Chapter 14
Ethan
He didn’t expect her to actually listen, but she looked up at him with those wide eyes, and then nodded once.
“The vine you were wrestling was poison ivy. You’ve got the oil all over you.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her arms.
He didn’t wait for her to process it further. “Follow me.”
And again—surprise—she did.
Ethan led her through the house and toward his bedroom. His pulse ticked faster the moment he opened the door. There was something about her standing in this space that made him feel exposed. Like she could see the parts of his life he kept shoved into closets—literal and otherwise.
He opened the bathroom cabinet and crouched to rummage through the mess of half-used products and expired ointments. “I’ve got a special soap for poison ivy. From when the kids went through that tree fort phase.” He held it up in victory. “Here it is.”
“I can manage,” she said, as much to herself as to him.
“Here,” Ethan cut in.
“Mr. Hale—”
“Let me help you,” he said simply with no room for argument.
She hesitated, lips parting like she had another argument teed up, but whatever she meant to say fell away. In the end, she held out her arm.
Ethan turned on the tap, tested the temperature, then gently took her arm. Her skin was warm beneath the sheen of oil, and suddenly it was hard to breathe like a normal person. He rubbed the soap into a lather.
She stiffened. “I said I can handle it.”
“I heard you,” he said mildly.
“You’re very”—she struggled for a neutral word—“confident about inserting yourself into other people’s situations.”
He glanced sideways at her, the edge of his mouth tugging upward. “That’s the peach calling the kiwi fuzzy.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said flatly, though he clocked the hint of a smile.
The truth was, he shouldn’t have let that bike sit there as long as he had. He should’ve tossed it, or stored it properly, or something. But he didn’t. He left it to rot behind the barn, where the poison ivy crept up and claimed it like everything else Leticia had left behind.
It had felt fitting at the time. Petty, sure, but fitting.
When he’d found out that the bureau released Leticia and she hadn’t come home, he was a wreck.
He’d gone to look for her only to find out that she had started a new life without them.
She chose not to come back, so why should her old things get treated with care?
Why should that stupid bright blue cruiser—joy written all over it—get to stay untouched when the rest of them had to carry the ache?
He didn’t think Honey would find it, much less try to clean it.
The old faucet sputtered, warm water trickling over his calloused hands. He let the water run over her forearms in a gentle stream, rubbing slow circles with his thumb to rinse away the soap. He reached for the hand towel and patted her arms dry.
Honey hadn’t known what it was. She’d just seen a mess and tried to fix it.
“I’m sorry for overstepping,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” he said, and meant it.
Honey Baxter was supposed to be bureau through and through—cold, efficient, procedural. Just another person sent to tell him he was doing it all wrong.
But that wasn’t what she was. Not really.
She was a rule follower, sure. But she also wandered into barns, got dirt on her shoes, touched things no one asked her to. She got involved. She cared.
Even when she was annoying as hell about it.
She was the kind of woman who truly believed that rules and order were helpful.
Which meant—he hated to admit it—he respected her.
She probably didn’t need the calamine. Her skin wasn’t even red, and she hadn’t complained, but his hands moved for the bottle anyway, still caught in the thoughts she’d stirred up. He squeezed a bit into his palm and rubbed it between his fingers to warm it before touching her arm.
He could feel her eyes on him, studying as he worked the pink lotion into her skin.
“Marlene told me what happened with your wife. I understand why you’re bothered by someone from the bureau coming in and messing with your life.”
He stiffened at the mention of his ex-wife.
Of course, Marlene told her. The thought should have made him angry; his private life was not something for the neighbors to share, but beneath the irritation was an embarrassing sense of relief.
He had dreaded the moment Honey would find out, had dreaded having to explain it himself, and now that she knew, he was spared from speaking the words aloud.
He paused, thumb smoothing the last bit of lotion over the curve of her elbow. “I shouldn’t blame you,” he said quietly.
He should’ve told her it wasn’t completely the bureau’s fault Leticia left. After they released her from custody, they didn’t force her to stay away, but he couldn’t help but think she would’ve never left if she’d been looking her daughters in the eyes as she walked out the door.
In the time the bureau held her, she missed Melly rolling over for the first time and her first gummy smiles.
She missed Brooke’s first day of preschool, and the way she’d strutted in with her backpack swinging off her tiny shoulders like she owned the place.
She missed seeing Emma’s wobbly determination and the whoop of victory as she finally learned to ride that bike without training wheels.
When Leticia finally called, it wasn’t to come home.
It was to ask for a divorce. He’d signed the papers while she was still in prison, sitting at the kitchen table with Melly fussing in her high chair and the other girls watching cartoons in the next room.
Even then, he’d told himself they were already over long before the bureau showed up.
He had still believed she’d want to come back for the girls.
That she’d still want to be their mother.
The bureau made her miss so many firsts.
But she’d chosen to miss the rest of them.
Maybe if she hadn’t been gone that month, she would’ve remembered what she had to lose.
“Ethan,” Honey murmured.
He blinked, realizing he still held her arm. He let go and stepped back a little.
“I wasn’t always a jerk,” he said.
“I don’t think you are.” She reached a hand out as if to touch him, and then seemed to catch herself.
She smoothed the front of her shirt, and Ethan wondered if she could see his heart beating away beneath his.
“I really did intend to stick to my business,” she said.
“But?”
“But it’s hard for me to see something I want to fix and not do it. It’s like a compulsion. Not just the orchard, or the house, or your extremely concerning free-roaming animal system—”
“Hey, now,” he said, lifting a brow.
“—but Emma too,” she continued, voice gentler. “Because I know what it’s like to be her.”
Something in his chest pulled tight. “What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, her gaze drifted past him, out toward the hallway where maybe she could see the holes in the walls from the pictures that used to hang there.
“I was a lot like her,” she said quietly. “Responsible. Observant. Quick to adapt.”
“She is all those things,” Ethan murmured.
“My parents tried their best,” Honey said, “but they were a bit of a mess, to be frank. You know my mom’s a witch, but she was wild with magic.
There were more spell jars in the fridge than food and more curses than crawlspace beneath the floorboards.
And unlike Emma, I didn’t have a dad like you to pick up the pieces. ”
Ethan’s throat tightened, but he said nothing.
“I was burying hexes before I could reach the garden spade without a stepstool. Washing runes off doorframes before the neighbors could ask questions. Going to school and pretending everything was normal when nothing ever really was.”
Ethan didn’t move. The shape of what she was saying was so familiar it made his skin prickle.
She was talking about herself, but he saw Emma in every word.
He’d noticed the way she darted to help with the orchard before he could ask.
The way she hovered nearby when he opened the mail at the kitchen table.
He’d told himself she was just responsible. Mature. A helper by nature. But now, he wasn’t so sure. The guilt stirred low and hot behind his ribs.
“I was a good little helper,” Honey said. “Always fixing things. I thought if I could just hold everything together, we’d be fine.”
She offered a small smile. “And it was fine. But it came at a price. I didn’t even realize how much until I got older and realized I had no idea what I actually wanted. I was so busy managing everyone else’s mess, I never figured out my own.”
“That sounds like a lot for a kid,” he said finally. His mind was a tangle of Emma’s habits and the slow-burning realization that maybe she wasn’t just growing up fast. Maybe she was coping, and he hadn’t even noticed.
“I want her to have space to be a kid,” he said, his throat suddenly thick with emotion.
Honey gave a small nod. “I won’t offer to help again. But if you decide you want it, my earlier offer stands.”
“Thank you.” His voice was quiet. “For telling me. And for being here.”
She wasn’t pushing, which he appreciated. She was just offering what she could, and after everything she’d told him, he understood exactly why.
Something inside him softened.
“A truce?” Ethan asked.
“I wasn’t aware we were feuding.”
“Oh, we were definitely feuding. You reorganized my spice rack without permission.”
He tried to keep his tone even, but the truth was, he’d opened that cabinet three times since she reorganized and could already intuitively find every damn thing.
“I did you a favor,” she said, smiling. “It was a disaster.”
“We were managing fine.”
“It was a cry for help, Mr. Hale. There were three open jars of nutmeg. One was from 2009.”
Honey screwed up her face like the memory personally offended her, and something about it punched a laugh out of him before he could stop it.
Honey startled, then smiled. “Does the possibility of foodborne illness amuse you, Mr. Hale?”
“I do a lot of baking. I’ll go through it.”
“Some truce. I wouldn’t feed my worst enemy expired spices, let alone a friend.”
“Ms. Baxter,” he said, “are you asking me to be your friend?”
She tilted her head. “Are you asking me to be yours?”
“I am.”
He felt a bit like an idiot, still standing there grinning down at her with his heart pounding away in his chest. Something in him needed to know if that’s what they were becoming.
“Then I accept,” she said, sticking out her hand like it was a business deal.
He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing and shook her hand. “I should warn you, friendship means something different here in Brim’s Hollow.”
“I come prepared,” she replied, eyes gleaming.
And, much to his surprise, he believed her.