Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Forrest
If emotional repression ever becomes an Olympic sport, I’m bringing home gold.
Maybe silver.
Gold would require talking about why I wanted it.
“Like I said, you don’t owe them pretty feelings,” I tell Daisy.
She blinks at me from across the table, half a sandwich in her hand and a face like she’s deciding whether to cry, argue, or throw the napkin basket at me.
“That is a terrible slogan.”
“It’s honest.”
“It would look awful embroidered on vineyard linen.”
“Only if you sell it at the gift shop,” I suggest.
This time, she almost laughs.
Almost.
I’ll take it.
The first time Daisy laughed at something I said, I looked away so fast I nearly spilled coffee.
It happened back in March. Before I knew she was Daisy Thorn.
Before she knew I was a Wolfcraft. Before Mom warned me that our families had made the whole thing complicated in a way only Winterberry Cove families can manage.
Which is to say, unnecessarily dramatically, and with at least three women claiming they saw it coming.
I was reading in the corner. She was restocking the romance shelf and muttering at a book with a clinch cover because the hero apparently had “the emotional stamina of a damp envelope.” I said that sounded generous. She stared at me for two full seconds, then laughed.
It was loud.
The sound had no strategy in it.
Since then, I’ve been chasing it without meaning to.
Which is a problem.
I moved to Boston for one reason.
Survival.
My PR team called it a fresh start. Cleaner that way. Easier to sell than “former league problem child relocates before the sponsors run.”
One sponsor agreed to keep me under contract if I could prove the anger-management classes weren’t just damage control.
My agent suggested coaching hockey.
Kids. Practices. Structure. A whistle instead of a contract negotiation. A second act respectable enough that people might stop waiting for me to ruin it.
Then I mentioned it to my mother.
That was my mistake.
Within forty-eight hours, she had found me an interview with the high school athletic department at Winterberry Cove.
Now, the school board wants to meet. Parents want answers. Boosters want proof I can coach kids without turning practices into war games.
The athletic director says my experience is exactly what they need.
The superintendent says my reputation is exactly what they fear.
They want the player without the history.
People always do.
They want the goals, the grit, the clips they can show at alumni dinners. They don’t want the penalties, the fights, the headlines, the grainy video of me losing my temper in a tunnel after a game while half the internet decided I was everything wrong with men in sports.
The fact that the video started after the worst part doesn’t matter.
Neither do small towns.
They don’t wait for context.
They print the version that fits on a napkin and pass it around with coffee.
It wasn’t the first time either.
That’s the part nobody has to say because I already know it.
Maybe that’s why August nearly broke me. Not because of the anger-management classes. Those were fine. Useful, even, once I stopped sitting there like I’d been kidnapped by a feelings cult.
My regular therapist heard me rant about the whole ordeal until I ran out of ways to sound justified.
During anger management, I realize that people aren’t angry.
Anger is an easier emotion to hold onto.
Anger gives people something to look at.
It puts a wall between you and the thing under it.
Fear. Shame. Grief. Panic. Humiliation. Exhaustion so deep it starts speaking through your hands because your mouth refuses.
Most of the time, people aren’t angry because they want to hurt someone.
They’re scared.
They’re cornered.
They’re ashamed.
They’re trying not to ask for something they already know they won’t get.
And if they do know they need help, good luck.
Therapy costs money. Time costs money. Medication costs money.
A decent doctor who listens costs money.
Taking a morning off work to sit in a waiting room costs money.
Even admitting you’re not okay can cost you a job, a reputation, custody, respect, the one remaining story people were willing to believe about you.
So people keep moving.
They get louder.
Quieter.
Meaner.
Funnier.
More gracious.
I glance at Daisy and wonder if she’s going to crack at some point and forget having grace, and snap at everyone. Her phone buzzes again.
The sound cuts through the café, small and electric.
Her fingers pause on the sandwich wrapper.
“Keep eating,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “You know, for a man reading a romance novel under duress, you’re very bossy.”
“I’m not reading under duress.”
“You looked like I handed you a live grenade.”
“I took the book.”
“Only because I emotionally cornered you.”
I scoff. “Like I’d be scared of you.”
She gapes. “I can be scary.”
“You’re five-five and holding a sandwich.”
“Five-five and a half,” she corrects, lifting the sandwich like evidence. “And women have done terrifying things with carbohydrates.”
Puck huffs beneath the table.
Daisy points at him. “See? He understands.”
“He wants your leftovers.”
“That’s still support.”
I look at my dog. “You’re embarrassing us.”
Puck’s tail thumps once against the floor.
Daisy smiles down at him.
This smile is tired.
But it’s hers.
I have the sudden, stupid thought that I’d like to see it in the morning light.
Not café light. Not under these lamps with the rain making the windows blur the city into something softer than it is.
Morning.
Her in my sweatshirt. Puck at her feet. Coffee she’s ruined with syrup. A book open on the table. No phone buzzing from people who use her competence like storage space.
The thought comes out of nowhere and hits hard enough that I shut the book.
Daisy looks over. “Wow. Already defeated by chapter one?”
“No.”
“Too many feelings?” She takes another bite of the sandwich, watching me over the edge of it like she’s waiting for me to confess to a crime.
“Too many adjectives,” I say.
“That’s called atmosphere.”
“That’s called wasting time.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll survive.”
I shouldn’t say what I add next.
I know that before it leaves my mouth.
Still, it comes out.
“You always do.”
Her expression shifts.
I see the words reach a place neither of us meant to touch.
For a second, there’s no bickering. No sandwich surveillance. No dog between us acting like an overly invested chaperone. Just Daisy looking at me, and me realizing I’ve said something too close to what I actually think.
That she survives.
That I notice.
That I don’t know why it makes me angry that she has to.
She lowers the sandwich to the wrapper. Her thumb brushes at a crumb near her mouth, missing it entirely.
I could tell her.
I could reach across the table and wipe it away.
I could do one small, stupid, intimate thing and ruin the careful distance we keep pretending is enough.
I don’t move.
Daisy drops her gaze first.
“Well,” she says, her voice lighter than her face, “someone has to. I’ve already saved for October’s rent, and it feels rude to waste the achievement.”
I let her have the joke.
For now.
Daisy reaches for her sandwich again. I open the book.
“You’re doing it again,” Daisy says.
“Reading?”
“Brooding with props.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“You absolutely are. The book is just there for plausible deniability.”
I turn one page. “I’m absorbing.”
“You haven’t absorbed a single sentence.”
“Maybe I’m a slow learner.”
“No, you’re not.” Her voice changes before she can catch it. Softer. Certain. Then she clears her throat and ruins it on purpose. “You’re many terrible things, Forrest Wolfcraft, but slow is not one of them.”
Something in my chest moves. I don’t name it. Naming things gives them rights.
“You always this generous when someone feeds you?” I ask.
“You bought me half a sandwich.”
“A full sandwich. You’ve eaten half.”
“Fine. You bought me a sandwich and then monitored it like a parole officer.”
“You were going to pretend coffee counted as dinner.”
“It has beans.”
“No.”
“Bean-adjacent.”
“No.”
“Bean-inspired?”
“No.”
Her mouth curves.
I keep my eyes on the book because looking at her when she smiles feels like putting my hand too close to an open flame and calling it warmth.
“Anyway,” she says, picking at the wrapper, “if you hate adjectives, romance may be too emotionally advanced for you.”
“I don’t hate adjectives.”
“You just insulted the atmosphere.”
“I insulted excess.”
“That’s rich coming from a man who communicates mostly through frowning.”
“Efficient.”
“Primitive.”
“Clear.”
“Emotionally bankrupt.”
I look up. “Careful, Thorn.”
Her eyes brighten, and there she is again. Not fine. Not fixed. But back in her body. Back in the rhythm. The banter puts a little space between her and the wedding, and I hate how relieved I am to see it.
“What?” she asks. “Are you going to report me to the Committee for Injured Masculinity?”
“No. They’re busy.”
“Annual conference?”
“Retreat.”
“Trust falls?”
“Fistfights.”
She laughs.
This time, she doesn’t swallow it.
It comes out quick and honest. For one second, I forget the book, the school board, the video, and the months I spent learning how to feel something without burning the room down.
For one second, I’m just here.
Across from her.
Wanting too much.
Bea calls Daisy’s name from the counter.
Daisy straightens like someone tugged an invisible string through her spine.
The moment is over before either of us can decide what it was.
“Duty calls,” she says, standing with her sandwich still in hand.
“Customer service?”
“Espresso emergency. Very different.”
She takes two steps, then turns back and points at the book. “You have homework.”
“I’m not doing homework.”
“You agreed to the book.”
“I took the book.”
“In the literary world, that’s a binding contract.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is when witnessed by a dog.”
Puck thumps his tail.
“Biased witness,” I say.
“Still counts.”
She starts to go again, then stops.
Her eyes drop to the romance novel, then to my hands, then back to my face.
For a second, she looks like she might say thank you.
Honestly, I don’t want the thank you.
I wouldn’t know what I’d do with it.
So I scowl first.
“Go,” I tell her. “Before Bea starts throwing biscotti.”
Daisy’s mouth tilts. “That happened once.”
“Twice.”
“The second time was justified.”
“Customer asked if she had decaf.”
“Exactly.”
Her smile stays a little longer this time.
Then she walks away, mustard on her sleeve, hair slipping from its clip, carrying her half-finished sandwich like she has every intention of pretending that counted as a meal.
I watch her go.
I shouldn’t.
I do anyway.
Because The Turning Page is quiet enough for a man to think.
Warm enough for my dog to sleep.
Crowded enough that no one asks too many questions.
And Daisy Thorn is here, driving me out of my mind one argument at a time, making this place feel less like somewhere I hide and more like somewhere I keep returning to on purpose.
Which is exactly why I should stop coming.
Tomorrow.
Probably.