47. Faith
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Faith
If there’s a checklist for “How to Accidentally Become the Town’s Valentine’s Day Hype Woman,” mine would look like this:
String lights you bought in bulk at the hardware store? Check.
Hand-cut paper hearts that may or may not be symmetrical? Check.
Hot cocoa station that smells like childhood and will absolutely ruin someone’s white sweater? Check.
A woman with a phone in her hand who is not spiraling? Miraculous, blinking, neon check.
It’s barely nine and my fingers are already cold, but my phone is warm from being in my hands for the last twenty minutes because apparently, I’ve become the kind of person who says things like “Okay, wait, hold that pose… no, don’t look at me, look at each other!
” without immediately wanting to crawl under a porch and live there forever.
The town square looks like it’s trying.
The lights zigzag between storefronts, a little crooked in places, as if whoever hung them got distracted by a conversation halfway through. Snow has been shoveled into uneven banks that sparkle in the morning sun. There’s a chalkboard sign by the diner that reads:
LOVE IS IN THE AIR
…AND SO IS FRY GREASE.
Which is either Jet’s best work or proof she’s finally stopped tolerating my attempts at “clean branding.”
I lift my phone, line up the shot, and catch the sign with the diner glowing behind it and a couple of kids racing past in puffy coats like tiny, chaotic comets.
Click.
I check the photo and immediately grin because it’s perfect.
Not perfect like the city. Perfect like real life, where the corners don’t match, and that’s the whole point.
My thumb hovers over “post,” and for a half second, I feel the old reflex tug at me. The one that whispers, Wait. Double check. Make sure it’s okay. Make sure it won’t make anyone mad.
Then I picture Dallas in his kitchen, watching me pace in circles last week while I stressed over font choices, and he said, very calmly, “Honey, it’s Buckhorn. If the font’s crooked, they’ll probably like it more.”
So I hit post.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Buckhorn!
Come warm up with cocoa, cookies, and the cutest small-town chaos you’ve ever seen.
#BuckhornValentines #SmallTownMagic #LoveLivesHere
I feel good. But it’s still a little hard to breathe, to not expect the other shoe to drop. Everything's so easy now… almost too easy. But for once, I want to let it feel real.
The likes start popping up so quickly, it feels like watching popcorn.
A comment appears: Is Jet doing the cookies again??
Jet replies from the diner’s account like she’s possessed: Yes, and they’re better than ever!
Another: Where do we park?
Another: Can we bring dogs?
And then, a message that makes my throat squeeze: This is making me homesick, and I’m only in Eugene.
I swallow around it. Because of course it does. Buckhorn has that effect. It’s like the town reaches out with a mittened hand and tugs you closer until you remember what being known feels like.
“Faith!” Rose calls, waving me over from the cocoa station like I’m running for office. “We need you. Jet is about to commit a felony.”
“I am not,” Jet snaps, shoving a tray down on the table with enough force to rattle the cups. “I am feeding people.”
Boone stands on the other side of the station holding a heart-shaped cookie like it’s a suspicious object he found in the pasture.
“This one says ‘Bemine,’” he says slowly, squinting.
Jet leans forward, eyes narrowed. “Read it again.”
Boone rotates the cookie a quarter turn. “Now it says ‘B E…’”
“It says Be Mine,” Jet repeats, each word a little sharper, like she’s trying to carve it into his brain.
Nash appears behind Boone like a heckling ghost. “He can’t read cursive, Jet. It’s a known condition.”
Clay steps in and slides Boone a cocoa with extra marshmallows like he’s defusing a bomb. Boone takes it immediately, betrayed by sugar.
I lift my phone without thinking and start recording.
Jet catches me and points a spatula at my face. “If you put this on the internet, I will fight you.”
“I would never,” I lie, smiling sweetly.
Rose leans in, whispering, “Please put it on the internet.”
I get Boone’s confused frown, Nash’s grin, Jet’s glare, and Clay’s tiny, rare smile all in one shot, and it feels… like I’m collecting proof that I’m really here.
That this is real.
That I’m not trapped in a glass conference room while someone closes a laptop in front of me like it’s a leash.
Someone bumps my shoulder gently, and I turn, expecting another crisis, but it’s my mom.
She’s bundled in her long wool coat, cheeks pink from the cold, hair tucked into her scarf, and she looks at me like she’s trying not to blink too hard, or she’ll cry.
Which is unfair, because now I want to cry too.
“You’re early,” I say, because I have no idea what else to say when my heart is doing that tender, bruised thing.
“I didn’t want to miss anything,” she replies, and the way she says it makes my throat tighten.
I glance away like I’m very interested in a snowbank.
Mom’s hand brushes my elbow. “Look at you.”
I do the stupid thing where I immediately check myself, like she means there’s something on my face, but she’s smiling. Not the careful smile. Not the “everything’s fine” smile.
The real one.
“You’re… glowing,” Mom says, but it feels so… foreign.
I try to brush it off, but the feeling lingers, soft and unexpected. Maybe I’m starting to feel like I belong here.
“I’m freezing,” I correct, because I cannot handle that level of emotion before noon.
Mom laughs quietly. “That too.”
Then she looks past me, and I follow her gaze.
Dallas is across the square, helping Ruth adjust a sign that keeps slipping sideways on the easel. He’s got that McCoy focus face on. Jaw set, hands steady, shoulders broad under his jacket. Lila is bouncing nearby, holding a stack of handmade valentines and directing traffic like a tiny foreman.
When Dallas looks up, his eyes find mine immediately.
It’s not even dramatic. It’s just… automatic.
Like he knows where I am even when he’s doing something else.
And the look he gives me, warm, amused, proud, hits me in the middle of my chest like a soft punch.
Mom watches me watching him. Of course she does.
She doesn’t tease. Doesn’t comment. She just squeezes my hand once and says, “I’m happy for you.”
That sentence could’ve shattered me a month ago.
Today, it just lands like something I can carry.
“Okay,” I manage. “Before I sob in public like a Hallmark commercial, I need to get a shot of the fire pit.”
Mom smirks. “Go, director.”
Director.
That word makes my spine straighten.
I weave through the crowd, phone up, capturing moments like they’re fireflies.
Mrs. Calder and her husband dancing slowly by the fire, her head on his shoulder like she’s done it a thousand times.
Laura organizing napkins into a flawless stack because, even though napkins don’t need perfection, Laura does. She catches me filming and immediately adjusts her posture like she’s been waiting for a camera her whole life.
Jet swatting Nash with a towel because he tried to steal a cookie off the tray.
Rose laughing so hard she has to bend at the waist, breath puffing white.
Clay crouched to tie a kid’s boot without being asked.
Boone lifting Lila onto his shoulders so she can hang a heart on the tallest branch of the “Love Tree,” his hands careful like he’s holding something precious.
I post a reel.
It’s thirty seconds of Buckhorn joy set to a cheesy love song I would’ve rolled my eyes at in the city.
The comments come in immediately.
This is adorable.
Where is Buckhorn, and can I move there?
My wife is making me drive here next year.
The cocoa looks incredible.
Is that Jet from the diner?? We LOVE Jet!
Jet sees the last one and snorts. “As they should.”
I don’t even feel the familiar dread when I watch the numbers climb. No panic about whether it’s “right.” No voice in my head saying, Careful. Don’t take up space. Don’t be seen too much.
Because Buckhorn doesn’t punish you for being visible.
It hands you a cookie and asks if you want marshmallows.
By mid-afternoon, the square is a living thing. Music playing softly, laughter rising and falling, people lingering because no one wants to be the first to leave.
I catch myself standing still, phone lowered, just breathing.
The cold air fills my lungs. The lights overhead glow against the snow. My hands ache from holding my phone and fixing signage and waving people toward the cocoa station like I’m directing a parade.
And I feel… good.
Not numb. Not high on adrenaline.
Good in my bones.
Like I did something, and it mattered, and no one had to twist my arm to make it happen.
“Faith!” Lila barrels into me, cheeks red, hair a fluffy mess under her hat. “I need you.”
My stomach flips. “Okay. Is this an emergency or a ‘kid emergency’?”
“Kid emergency,” she announces solemnly. “The Love Tree is unbalanced.”
I blink. “The Love Tree is… unbalanced.”
“Yes,” she says, as if I should’ve noticed. “All the hearts are on one side. Love will topple.”
“Tragic,” I whisper. “We can’t have that.”
She grabs my hand and drags me toward the tree with the urgency of someone who believes this is life or death, and I follow because apparently I’m the kind of person who gets kidnapped by a five-year-old for a craft crisis and thinks, This is nice.
Dallas is already there when we get to the tree, crouched down, tightening the rope around the base so it doesn’t lean.
He looks up at me, eyebrows lifting. “Love Tree trouble?”
“Catastrophic,” I confirm.
He huffs a laugh, then reaches up and plucks a paper heart off a low branch. It’s lopsided and covered in glitter.
“What’s this one say?” he asks.
Lila leans in, squinting like a tiny librarian. “‘Fate + Dallus’ with a smiley face.”
I choke.
Dallas goes very still.
Lila beams, proud of herself. “I made it.”
Dallas’s gaze flicks to mine, warm and sharp and so full of love my ribs ache.
I swallow around it. “That’s… very sweet, Lila.”
“I know,” she says, completely unbothered. “Okay, we have to fix love now.”
Dallas reaches for another heart, hangs it carefully on the opposite side of the tree, then gestures with his chin. “You want the honors?”
I take the heart Lila hands me, a tiny, messy cutout with LOVE written in marker, and hang it high on the branch Dallas holds down for me.
My fingers brush his for half a second.
Electric.
Simple.
Enough to make my stomach flip like I’m a teenager and not a grown woman who has filed restraining orders and survived hell.
Dallas lets the branch go slowly. The heart sways. The tree looks… balanced.
Love is restored.
Lila nods approvingly. “Okay. Crisis solved.”
Then she darts off toward the cocoa station again like she has eight more emergencies scheduled.
Dallas stays.
He watches me for a beat, eyes flicking over my face like he’s reading me.
“You did good today,” he says.
It’s so simple it nearly knocks me over.
I laugh softly, because if I don’t, I might cry. “I did, didn’t I?”
He steps closer, close enough that I can smell him. “You looked like yourself.”
I swallow. “I feel like myself.”
That’s the part that still surprises me. Like I’m waiting for someone to take it away.
But no one does.
Instead, Dallas’s hand slides around my waist, warm through my coat.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
He kisses me right there under the lights, in the middle of town, with snow drifting down like confetti and the Love Tree swaying beside us like it approves.
When he pulls back, my breath is shaky. My cheeks hurt from smiling, and my chest feels full in a way that used to scare me.
Dallas’s forehead rests against mine.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he murmurs.
I exhale, laughing under my breath because, of course, I’m going to get emotional over a holiday I used to pretend not to care about.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Dallas McCoy.”