Chapter 4
four
HOLDEN
The thing about small towns, especially last-minute Homecoming meetings, is that they’ve got a way of dredging up ghosts.
Laila Mitchell is mine.
Not literally. Enchanted Hollow has magic, sure—random bridge trolls, wishing wells, enchanted letters, fairy godmothers—but no one comes back from the dead.
I’m simply haunted by memories. The kind that don’t rattle chains, just stir the air like ghosts of Christmas past—or autumn past. They’re flickers of who we were, reminding me of everything we need to be.
Everywhere I turn, I can see her in my mind: the way she leaned on the bleachers when she talked to me after pep rallies, the echo of her laugh bouncing off the walls. I’m a student again, my heart hammering in my chest as she tucks her hair behind her ear and agrees to be my Homecoming date.
But the memory that haunts me the most? It’s one that doesn’t even have to do with fall or Homecoming or our early days of dating. It’s from a wintry sleigh ride through evergreens last December.
We took our first trip together outside of the immediate area and pretended to be newlyweds when a winter storm ruined our plans and we got snowed in at a bed-and-breakfast in Sweetheart Springs.
I don’t like faking things, but the only room left was the honeymoon suite.
But somewhere between the town’s infamous gingerbread lattes and assumptions, our lives changed.
“Sometimes it feels like our weekends are perfect versions of what life could be like. Three days of magic and then we disappear back into our lives.”
“Like a highlight reel?” Laila asks. “When people only show their clean house or how well everything looks without all the mess.”
I nod.“Yes. Exactly like that. I don’t like our relationship feeling that way. I want to stop pretending, Laila. We could be more than that.”
She closes her eyes, letting the words sit. That’s what Laila needs when she gets new information. I’m fine with that, so long as she understands that I’m not asking for forever. At least not yet. She’s not ready.
I’m following the hunch that this weekend shouldn’t be squandered. We’re never alone like this, and yes, maybe I’m caught up in this whole fake honeymoon nonsense. But Laila’s walls are slowly coming down. There are things I need to say to her while they are.
It’s hard not to spiral in the quiet, though. There’s no sound but the horse hooves clomping and crunching, the sleigh slicing through the fresh snow, and soft bells jingling from the horses. It’s all very magical.
I don’t think she will, but I’m scared she’s going to tell me she doesn’t want that. That she’s fine with what we’re doing. I don’t think I can live like that anymore, but I can’t imagine a life without Laila in it. And where will that leave us?
She opens her eyes again, watching me intently.
“What if pretending is the only way we don’t ruin what we have? I don’t want to lose that.”
My heart stumbles and stutters. She wants more, too.
“Why does it have to ruin it, though?” Her words push me harder. “All I’m asking for is to let it get messy and real. I want to weather it all, not just enjoy the best moments. Not anymore.”
Her breathing shifts to a little faster than before.
She thinks I don’t see how hard she works to keep our time as close to perfect as she can.
Or the worry that creeps in when she thinks I’m not looking.
When we agreed to one weekend a year, she said it was because it was too hard to do much else, and when we were young, I think that was true. Travel is expensive.
But as time wore on, I think she was scared to let her mother touch what we have. We were ripped apart in high school, and I think that left a lasting imprint on both of us.
I’m a grownup now. If push came to shove, I’d do whatever it took to protect Laila and what we have. I just don’t know how to show her that.
Right now, though?
I just want real.
Back in the car, I dug the rings we bought at the market out of the bag she stuffed them in.
She doesn’t need to know that I fully intend to put these on her hand one day, forever.
For now, they can just represent an agreement that we’ll give this thing a real shot.
The first step in breaking this yearly cycle we have so that we can move forward.
She’s lost in her own thoughts, so I dig them out of my pocket.
This is it.
She’s either going to panic and tell me I’m asking for too much, or she’ll see this for what it is. A chance to see who we are when no one we know is watching. No barriers, no filters.
Just us.
“Laila.”
She turns to me, and her eyes immediately home in on the rings in the palm of my glove. Her eyes round and her perfectly groomed eyebrows curve upward.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
In my head, this felt a lot less emotionally heavy, but suddenly it feels like I’m asking for a lot more than transparency.
“I want to ask you a question.”
She nods, her mouth still open in surprise.
I’m shaking a little, and it’s not from how cold it is. I hope she can’t see my fear, though all the layers I have on.
“Will you stop pretending with me?”
She visibly swallows. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“I don’t want a highlight reel anymore. If we get messy?
Bring it on. Our weekends are usually filled with one foot in reality and one foot racing to fill our time with as many memories as we can make.
But we’ve got a chance to go all in here.
No cell service, no one who knows us. I don’t want to lose more time with you, and I don’t want to waste the time we have.
Don’t you want to see what happens when we do that? ”
But I don’t get a chance to play out the rest of this memory—Quinn’s elbow finds my ribs.
“Holden, you should really pay attention,” Quinn hisses.
There’s about six inches of room between me and the person beside me. That’s not nearly enough, but I make the move, anyway.
“That was unnecessary.”
“That six inches won’t save you.” She scoffs and takes a sip of her iced coffee. “Besides, you need to pay attention. You know how Vera is.”
My gaze flicks to the woman standing on the gym floor, commanding a microphone.
McKenna, my sister, says she’s the poster child for “the higher the hair, the closer to God”.
It doesn’t matter that Dolly Parton is probably the only woman still teasing her hair to heaven.
I know from experience that you can smell the mixture of hairspray and perfume from several feet away.
Vera Honeycutt is the head of the Booster Club for Phoenix football. No one has dared challenge her to step down in well over a decade. She adjusts her red rhinestone reading glasses on her nose and clears her throat with a ferocity that has every man in the gym adjust their posture.
She looks sweet, but Vera takes no prisoners.
“All right, y’all,” she begins, commanding the hum of conversation to quiet. “Homecoming is Friday, and I just want to make sure everybody is on track. We play Midnight Grove this year—bless their hearts—and you all know what that means!”
All at once, the whole gym chants, “Wolves howl. Phoenixes soar!”
I’m all for town spirit, but football in this town is a whole different beast. Especially when we’re playing our town’s biggest rival at the same time as Autumn Enchantment. Tension is high as all the things that mean most to Enchanted Hollow collide.
“Now,” Vera continues, flipping through her color-coded binder.
“This year is extra special. I know everyone already has their hands full with the bicentennial of Autumn Enchantment. But we’ve got a big star alumnus coming for the game on Friday, and he deserves all the Phoenix Pride we can give him! ”
My stomach clenches as she continues on and on about Cade and his famous fiancée, Holly Everheart.
She came here around the flower festival at Ever After Farm—I guess, late spring—and ran right into Cade in the sunflower field.
Rumors have flown for months that their relationship is a publicity stunt, but I know better.
Cade is a great guy.
He’s the quarterback for the Frost Giants, an NFL team represented by a town about an hour away.
My brother Logan is a running back on the same team.
I’ve met the entire team on multiple occasions.
But now this town is ready to lose its mind over this “homegrown love story” between Cade and Holly, and you’d think they’re practically royalty.
Granted, it’s not every day an Grammy-winning country singer and a star quarterback plan a wedding in your small town. But between demands for Autumn Enchantment, a local fall festival hosted out at Ever After Farms, regular town activities, the season, and now Homecoming—I’m swamped.
Drowning even.
I tug my phone out of my pocket for a quick glimpse of my home screen.
Laila sent me the picture she took on our sleigh ride in Sweetheart Springs last Christmas, and it’s one of my favorite pictures of us.
She’s so carefree here, with cheeks flushed pink and snow in her hair.
Her name still drifts through this town like a restless ghost, stirring up every memory I swore I’d buried.
Her scarf was bright red that day—love used to feel that way: burning, reckless, loud enough to drown out everything else.
Now I want something steadier. Golden. Something that doesn’t fade when the season ends, that hums quietly but lasts.
I used to think love had to burn to mean something—fast, bright, impossible to ignore. But the older I get, the more I think the real thing glows steady, golden, like light through honey.
I’m one foot into another memory when Quinn’s shoulder presses up against mine.
“Did you catch the love bug, too?” she asks dramatically.
With a sigh, I press the power button and darken the screen.
“You’re worse than McKenna, you know that?”
She straightens back up with a smile. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Before I come up with a comeback, Vera’s voice booms through the gym again. Someone really should take that away from her.
“Ethel usually sits as the taste-tester for the Homecoming chili cook-off, but she’s swamped. Do I have a volunteer to take over?”
Every head in the bleachers swivels toward me.
I hold up a hand in protest. “I bake, I don’t know anything—”
“Holden volunteers as tribute!” Quinn shouts. Then, in a quieter tone, she leans toward me. “It’s practically spicy pastry, Kolache Boy.”
If sarcasm were a sport, Quinn would’ve gone pro years ago.
A few murmurs float through the crowd, a few other voices nominating me.
My mouth flattens into a hard line. “I don’t have time to taste chili, Quinn.”
“McKenna would have done the same thing. It’s my duty as her best friend to fill in where I’m needed.”
“I supply your kolaches. You’re really messing with something beyond your ken.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, swirling her iced coffee before taking another sip.
Vera beams, pointing her rhinestone pen at me like a wand. “Wonderful! Thanks, Holden.”
The gym erupts in applause and cheering.
Great.
Sleep is overrated, anyway.
My old truck still has one of her mix CDs jammed in the console—half the songs skip, but I can’t bring myself to toss it. It’s the sound of every summer we never quite let go of.
Before I can sit with my irritation for too long, phone chimes sweep through the bleachers like a technological wave.
Quinn taps her feet excitedly on the bleachers. “Hurry and get your phone out. I smell tea.”
There’s no point in arguing, so I fish my phone back out.
The notification is from Hollow Hub, the town app. It’s not something I ever had on my phone until a couple of months ago, when McKenna installed it. She insisted we needed it for fall, and as much as I hate social media, she wasn’t wrong.
I scroll through the app, noting worthless posts about upcoming Homecoming festivities and pictures of pumpkins on porches. There’s nothing I can see that would warrant a town-wide push notification.
Until I see a little red dot hovering over the “new posts” icon on the menu.
Quinn gasps when the picture lights up the screen: Ella Taylor and Luke Jackson in an embrace on the sidewalk outside her coffee shop, and the words that make this front page news are in bold black letters:
THEY’RE GETTING MARRIED!
“I missed that to be here?” she squeals. “I knew something was up when I saw them at breakfast!”
My mind is spinning a million miles a minute, but it’s definitely not for the same reason.
I smile at her weakly. “Consider this karma for your tribute nonsense.”
“You’re probably right.” She bends and gathers her things in her arms. “I’ve got to get back. Someone saw something, and I need all the details.”
“Don’t forget about the gnomes,” I mumble as she jogs down the steps.
Henry once told her that every love story is a kind of folklore. Maybe this is just ours—half memory, half myth, waiting for its next verse.
I stare until the image blurs, then I squeeze my eyes shut to lubricate them again. Ella getting engaged is a huge deal. It might as well be a Batman signal to Laila. So, it’s not a matter of if Laila is coming back to Enchanted Hollow.
It’s a matter of when.
Fall in Enchanted Hollow always churns up all sorts of ghosts where she’s concerned, but we’ve never faced them. She’s only here for one season, one weekend at a time.
I guess our time is up now, and we get to face them. Everyone else grew up, moved on. We just hit pause on the story and never found the nerve to press play again. Maybe this is how it always starts in Enchanted Hollow—a whisper, a ghost, a breadcrumb leading someone home.