

“Torturing me.”

A tiny smile pulls at her mouth. “With squirrels?”

“With that one specific squirrel song, yes.”

“She’s five.”

“She’s strategic.”

That gets another quiet laugh out of her, softer this time, and I swear the sound hits me harder than it should. I didn’t realize how quiet my life had become until right now.

“I just… I keep looking at her, and then at everything else, and I realize how much I was holding my breath.”

“Holding your breath for what?”

“For you to leave,” I admit, the words feeling clumsy. “I spent months, honestly, thinking it was just a seasonal thing. Like you’d pack up the second the first frost hit and head back to wherever you came from.”

Ember turns her head toward me. “We’ve had this conversation, Brooks. You made your assumptions about me pretty clear.”

“I know,” I say. “But the absurdity of it is finally sinking in. I look at you now—I see you in the bakery, I see you with the neighbors, I see you in the line at the post office—and it’s like… the town feels different. It’s like the place wouldn’t even recognize itself without you here.”

She goes quiet.

“I feel like such an idiot. I spent so much energy bracing for you to leave that I forgot to actually ask you to stay. I was so busy protecting myself from an exit that hadn’t even happened yet that I missed the fact that you were already building a life here. My life.”

She doesn’t answer right away. I keep talking because if I stop now, I probably won’t say any of this.

“You come in here with your little glitter boxes and your plants and your music playing at seven in the morning, and Sophie gets attached to you in like… two seconds.” I shake my head once. “Then I get attached to you, which is somehow worse.”

Her eyes flick toward me.

“I kept thinking eventually you’d wake up and realize this town’s too small. Or too boring. Or I’m too much work.”

“Brooks—”

“No, seriously.” I let out a short laugh that doesn’t sound amused at all. “You know what my plan was? Keep everything casual enough that it wouldn’t destroy me if you left.”

“And how’d that work out for you?”

I huff out a breath. “Terrible. Obviously.”