Chapter 8
Charlotte
Festivals always start loud, even before the crowds arrive, there’s noise everywhere; vendors unpacking boxes, tents snapping open, volunteers calling for zip ties.
By the time the Heart-to-Heart Festival officially opens, the entire field is humming with people, music, barking dogs, and one vendor testing his microphone so loudly that three toddlers burst into tears.
It’s chaotic, and normally I thrive on that, but today my brain is split between event management and trying very hard not to think about Liam.
Spoiler: I’m doing a terrible job.
He was at the bakery booth when I first did my morning rounds.
I’d stopped by to check the setup, but mostly I stopped because I wanted to see him.
We said hello, simple and normal, but the second he smiled at me in that soft, warm way that hits right in the center of my chest, everything inside me went quiet.
Then he hesitated, only for a moment, but I felt it. I know better than to overthink a single breath, but I still found myself replaying it while directing traffic cones and answering twenty-seven questions about booth locations.
“Charlotte!”
A vendor rushes toward me holding a tray and I brace myself instinctively.
“My carrots are melting.”
I probably blink for a solid second. “Your what?”
She thrusts the tray up for inspection. “My carrot soaps. They’re sweating and losing their shape.”
Sure enough, the soaps look like they’ve given up on life. “Okay. Let’s move you closer to the shade. I’ll get Henry from the bakery to help reorganize your table.”
She lets out a shaky breath and follows me as I point her toward a better spot.
Once she’s settled, I keep moving through the festival, making mental notes about which booths need umbrellas, where the crowd is pooling too tightly, and where the music is a little too loud for anyone with functioning ears.
By the time I circle back toward the main walkway, the bakery booth is already swamped.
It makes sense. Their booth looks like the place everyone wants to hover around, it’s warm, busy, filled with sugar and men who know how to work with their hands.
I’ve been here long enough to know exactly how women talk about Spice Spice Baby in group chats.
Mark is in full performance mode, telling someone an animated story with enough hand gestures to qualify as exercise.
Chris is frosting cupcakes so quickly I’m half convinced there’s magic involved.
Jonah is slicing sourdough like he’s conducting a meditation class.
Henry’s charming a line of customers like he’s personally responsible for their happiness.
But it’s Liam who draws my eyes first.
He’s focused on a tray of pastries, his sleeves are pushed up, his hair is a little unruly, and when he glances up and sees me, his smile shifts from polite to something deeper.
I feel it everywhere.
I start walking toward him, but I don’t get more than two steps before something small collides with my hip.
“Charlotte!”
Maisie throws herself at me with full enthusiasm, her forehead is dusted with pink frosting, which tells me she’s been left alone with Chris or she decided her head deserved a treat.
“You came!” she says, grabbing my hand like she owns me now.
“I told you I’d be here. It looks like you’re having fun.”
“I had one cupcake,” she says proudly. “Daddy said one, but I think he forgot how numbers work.”
I lower my voice. “I won’t remind him.”
She grins so wide it practically squeaks and pulls me toward the back of the booth. When we stop near a stack of bakery supplies, she digs into her tiny backpack with dramatic flair.
“I made you something.”
My chest softens immediately. “You did? Can I see?”
She hands me a folded paper stiff with glue. I open it carefully, and my heart stumbles.
It’s a picture of the three of us holding hands in front of the bakery. I'm wearing a crown, Liam has a cape, and Maisie is covered in glitter.
“This is beautiful,” I say, my voice catching a little. “Thank you.”
“It’s us,” she says simply. “I wanted you to have it because me and daddy like you.”
I swallow. “He does?”
She nods, completely confident. “He smiles differently when he sees you, not a regular smile, a squishy one.”
“A squishy smile,” I repeat, trying not to laugh.
She attempts the expression. It’s… intense. I’m not sure what emotion it’s supposed to be, but I adore her effort.
“I’m going to keep this,” I say. “Forever.”
“You can,” she says proudly. “It’s not even sticky anymore.”
I have questions about why it was sticky in the first place, but I decide not to follow that thread. Before I can ask anything else, someone calls for help from the front of the booth and Maisie darts away to assist like she’s part of the staff.
I’m still holding the drawing when I hear footsteps behind me.
“You okay?”
I turn, and Liam is there, looking at me with that careful steadiness he uses when he’s trying to figure out how I feel. Flour dusts his forearms and there’s a faint smudge of sugar on his collar.
“I’m okay,” I say softly. “Maisie gave me something.”
He glances at the paper, then meets my eyes again. That look tells me he’s bracing for my reaction.
“She worked hard on it,” he says quietly.
“I love it,” I tell him. “It didn’t overwhelm me, it made me really happy.”
Some of the tension lifts from his shoulders. “Good.”
We stand there in a pocket of quiet while the festival buzzes around us. There’s a heaviness in the air, it’s not stifling though.
“You’ve been busy,” I say.
“So have you.”
“I’ll let you get back to it,” I tell him, but neither of us moves at first.
He gives me a small, warm look that tugs low in my stomach. “I’ll see you later.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes my pulse skip.
I step back into the festival, my chest strangely full.
By mid-afternoon, the event reaches full chaos. The list of problems grows by the minute, a balloon vendor loses half his stock to a sudden gust of wind, a couple argues loudly about the funnel cake line, and a man insists his dog should count as a paid participant in the couples photo booth.
I solve each problem one at a time, but through all of it, I catch myself glancing toward the bakery booth more often than I should.
Every time I look, I find Liam.
Sometimes he’s carrying trays, sometimes he’s talking to customers, sometimes he’s kneeling to hand a cupcake to a kid who dropped one. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, it always hits the same way-- a warm thrum in my chest.
When he catches me watching him, he gives me a small look that makes my stomach go warm and tight.
But there’s still a small distance in his eyes, a worry he hasn’t said out loud.
I feel it every time he hesitates before speaking. Every time he almost touches me but stops. Every time he looks at me like he wants something and is afraid of wanting it too much.
I understand that fear, but I also feel the pull between us getting stronger, deeper, harder to brush away.
The sun moves overhead, the shadows shift, and the festival only gets louder.
In the middle of all that, the bakery booth stays steady.
I must pass it a dozen times while bouncing between problems, and every time I do, I catch pieces of Liam’s voice or laughter, little reminders that he’s here, that we’re… whatever we are.
By the fifth pass, Chris has noticed.
He leans across the counter as I walk by. “You know you’re allowed to stop and take a breath, right?”
“I don’t have time for breathing.”
“You do if the person you want to breathe next to is standing ten feet away.”
I blink. “Chris.”
“I’m just saying,” he says with a shrug. “Festival romance. It’s a thing.”
From behind him, Mark nods. “He has a point,” he says. “People hook up at festivals all the time. Something about fried food and chaos.”
“That is not helpful,” I mutter.
It’s also not wrong.
Behind them, Liam is juggling a tray of pastries and a conversation with an elderly couple, smiling kindly while they ask many questions about the difference between scones and biscuits. I watch him for a moment longer than I should, then force myself to keep moving.
I’m halfway to the main tent when a hand touches my arm.
Not a grab, just a brush.
I turn and see Liam standing there, closer than he’s been all day, his fingers slipping away from my skin like he didn’t mean to keep them there.
“You okay?” he asks, and the worry in his voice sends a warm ripple through me.
“I should be,” I say. “It’s a festival, not a hostage situation. But somehow it’s both.”
He gives a small smile, softer than usual. “Need help?”
“With the hostage situation? Absolutely. But it’s fine. Really.”
He studies me like he’s trying to decide whether that’s true. “You sure?”
I nod. “Are you doing okay?”
The smile falters just slightly, the careful pause slipping back in. “Trying to be.”
The words punch deeper than he means them to.
Before I can say anything, a volunteer rushes over shouting about a broken banner, and I have to bolt, but for the rest of the afternoon, that quiet answer echoes in my chest.
Trying to be.
That tells me more about where his head is than anything else he’s said today.
Hours pass. The crowds get thicker and louder. My feet ache, my brain is cotton candy. At one point, someone tries to hand me a ferret and asks if we have a lost-and-found for animals. I redirect that problem to another volunteer because I don’t get paid enough to negotiate with a ferret.
By the time I make my next pass by the bakery booth, the rush is slowing down. People wander off toward the music tent, giving the bakers a few minutes to breathe.
Maisie spots me again and waves her entire arm like she’s summoning a plane.
“Charlotte! Come look!”
I lean over the counter, and she proudly shows me a cupcake with so many sprinkles it looks like someone forgot to stop shaking the bottle.
“This one is for later,” she whispers. “It’s special.”
“Why is it special?”
She leans closer. “Because Daddy said he likes you.”
I feel my eyebrows lift. “He did?”
“Yes,” she says cheerfully. “But he thinks I wasn’t listening.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from smiling too hard. “Your secret is safe with me.”
She nods and runs off again, chasing after Chris, who seems mildly concerned about her enthusiasm with the sprinkle jars.
I’m still smiling when I look up and find Liam watching me from behind the counter. His expression is unreadable.. For a second, neither of us looks away. Then someone approaches him for a purchase, and the moment breaks.
The loudspeaker crackles to life, and the mayor’s voice echoes over the field.
“Charlotte Renner to the stage, please. Charlotte Renner to the main stage.”
My stomach drops. That tone means I’m either being recognized or blamed, and honestly, either is possible.
I take a breath and head toward the stage area. The walk feels longer than usual, partly because my legs are tired, partly because I know Liam is somewhere behind me, watching.
The mayor meets me at the steps. “There you are,” he says, upbeat and oblivious. “We’d like to thank you publicly for organizing this amazing event. You’ve done a phenomenal job.”
“Oh,” I say, pasting on a polite smile. “Thank you.”
“We’d love for you to come up and say a few words.”
My internal soul leaves my body. “A few words?”
He nods as if he hasn’t just sentenced me to public speaking. “Just tell everyone how much work went into this.”
I inhale through my nose and step up onto the stage. The crowd claps lightly. It’s manageable, I can handle this, I can do hard things.
I look out over the festival, trying not to think about the fact that I didn’t prepare a speech. The mayor hands me the microphone.
And that’s when I see it, movement in the crowd, a familiar figure stepping forward.
Liam.
Striding, purposeful and focused. His eyes are locked on me like everything else in the festival is background noise. A path opens for him automatically, people shifting aside like they sense something is about to happen.
My heart stumbles in my chest.
He reaches the base of the stage, pauses for a breath, and looks up at me. His expression isn’t unreadable now, in fact, it’s wide open. I see the fear, happiness, and hope shining in his eyes.
Whatever hesitation lived in him before is gone.
He lifts his chin slightly, silently asking the mayor for the mic. The mayor hands it over without question.
Liam takes the microphone and steps onto the first step of the stage, close enough that I can see the nerves in his eyes underneath the determination.
He turns to the crowd, then back to me.
Then he starts to speak.