Chapter Twenty-Four
The village hall smelled like sweat, dust, and slightly like desperation.
Two days. Two bloody days until the fundraiser, and everything looked like it was falling apart.
Gloria was mid-tirade about costume authenticity, her voice echoing off the walls as she gestured wildly at a rack of what appeared to be repurposed curtains. "This is meant to be a performance, not a jumble sale! These children deserve proper theatrical costumes!"
"They're eight," Arty said mildly from his ladder, where he was attempting to hang stage lights. "They'll be happy if the costumes don't fall off. Most of ‘em would rather be Pokemon."
"That is precisely the attitude that is ruining the arts in this country!"
Raven leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, watching the chaos unfold.
She was used to last minute nerves, and this was nothing more than that.
But the children were overexcited, running in circles, shrieking with laughter, completely ignoring Blossom's attempts to organize them into lines.
Daisy had somehow managed to tangle herself in a rope meant for the backdrop.
Nina was frantically searching for the sheet music that had mysteriously vanished.
And Annabelle…
Annabelle looked like she was about three seconds away from a complete breakdown.
Mind you, she’d looked like that for two weeks now, but no matter how often Raven offered to help, she never seemed to want it.
She stood in the center of it all, clipboard clutched to her chest, trying to smile while simultaneously solving seventeen problems at once.
Her cardigan was buttoned wrong. There were dark circles under her eyes that even her determinedly cheerful expression couldn't hide.
And she kept blinking too much, like she was trying to stay awake on her feet.
Raven sighed.
Helpless. That's what she felt. Completely fucking helpless.
She couldn't fix Gloria's dramatics. She couldn't make the children sit still. She couldn't solve the costume crisis or find the missing sheet music or perform any of the thousand other miracles that seemed to be required to pull this thing off.
All she could do was stand here and watch Annabelle slowly crumble under the weight of trying to save everyone and everything and wonder how, and why, she did it.
"Raven!" Gloria's voice cut through the noise. "We need you on stage for the musical number!"
Raven pushed off the wall and made her way through the chaos, dodging running children and what appeared to be a papier-maché book that someone had left in the middle of the floor.
The next twenty minutes were a special kind of torture.
The children couldn't remember the words. Gloria kept stopping mid-song to give "directorial notes" that made no sense. And through it all, Annabelle kept smiling, kept encouraging, kept acting like everything was fine when it clearly wasn't.
Finally, finally, Gloria declared they needed a break.
The children scattered immediately, descending on the snack table like a swarm of locusts. Raven stepped off the stage, ready to escape to the relative peace of the back wall, when she noticed a small figure sitting alone.
Jamie.
He was perched on the edge of the stage, knees pulled up to his chest, staring at nothing. While the other kids laughed and ate biscuits and generally behaved like tiny humans hopped up on sugar, Jamie just… sat there.
Raven frowned. She crossed the room before she could talk herself out of it and sat down on the stage beside him.
"You been practicing?" she asked.
Jamie nodded.
"Good."
A tiny smile flickered across his face.
They sat in silence for a moment. Raven had no idea what she was doing. Small talk wasn't her strong suit at the best of times, and children were a completely foreign species.
"You, um, alright?" she tried.
Jamie shrugged. Which was the universal language for 'no, but I don't want to talk about it.'
Raven knew that shrug. She'd perfected it herself around age twelve.
"The performance is in two days," she said carefully. "Getting nervous?"
"A bit." His voice was barely above a whisper. Then, quieter still: "My dad moved out. Like, properly. He's got a flat now and everything."
Oh fuck.
Raven went very still.
But Jamie was looking at her now, his eyes shiny with unshed tears, and Raven couldn't just get up and walk away.
"Sucks," she said, because what else was there to say?
"Yeah." Jamie pulled his knees in tighter. "Mum cries a lot. And they still fight on the phone. I can hear them even when I'm in my room."
Raven's chest tightened. She knew that feeling, not from parents, but from foster homes. The fights through thin walls. The feeling of being stuck in the middle of someone else's anger. The desperate wish to just make it all stop.
"Music helps," she heard herself say.
Jamie nodded slowly. "That's why I like the guitar lessons. When I'm learning the chords, I don't think about the other stuff."
"Exactly." Raven paused. "You're doing really well."
"Really?"
"Really. And I'll keep teaching you after the fundraiser, yeah? We'll keep going."
The smile that spread across Jamie's face was like watching the sun come out. Sudden and bright and completely transforming.
"Thanks, Miss Raven."
"Just Raven is fine. I sound like a Marvel character otherwise."
"Thanks, Raven."
She watched him hop off the stage and head toward the snack table, his shoulders a little less hunched, his steps a little lighter.
And then she felt it, that prickling awareness that meant someone was watching her.
She turned her head and found Annabelle standing a few feet away, clipboard forgotten at her side, staring at Raven with an expression that was equal parts wonder and something else. Something soft and aching and far too tender.
Their eyes met.
For a moment, the chaos of the hall faded away. The shrieking children, Gloria's voice, the general mayhem, all of it just… disappeared.
There was only Annabelle, looking at Raven like she was some kind of jewel.
Raven's heart stuttered.
Then Annabelle blinked, seemed to remember where she was, and quickly looked away, her cheeks flushing pink.
Raven turned back to the stage, her pulse hammering against her ribs.
Shit. Shit. Was this always going to happen? Was Annabelle always going to make her feel this way?
"Right!" Gloria clapped her hands. "Back to positions, everyone! We have a show to prepare!"
The chaos resumed. Raven forced herself to focus on the music, on the children, on anything except the way Annabelle had looked at her.
By the time rehearsal finally, mercifully ended, Raven was exhausted. Not from the music, that was fine, easy even, but from the constant low-level anxiety of being in a room full of people while tabloid photographers might be lurking outside.
She'd spotted two this morning. Just standing on the street outside her cottage, cameras ready, waiting for a glimpse of the "reclusive rockstar" to sell to the highest bidder.
Annabelle was by the door, seeing parents off, thanking them for coming, still smiling even though she looked like she might keel over at any moment.
Raven waited until the crowd had thinned before approaching.
"Hey," she said quietly.
Annabelle turned, and her smile brightened. "Hi! That was wonderful today. The children really respond to you, you know. Jamie especially. I saw you talking to him."
"Yeah, about that." Raven shoved her hands in her pockets. "He told me about his dad. That he moved out."
Annabelle's smile faltered. "Oh. Yes. It's been… difficult for him."
"He's struggling," Raven said bluntly. "Like, really struggling.
And I think…" She hesitated. This wasn't her place.
She barely knew these people. But Jamie's face kept flashing through her mind.
"I think you might be too. I think maybe you're trying to do too much.
With the fundraiser and everything else. "
"I'm fine," Annabelle said quickly. Too quickly. "Everything's under control. Just a bit tired, that's all."
"Annabelle…"
"Really, I'm fine. I just need to get through the next two days, and then I can rest. I promise." She touched Raven's arm, just briefly, and even that small contact sent warmth spreading through Raven's chest. "Thank you for caring about Jamie. It means a lot."
Then she was gone, swept away by Gloria who had apparently discovered a new crisis involving the backdrop.
Raven stood there for a moment, watching Annabelle dive back into the chaos with that same determinedly cheerful expression.
She wanted to grab her by the shoulders and tell her to stop. To take a break. To let someone else fix things for once.
But she didn't. Because Annabelle wouldn't listen, and Raven didn't have the right to make her.
Instead, she left the village hall and walked back to her cottage, her mind churning.
IT WAS PAST midnight when Raven finally gave up on sleep.
She'd been lying in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, unable to shut off her brain.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Annabelle's exhausted face. Heard Jamie talking about his parents fighting. Felt that moment when their eyes had met across the hall. And she thought about the phone calls and the offers and the knowledge that at some point she’d have to leave.
Sooner rather than later if the increasing amount of journos around had any say in the matter.
Finally, she got up, grabbed her guitar, and settled onto the sofa.
She didn't think about what she was going to play. Didn't plan it or force it. She just let her fingers find the strings and followed where they led.
Slowly, a melody emerged. Quiet. Gentle. Almost like a lullaby.
And then words came with it:
In the darkest corners
When the noise won't stop
There's a light that flickers
Never quite goes out
In the smallest kindness
In a child's shy smile
There's a strength that carries
Makes it all worthwhile
It wasn't polished. It wasn't something she could release or perform or even really call a proper song. Maybe on a B-side though.
And it was done. Complete. It felt whole. The first finished piece she'd written since Vegas, since Alissa, since everything fell apart.
Raven set her guitar aside carefully and stared at her notebook.
She'd written about Annabelle. About Jamie. About this strange little village and the way it had somehow worked its way under her skin.
She'd written about hope.
"Fuck," she whispered.
Because this wasn't just attraction anymore. This wasn't just physical. This was something bigger. Something that made her chest ache and her hands shake and her carefully constructed walls feel paper-thin.
She liked Annabelle. Really, truly liked her. More than she'd ever liked anyone, maybe. More than she'd ever liked Alissa, certainly, because with Alissa it had always been intense and passionate and volatile. A wildfire that burned hot and fast and left nothing but ash.
This was different. This was gentle and terrifying and felt like it might actually matter.
Raven pulled a blanket around her shoulders and looked at the wall that separated her cottage from Annabelle's.
She should tell her about the song. Should share it with her. Should say something about this thing that was growing between them.
But Annabelle was already stretched so thin. Already trying to save the world single-handedly. The last thing she needed was Raven adding to her burdens with feelings and complications and all the messy, difficult parts of actually caring about someone.
So Raven would keep the song to herself. At least for now. At least until after the fundraiser, when Annabelle might actually have the space to breathe.
She curled up on the sofa, still wrapped in the blanket, and closed her eyes.
And for the first time in months, she felt something that might have been peace.