CHAPTER 3 #2
It wasn’t the kind of imposter syndrome you could talk about in polite company, or even with a close friend—though she tried, once, with Alaina, who had smiled and said, “But you are the boss, Lainie, the owner.” As if the papers in the safe, the bank statements with her name instead of John’s, could testify to the world that she belonged in her own life.
The truth was, she sometimes felt like the ghost of herself, haunting the rooms of a story she barely remembered writing.
The original Lainie—the one who powered through grad school, who could recite every cabernet vintage on the Central Coast, who wore her hair shoulder length and kept her voice low—she was a rumor at best. This Lainie, with her insomnia and her secret-keeping and her new wrinkles, was the unreliable narrator of her own damn memoir.
When was she going to arrive on the other side?
She sighed, trying to summon a sense of occasion, a little pride, a little something.
The grand opening was supposed to be a celebration, the kind of event people remembered years later.
She'd ordered the banners, triple-checked the guest list, even arranged for a jazz quartet instead of the usual wedding cover band.
But now, standing in the mirror with her hair still damp and her eyes rimmed with sleep, all she felt was the low, familiar drone of anxiety.
With a shake of her head, she grabbed the brush and blow dryer and styled her hair into a sleek bob.
She smoothed her palm down her blouse, straightened her collar, and realized her hands were shaking just enough to make buttoning a challenge. She made a fist until the tremor stopped, then exhaled through her nose the way Kalen sometimes did when he was trying to pass for human.
She pressed the timepiece flat against her sternum and breathed.
The metal flared warm under her palm. Just for a second—a quick bloom of heat that faded before she could decide if she'd imagined it.
She hadn't imagined it.
Downstairs, Kalen was waiting with another mug.
"Thank you."
"Nae problem." He leaned against the counter, dressed now in black from head to toe—shirt, trousers, boots.
It was more formal than his usual look. She could tell from the way he kept rolling his cuffs that he'd rather be in a kilt.
"Everything we need is already up at the winery.
Charlie has it handled. Nothing to do until about ten. "
"Even with the rain?"
"Aye. Even with the rain." His mouth curved. "Quit frowning."
"I'm not frowning."
"You are."
She caught her reflection in the dark window behind him. Damn. She was.
"I saw you flying this morning," she said. "From my window."
"Felt a wee bit wound up. Thought I'd stretch my wings, have a look around."
"And?"
"Nothing seems amiss."
His eyes held hers a beat too long. Something moved behind them—not dishonesty, but a door closing. He was choosing what to share. She recognized it because she did the same thing with her kids every day.
She didn't push. Not today.
He lifted the last cinnamon roll from the plate. "Want half?"
She shook her head.
He cut it into four sections anyway, flipping the knife end over end between cuts—not showing off, just a reflex.
He'd told her once that, in his world, a knife was as common as a fork.
She found herself watching his hands—not the cinnamon roll, his hands—and something warm moved through her chest that had nothing to do with the timepiece.
Three months. Sometimes the details of how he'd ended up here—the novel, the fairy, the broken heart—blurred together like a dream she kept choosing to believe.
He'd carved his way into her mornings. Into her routines. Into the space she'd stopped believing anyone would fill.
"The rain will stop," she said. To him. To herself.
"Aye." He popped a section of roll into his mouth. "It will."
Her phone buzzed. Charlie's name on the screen.
"Caterers are pulling in," Lainie said, grabbing her jacket from the back of a chair. "Brennon, Jenna—come up to the winery when you're ready."
"Sure, Mom," coming from Jenna.
Brennon, halfway through a plate of eggs, raised a hand without looking up.
"We're taking the golf cart," Kalen said over his shoulder.
Jenna smirked from the doorway. "Obviously."
The ground at the winery was damp but held firm under their boots. The rain had eased to a drizzle, then stopped—just like that. No gradual thinning. No last spatter on the windshield of the golf cart. One second rain, the next silence. Lainie's hand went to the timepiece.
The metal was warm. Still warm.
Kalen's hand found the small of her back as they walked around the building to where the caterers were unloading. The touch was light. Automatic. The kind of thing he did without thinking, and the kind of thing she'd stopped pretending she didn't notice.
Charlie met them at the entrance to the tasting room, his face creased with a grin. "Don't you two look sharp."
"We clean up all right." Lainie managed a real smile for the first time that morning.
She moved into the tasting room to check with the catering lead—placement of chafing dishes, timing on the appetizers, the status of the outdoor bar setup.
Behind her, she heard Kalen fall into step beside Charlie, their voices low.
When she glanced back, Kalen gave Charlie a nod—short, loaded—and Charlie's expression shifted. His jaw set. His shoulders squared.
They moved away together, talking.
Lainie watched them go. The berserker and the dragon, conferring like two generals before a battle that hadn't started yet. She almost asked what they were talking about. Almost. But she reined it in.
She turned back to the caterer.
Outside, the clouds were breaking apart.
Patches of blue sky opened up, tentative, as if the sun was checking whether it was safe to come out.
The vineyard stretched in every direction—twenty-two acres of gnarly vines, dormant now but pruned and ready for spring, their dark arms reaching along the trellises in rows so straight they looked ruled.
Lainie walked the perimeter alone, her boots leaving prints in the soft earth.
She'd stood in this exact spot the day she'd first walked the property, back when it was someone else's dream that had died with his wife. Charlie's dream. Sue's dream. And then, somehow, hers.
Everything she owned she'd bought with money that appeared from a pocket watch. The conjurings had stopped since her return from Kalen's book world, but the safe upstairs still held more cash than she'd ever dreamed of.
The winery had to stand on its own now. Real revenue. Real customers. Real wine sold to real people who didn't know and would never know that the woman pouring their cabernet could produce chocolate cake out of thin air.
She stopped at the end of a row and turned back toward the winery building.
The caterers were finishing setup under the white canopy.
Fairy lights—the electric kind, not the Esidarap kind—twinkled in loops from pole to pole.
The firepit was stacked and ready. The wood-fired pizza oven trailed a thin wisp of smoke.
This was hers.
She'd escaped a man who told her she couldn't do anything right.
She'd found a watch that answered to something inside her she hadn't known was there.
She'd fought witches, crossed dimensions, been shrunk to the size of a thumb, and fallen in love with a dragon who made her coffee every morning without being asked.
And now she was opening a winery. On Valentine's Day. Because she wanted to.
Cars appeared on the private road. First one, then two, then a line of them curving through the trees toward the parking area.
Lainie straightened her shoulders. Smoothed the front of her jacket. Took a breath.
The watch pulsed once against her chest. A single, deliberate throb—slow and deep, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to her. The metal burned warm through her shirt.
The storm had passed. The sky was clearing. The guests were arriving. And something—beneath all of it, beneath the coffee and the cinnamon and Kalen's steady golden eyes—was wrong.
Lainie lifted her chin and walked toward the crowd.