CHAPTER 8 - BRYNN
The sounds of car doors slamming followed by an excited flurry of little voices wakes me from a very deep sleep, and for a moment I lie there in the dull light, my heart racing as I try to remember where I am.
Then the scent hits.
The soap from the shower.
The coffee.
The pine smell that you can’t escape because of the forest that surrounds the small town of Hallowed Springs.
Grizz.
My fingers curl into the sheets as the memory of last night hits me.
The way his hands felt on my body—rough and calloused, yet so damn careful.
As if he was holding something he was scared to break.
The way his voice drops when he says my name, and how he made it clear it wasn’t a request when he told me to stay.
I can’t escape it.
He’s wrapped himself around me within just a few short days. This stranger, in an unknown town. This man whose hands I have no business putting myself or my daughters' safety in, but I’ve never felt more secure in my entire life.
“Mom!” Jovie’s excited voice breaks through my thoughts. I leap out of bed and rush into the lounge to see her standing at the window, her nose pressed to the glass. “There’s people down there! Kids! And they’re going into the bar.”
With a frown, I hurry over, scanning the street below.
She’s right. Outside the frosted window, cars are parked along the street, and families are piling out. They’re wearing Christmas sweaters and clutching small bags, laughing as they disappear into the bar below us.
I blink, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “What on earth…”
Jovie may be obsessed with Grizz and his grumpy demeanour, but I know for sure these children are not giggling and laughing excitedly to spend the day with his frowny face.
“Let’s go see!” Jovie says excitedly, bouncing toward the door with the kind of energy I won’t have until I've had my third cup of coffee for the day.
“Freeze, squirt!” I call after her, and she jerks to a hard stop, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “I’m going to demand you put pants on before you leave this apartment.”
My dramatic child throws her hands in the air and looks down at the nightgown she’s wearing. “I think this is fine.”
“It’s not, go get dressed,” I tell her, folding my arms across my chest and hitting her with my best motherly glare. “I’ll meet you at the door in five, and we’ll go see what’s happening.”
Jovie huffs but scampers back toward the bedroom, muttering under her breath about pants being overrated. I fight a smile and shake my head as I make quick work of pulling on a pair of jeans and one of the seven Gallows shirts Grizz insisted I have.
The man is a little excessive, but I’m starting to realise that maybe excessive is the way he shows he cares.
He didn’t give us a place to stay, he gave us a full apartment.
He didn’t drop off just a few supplies. It was everything we could possibly need.
He doesn’t do things halfway.
It’s all or nothing.
But am I ready for it to be all, when I’ve had nothing for so long?
“Ready!” Jovie sings, and I walk out to find her already standing beside the door, bouncing on her toes as she fights with the buttons on the front of her jacket. “Do you think they’re making Christmas presents? Or doing crafts? I saw glitter!”
I can’t help but chuckle at the excited sparkle in her eyes, sure, I’m about to watch Christmas lights or candy canes shoot out her ears. “Okay, okay,” I laugh, grabbing my hoodie from the back of the sofa before the two of us squeeze out the door and rush downstairs.
The bar looks almost unrecognizable.
Fairy lights are strung up and wrapped around the exposed beams, with handfuls of tinsel and paper snowflakes fluffed up in the corners.
All the bar tables are pushed to the sides of the room and stacked out of the way, while long folding tables fill the space instead, each with colored paper, pens, jars, and an obnoxious amount of glitter—just like Jovie said.
“Brynn! Jovie!” Sarah calls with a wave, ducking out from behind one of the long tables and dodging several small children as she hurries over with a worried frown. “I’m so sorry if we disturbed you. We tried to keep quiet while we were setting up, but—”
I wave my hand, cutting her off. “Oh no! You’re totally fine! We just came down to see what was going on.”
Her face lights up, and she claps her hands.
“Well! Every Christmas festival we do some fun stuff for the kids, and one of them is making Christmas Wish Jars,” she explains, grabbing one of the old mason jars from the centre of a table. “It’s a Hallowed Springs tradition.”
Jovie takes the jar, twisting it in her hands. “Are they wishes for Santa?”
“Not exactly,” Sarah says, her voice softening as she crouches down to Jovie’s level.
“It started over a hundred years ago when Hallowed Springs was no more than a few streets and a church.
Winters were rough, money was tight, and the pastor's wife came up with the idea to have everyone in town write down one thing they wished for, for the year ahead.”
I’m not usually one to fall for these old tales about miracles—the cynic in me having been created by a lifetime of disappointments and bad luck, but even I have to admit to being drawn in by Sarah’s gentle voice and the way she speaks as if what she’s saying isn’t town legend, but town lore.
“The catch was that these wishes and hopes for the future weren’t allowed to be physical things,” Sarah continues, strumming her nails on the empty jar Jovie is clutching tightly.
“So the townspeople wished for things like forgiveness for mistakes they’d made, they wished for good health, and some even wished to find love. ”
Jovie chuckles at Sarah’s playful wink. “What did they do with them?”
“They put them in their windows, or hung them in their trees outside. Anywhere the other townspeople could read them,” Sarah explains, pointing up behind us.
Jovie and I both spin around to see the string of jars hung up above the bar.
Some are painted, some decorated with ribbon and glitter, and more glitter.
Every single one is different. Sarah walks over and takes one off the string, unscrewing the lid as she walks back.
“This one is mine from years and years ago.”
She holds it out and I pluck the paper from inside.
It’s also decorated and colored with swirls and hearts, and the writing is printed perfectly.
I jerk my head up, my mouth open and ready to question Sarah, but she quickly plucks the items from my hands. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry, I have to go organise the rest of the staff and the kids, we start in just a few minutes.”
“Mom!” Jovie tugs on my arm. “Can I stay and do it?”
“I dunno, squirt,” I say with a sigh, taking in the number of children still flowing through the door. “It looks like Sarah is going to have her hands full.”
“Actually…” Sarah says, stepping back with a wide smile. “I could use an assistant to help out with some of the younger kids, and to help—”
“I’m in!” Jovie exclaims, ignoring me completely and rushing off to join the other kids.
Sarah chuckles and turns to me. “You are welcome to leave her with me for a little bit if you want to go do something on your own,” she offers with a warm smile.
“I'll be right here for the next three hours as groups of kids move through, and I was being completely honest when I said I could use an assistant.”
I pause, chewing on my lip.
There is a nature trail down the street that I’ve been eager to walk.
Every time I look out the bedroom window upstairs, I see the sign pointing toward the worn path in the brush, and every day, people march in and out with smiles on their faces as they shake snow from their hair, making me so curious as to what is beyond that treeline that had people returning from their walks with such wonder on their faces.
Jovie’s laughter rings through the room like a bell, drawing my gaze across the room. She’s already surrounded by other children, which is nothing new. This kid has something about her that draws people in.
The smile on her face though… It’s wide and beaming like a bright light, and that is a smile I don’t get to see all that often.
It instantly warms something deep within my chest, but I still hesitate.
It’s always been the two of us.
The only time I ever leave Jovie alone is when she’s at school.
But Sarah, she’s the kind of person who makes you forget to worry. I’ve watched her work hard, night after night. She’s always kind, respectful, and attentive—especially with Jovie.
“Alright,” I say with a nod of finality. “Yeah, I mean, that would be great. I’ll try not to be long, though.”
Sarah’s smile never slips. “Please take your time, you deserve it!”
She rushes away before I can even respond, and with Jovie already double fisting bottles of glitter… I turn and walk out of The Gallows front doors.
It hasn’t snowed yet today, but there’s a chill in the air.
One breath and it bites sharply at my lungs, making me tug my hood up over my head to keep some heat in as I make my way down the busy street.
By the time I reach the old wooden sign at the end, I’m already breathing heavy.
I try to remind myself it’s the cold mountain air, and not my lack of fitness, but I’m sure it’s a mixture of both.
The letters on the sign are hand carved and have been obviously touched up recently with a fresh swipe of white paint.
Misty Mountain Town Loop Walk.
It also includes a small, scratched out image of the trail, and the way it loops around to come back to this point, but I don’t take much notice and step straight onto the smooth dirt that leads through the bushes and into the unknown.
The way the world around me seems to instantly change is unexplainable.
It’s quiet.
But also, not.
The leaves rustle around me, wind moving through them as if the forest is breathing—each cold breath rushing by me, filling the trees with life. And filling me with life too.
I’m not used to this weather—the Texas heat being all I’ve ever known—but there’s something about the smell of the woods mixed with the cold air that’s refreshing and invigorating, and I find myself almost bouncing as I navigate the winding path.
I have no idea where it leads.
No clue as to what I might find.
But with each step, it feels more and more like I’m being pulled toward something.
My foot catches a stone and I stumble a few steps forward, finding my feet right at the corner of a fork in the path.
The trail splits in two, though it’s obvious that the left is more used and well-trodden, while the other is barely visible and disguised—maybe purposefully—by large ferns that reach across, and a couple of haphazardly placed rocks.
I should continue walking.
I should follow the track around the loop that leads back to the street.
I should.
But I don’t. I take a step into the thick bushes, gently pushing them aside as I navigate the road less travelled.
It’s not as if I’m some rebellious person who doesn’t like being told where to go or what to do—that part of me burned out somewhere between teenage pregnancy and overdue bills—but there is a little curiosity and intrigue buried within me that finds it hard to walk away without answers.
Sticks and twigs crack and crunch under me, and I’m practically swallowed by the trees, the canopy up above me suddenly becoming thicker and shrouding everything within the shadows. My body tingles and my heart races, though I have no idea why.
I’m on a nature walk.
There’s nothing here but a mess of greens and browns and… I pause, squinting a little at a couple of small yellow dots off the path, under a large pine. Flowers? Tiny ones, like specks. Fighting the odds and the cold to bloom in the middle of winter!
I twist and turn, scanning the rest of the forest floor, but it’s the only bright color amongst the earthy tones. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I open the camera and tiptoe over to it, trying not to disturb anything—leave it as you found it and all that.
Crouching down to take a photo to show Jovie, I reach out to lift them just slightl—
“Don’t touch that.”