Chapter 8 Isla
EIGHT
ISLA
The house music curls around my spine and yanks.
I catch the pole mid-turn and let it carry me. I climb, then invert and hold, body locked, shoulders burning, hair skimming the stage. Someone near the edge lifts a hand, then thinks better of it. A server pauses mid-step.
I come down slowly, inch by gratifying inch. When my heels touch the stage, I don’t stand. I roll through the landing and stay low, one knee down, one hand braced, chin lifted.
That’s when the money appears. Bills slide onto the edge of the stage. I crawl forward enough to collect them, fingers grazing the lacquered surface, never crossing the invisible line.
The club enforces that line strictly. Touching costs money.
At the corner table, Roland watches me.
He won’t come to the stage to tip. He’ll give me it to me later when I approach his booth. I don’t know if it’s a power play or a highly specific kink of his. I also haven’t decided which would annoy me more.
“Starla will be back on after midnight,” the MC announces, voice crackling through the speakers. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I stand, take a bow, and step offstage while applause follows me into the dark. Back here, it’s calm in the chaos.
Simone presses a towel into my hands. “Ridiculously clean out there, princess,” she says. “Your holds were locked.”
“Thanks,” I say, breathless. “I almost lost the invert.”
“You stacked it and owned it. Crowd loved that little pause.”
I blot my neck, my palms, the place just below my collarbone where my heart refuses to calm down. My legs tremble faintly, that deep muscle shake that means I pushed myself. For a minute, the performance is all I can feel.
Then the rest of my life comes rushing back in.
Everything is in flux. Jack swooping in with a proposal doesn’t mean the orchard is suddenly solvent. It doesn’t mean grants rain down from the sky or the roof patches itself or the bank stops calling.
We still have to go through with the ceremony, fill out a range of applications, and then somehow convince a committee that our lives and our land are worth the paperwork.
Waiting has never paid a bill. So, I’m here at Luxe again, working the late set.
I stretch against the wall, pressing my calf flat, breathing through the ache. This job covers the gaps. It buys time. It keeps the lights on while the future makes up its mind.
Simone leans beside me, rolling her shoulders. Her silver boots are unlaced, her curls neatly pinned into place. “You feeling okay?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
She snorts. “Biggest lie I’ve heard tonight.”
I glance at her, drop my voice to a whisper. “Would it be terrible if I end up quitting? You know, down the line once the orchard stabilizes. Would you be pissed?”
Again, Simone is the reason I have this job. She vouched for me when I showed up here, shaking and underqualified, taught me how to work a room without letting it take something from me, and never once asked why I needed the money so badly.
She raises an eyebrow. “Hell no, I wouldn’t. You don’t owe anyone your body.”
“Feels illegal somehow. To ditch, you know, after everything.”
“It’s not at all. I wouldn’t begrudge you for a minute.”
I don’t quit things easily. I usually wait until they quit me. But if this marriage thing shakes out and we do get the grant, the work is gonna shift in a real way. I’d finally be able to afford not working two jobs.
“You doing orchard math in your head?”
I smile. “Always.”
“Are you worried that guy might flake out on you? The tall one with the hair situation.”
I close my eyes for a second. “Jack.”
Simone’s been subjected to a truly unreasonable number of texts about Jack Rhodes, his hair, and the legal arrangement currently wrecking my peace. There are few people I trust with the truth. She’s one of them.
“Jack,” she says. “He’s very hot, by the way, even with the blond mop.”
“I’m not worried, per se. But I don’t make plans that depend on men behaving well.”
“The charming men are always the dangerous ones.”
“Jack doesn’t charm me much,” I say. “If you weren’t gay, I’d say he’s all yours when I’m done with him.”
I may have told Jack that no one can know it’s fake, but Simone doesn’t count. She’s not part of Blue Willow, and she doesn’t move through my life with consequences attached. No one will find out through her mouth.
Besides, if I don’t talk to someone about it, I might implode.
“Alas, I’ve been blessed by excellent taste and zero interest in men.”
“You live a charmed life.”
If funders didn’t still act like stability comes with a husband’s last name and a shared tax return, I could’ve asked Winnie or Simone to do this with me. It would’ve been cleaner. Safer, too, than tying myself to a man.
Then again, stability has always felt a little made up.
My mother taught me that the night she left. One day, we were a family in the orchard. The next, she was gone, and my father and I were left patching together groceries, bills, and hope that it might still somehow be temporary.
It wasn’t.
That’s why I plan for collapse. Why I build contingencies on top of contingencies.
I check the clock. Six minutes left until my next set.
I roll my shoulders, reapply grip, and catch my reflection in the mirror. Starla looks calm and controlled. Underneath her is the same woman who walks the rows at dawn, counting blossoms, debts, and the days until the next payment clears.
Jack thinks this proposal is a way through. I trust him. I want to believe in what he’s offering. Even so, some part of me is already preparing to carry the next part alone if I have to.
The music starts again. I step back toward the stage.
“Push your tits out a little more!” Simone calls. “This isn’t the damn farm.”
I roll my eyes, flip her off, and head for the lights.
There are very few problems in life that a five-year aged bottle of Mirabelle wine can’t solve. It does well with acute panic and catastrophic overthinking. Not so much with lying to my friends.
I bring the bottle anyway.
Winnie’s house glows warm through the windows, with honeyed lamplight and pressed clovers taped into the corners. Goldie and the bees are already asleep. The flowers are not.
Elsie answers the door in socks and an oversized sweatshirt she definitely stole from Wells, curly brown hair twisted up with a pencil. “You brought wine,” she says reverently. “Come inside. I must warn you, though, Winnie is trying to starve us.”
“I put out snacks,” Winnie calls from the kitchen. “They’re just very responsible snacks.”
“Responsible snacks are not snacks,” Elsie calls back, already taking the bottle from my hands. “I don’t know where this vegetable kick has come from, but I need more cinnamon and sugar.”
We keep our voices low as we move inside. The house smells like chamomile and the faint sweetness of beeswax polish.
Winnie appears with three mismatched glasses. “You’re late,” she says, curious.
“Time got away from me.”
We settle at the small table near the window. Elsie opens the bottle and pours generously. “So,” she says brightly. “What’s going on?”
I take a sip, savoring the magic of it.
I tell people that the trees on my land are particular, and the healing salve is an old family recipe. But the wine does its own kind of work, too. It settles the nervous system and eases the tight places in your chest.
Jack calls it truth serum. It’s really more like borrowed courage.
In the right company, it’s a good thing. Not just for the mind, but for the heart, too.
“I’m getting married,” I say.
The words land between us and immediately detonate.
“Oh my God,” Elsie breathes. “To whom?”
“I knew it,” Winnie says at the exact same time.
I blink. “You did not.”
“I absolutely did,” Winnie says, nodding once. “I told Reid I thought you were hiding something. He guessed an illicit plum moonshine ring, but I said that you were sneaking around with a man.”
Elsie is already halfway out of her chair. “We’re talking about Jack? It’s Jack, right? It has to be Jack. You’ve been weird. He’s been weird. Wells has been acting like he knows something and trying not to say it, which is physically impossible for him.”
Jack must have told him to keep it a secret. He knew I’d want to be the one to tell my friends, and I appreciate that. I really do.
In Blue Willow, he’s the only man close enough to me for this to make sense, and also the last person anyone should assume I’d be willing to marry.
Jack Rhodes, of all people. The man who constantly provokes me on purpose. Under normal circumstances, this would not be happening. Except these are not normal circumstances. These are highly specific, deeply inconvenient ones.
“Yes,” I say. “Jack.”
They lose their minds. Winnie claps a hand over her mouth and squeals, bouncing in her seat. Elsie exhales, slow and satisfied, like this confirms a theory she’s been workshopping for months.
“I knew it,” Elsie repeats. “I knew something was going on. The way he looks at you. The way you pretend not to notice.”
“I do notice,” I say weakly.
“That’s worse,” Winnie teases. “That means you’ve been lying to yourself. And us. And all of Blue Willow for who knows how long.” She frowns. “How long has it been, exactly?”
“You’re both exhausting.” I stare into my glass. “It’s only been a few months.”
Elsie reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “Well, when’s the wedding?”
“Soon,” I say. “Courthouse. Very small.”
Winnie nods immediately. “You’re gonna clue Bobby in so he can play magistrate, right?”
“That’s the plan,” I confirm.
Bobby Brindle is our mayor. But he’s also been like a second father to me since I was young enough to ride my bike to town on my own.
After my mom left, he showed up for me in quiet, consistent ways. I was technically an adult, but he knew I needed someone to step in without making a fuss. Rides when the weather got bad and my dad was working late. A hand on my shoulder when I didn’t know what came next.
If he knew how close the orchard was to the edge, he’d do whatever I needed to keep it from collapsing. In Blue Willow, that means showing up on a quiet afternoon, unlocking the courthouse, and doing what needs doing.
“Should we do the Harbor Light after?” Elsie adds, already planning. “We’ll make it cozy. Winnie can do flowers. Oo, can I do the cake?”
Elsie’s enthusiasm for baking far exceeds her skill. She says it makes her feel closer to her late grandmother, so no one has the heart to stop her. We all love and miss Elspeth Sr., too.
Winnie claps her hands and says, “I’ve never been more emotionally invested in something in my life. Well, except for Goldie, but that’s a given.”
I laugh because if I don’t, I might cry.
They look so happy for me. So completely convinced this all makes sense.
I tell myself I’ll explain it later. In a year or maybe three.
When the orchard is stable and the paperwork is done.
Right now, the story we’re telling feels so fragile that it might crack if I touch it too hard.
If I tell them that it’s a paperwork marriage, they’ll try to come up with alternate solutions that aren’t as risky.
Ones that don’t involve Jack’s or my hearts. And I don’t want to hear them. I’ve already made up my mind. So, I smile and nod and let them believe the version of this story we agreed on.
Winnie sets her glass down. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” I say. “This will be good. And you’re right, I think, about the Harbor Light. Thank you.”
Elsie squeezes my hand. “Of course. You deserve something good.”
The guilt flares again, but I push it down. This is not the moment.
We talk logistics next. The courthouse and keeping it small. We won’t make a spectacle out of it, which is good because there are limits to how many people I can lie to at once.
Jack and I already talked extensively through the why, the when, and the how. We talked about paperwork and what this would look like when it’s all finalized. We didn’t talk much about what it would look like during.
And we certainly didn’t talk about how it ends.