The Girls and the Garden
The back porch of Harper's cottage smelled like peppermint tea and damp earth.
It was the first time in three weeks I'd been allowed out of the house without a six-foot-tall shadow following me.
Anthony was on duty, and Nick was—after a lot of convincing and a very long kiss—at the shop catching up on a backlog of engines.
"He actually let you leave?" Tessa asked, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief as she handed me a plate of lemon bars. "I figured he'd have you under house arrest until the baby was old enough to drive a tractor."
"He didn't let me," I said, leaning back into the wicker chair, the afternoon sun warming my face. "I told him if I didn't get an hour of non-man-related conversation, I was going to start crying again. He folded like a lawn chair."
Harper laughed, her blonde ponytail swinging as she tucked a stray strand behind her ear.
She'd been busy with the peak wedding season—ironic, I know—and Tessa had been pulling double shifts at the clinic.
We hadn't had a "girls' day" since before the pharmacy incident, and the silence between us felt heavy with everything we hadn't talked about.
"We heard about the courthouse," Harper said softly, her smile fading into something more sincere. "And Chloe. Aubrey... we're so sorry. We should have been there."
"You were working," I said, shaking my head. "And honestly? It wasn't a spectator sport. Seeing her in that jumpsuit... it didn't feel like a win. It just felt like the end of something that should have died a long time ago."
Tessa leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. "And Brandon? Is he still lurking at the motel? Because I saw his car yesterday near the park, and I swear, if he doesn't leave, I'm going to 'accidentally' lose his medical records if he ever steps foot in the clinic."
"He's still here," I sighed, my hand dropping instinctively to the sixteen-week curve of my stomach. "He's obsessed with the paternity thing now. He thinks if he can prove it's his, I'll magically forget that he's a liar and a cheat."
"He's a narcissist," Harper said, her voice unusually sharp. "He doesn't want the baby, Aubrey. He wants to win. He can't stand that you found a man like Nick—a man who actually sees you—while he's stuck in the mess he made."
I looked out at Harper's garden, the marigolds and zinnias blooming in a riot of color. "He told me about Chloe. About her miscarriage."
The porch went silent. Tessa and Harper exchanged a look—the kind of look friends give when they've already heard the gossip but didn't want to be the ones to bring it up.
"It's all over town, isn't it?" I asked, a dry laugh escaping me.
"Willow Creek is a small pond, Bree," Tessa said gently. "People talk. But they aren't talking about her with sympathy. They're talking about how she used that loss to stay in your life like a parasite. It's twisted."
"I felt so stupid," I whispered, the confession coming out easier here, with them. "I felt like I was the only person in the world who didn't know what was happening in my own house. I spent a year being the perfect friend to a woman who was mourning a baby with my fiancé."
"You weren't stupid," Harper said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. "You were loyal. That's a strength, not a weakness. Don't let their ugliness make you regret your own heart."
I took a sip of the tea, the warmth spreading through my chest. "Nick says the same thing. He says I was decent, and that's the difference."
Tessa grinned, the tension breaking. "Speaking of the Mountain Man... how is that going? Because the way he looks at you at the diner makes me want to fanning myself with a menu. It's a lot, Aubrey. In a good way."
I felt my cheeks flush—a real, honest-to-God blush that had nothing to do with the summer heat. "It's... it's everything. He wants to be on the birth certificate, Tessa. He told me he's signing up for a lifetime of this. He doesn't care about the DNA."
"He's a keeper," Harper murmured. "And the baby? How are they doing after... the fall?"
"Strong heartbeat," I said, a genuine smile finally touching my lips. "I've started feeling these tiny flutters. Like bubbles popping. The doctor says it's early, but I know it's them."
"A little fighter," Tessa said, her eyes softening. "Just like their mom."
We sat there for another hour, talking about nothing and everything.
We talked about the upcoming harvest festival, the ridiculous drama at the town council, and the fact that I was definitely going to need bigger jeans by next week.
For a little while, the city felt a thousand miles away.
Brandon was just a ghost, and Chloe was just a memory in a cell.
But as the sun began to dip behind the mountains, a familiar black SUV crawled slowly past the edge of Harper's property.
The SUV didn't stop. It didn't speed up. It just lingered, the tinted windows reflecting the orange glow of the sunset like a pair of cold, dead eyes.
The laughter on the porch died instantly.
"Is that him?" Harper whispered, her hand tightening on her tea cup.
"Yeah," I said, the familiar chill returning to my spine. "That's him."
He wasn't gone. He was watching. He was waiting for the moment the "protectors" weren't looking.
I stood up, my legs feeling a little less steady than they had a moment ago. "I should go. Nick will be at the house soon, and if I'm not there, he'll probably call out a search party."
"We'll walk you to your car," Tessa said, already standing.
As I drove home, I watched my rearview mirror. The SUV stayed three cars back, a silent shadow in the twilight. I realized then that the legal papers and the jail cells were just a fence. And Brandon was the kind of man who would wait until the fence rotted to find a way back in.
But as I pulled into the driveway and saw Nick's truck already there—saw him standing on the porch with a bag of takeout and a look of relief that could power the town—I knew the fence wasn't going to rot.