Chapter 13
thirteen
LAILA
OCTOBER
Holly said no to the donut wall for the wedding, but the infamous apple cider donuts Ever After Farm is known for are front and center at the rehearsal dinner.
Well, post-rehearsal dinner.
This part of the night exists solely for Holly and Cade before they say their vows tomorrow, and this is one of my favorite moments before a wedding.
It’s a deep sigh before the wedding day, unless we’ve got a bride who forgot something last minute.
It happens, and we roll with it—or we have an associate deal with it so we can stay ready for the morning.
But Holly is gleeful and relaxed, her laughter high and unrestrained, rising above everyone else’s. She’s earned her happiness—not that happiness is something anyone should have to earn. More laughter joins hers, fading as I get closer to the Ever After Pond.
Golden light from the lanterns swaying gently on their posts spills onto the path that will lead me to the dock.
I’m not hiding. I just want a place to recharge.
It’s funny, this little pocket of quiet feels like it belongs to another story entirely.
The type that Henry would say rewrites itself when no one’s looking.
I keep following the lanterns’ reflections, gold on dark water—like lemon gumdrops on icing, flickering in rhythm with the crickets.
I kick off my shoes and sink onto the edge of the dock, legs dangling, toes brushing the glassy surface. The reflection trembles, and for a moment, it looks like the world is breathing with me.
Once, there was a girl who believed in sugar and spice.
She followed the sweetness home.
Ella’s father loved that story. At some point, in all the times he recited it from memory while we shucked pecans or before bedtime, I claimed it as mine.
It’s nice to know Aurora Thorne—whoever she is—treasured these stories enough to collect them so other people can enjoy them, too.
Seeing the story in print made me think of him, like part of what he loved found a way to keep growing, even when we weren’t looking.
It wasn’t as scary as Hansel and Gretel—no blind witch waiting to eat children—but it carried the same kind of lesson. I reach for it when I feel lost, chasing comfort in applause instead of quiet.
I hate the quiet.
Thankfully, I’ve got a whole background symphony of nature and happiness while I sit here. It’s just enough.
This place feels like the ending I never let myself imagine.
“Should’ve known I’d find you here,” Holden says softly behind me.
He sits beside me without waiting for an invitation, his shoulder brushing mine, his warmth steady against the slight chill that rolls off the water.
I smile at him. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Modern folklore. Henry says wedding rehearsals are our generation’s version of myth-making.” I chuckle. “He’s always reframing familiar things in a way that just clicks with me.”
“I’d say that means you’re on the right path then,” he says. “What else does he say?”
I draw a figure-eight in the water with my toes. “He says that we gather around food and people, say the right words in the right order, post it all online, and call it proof. But we’re focusing on the wrong part. The photos, not the pattern.”
“The way people keep finding reasons to circle back to love,” Holden supplies.
His words settle in my chest, the same way they always do—like he’s reminding me that love isn’t a destination. It’s a home you keep finding, even when you think you’ve lost the map.
I think about the posts sitting in my drafts folder on various apps: the blurred photo of Holly and Cade laughing under string lights, the caption about how love stories aren’t fairy tales—they’re habits. Tiny, ordinary miracles we choose to keep believing in.
But it still doesn’t feel quite right.
“Tell me about her,” I say, dragging my toes through the dark water.
Holden bumps my leg with his. “You’re working with her, La. What could I tell you that you don’t already know?”
He notices things people usually don’t. Or maybe it’s just with me.
I want something important that I can use to tell the final bits of their story, beyond hashtags and pretty photos, that people expect from a wedding.
They’ll have a photographer and a videographer, and their versions of the story are important.
But I’m telling a different story, and I want to see if I’m on the right track.
Sweet Treats started as a maybe—an idea I was too afraid to say out loud. But Holly’s wedding felt like the perfect experiment. If I could tell one love story honestly, without filters or brand polish, maybe I could remember how to tell my own again.
“An outside perspective. I’ve heard how the Jacksons feel about her—and of course, I love their opinions. But she lived with them for months. What did you see?”
He thinks about that for a second, eyes on the ripples spreading from my foot.
“This town never stops talking about her,” he says finally. “Like she’s some kind of fairytale—the girl who ran away from the castle, and Cade’s the one who rescued her.”
“I can see that,” I say softly.
“They’re too fixated on the romance of it, I think. At the pep rally last week, Vera went on and on about how they’re this huge deal—but honestly, the only thing that makes them extraordinary is that they’re famous.”
“Before she volunteered you for the chili taste-tester position?” I tease.
He grimaces. “I told you we’re not talking about that ever again. Some people should never be allowed near a kitchen. Ever.”
A laugh tips out of me, completely free and relaxed. I’m not used to feeling like this, and I’m trying to ignore the “shoe could drop at any moment” feeling hovering around the edges of this moment.
“Like me?”
He smiles, a dot of bright under the full moon. “You can cook, honey. You just don’t like to—there’s a difference.”
My heart skips a few beats. Most people would say I’m a terrible cook, but Holden sees the underlying details. I’m not patient enough to get better at it, unless I want to. He quietly steps in and teaches me how to improve, and I want to do better.
Everyday rituals.
“So the town is obsessed with them,” I say, steering the conversation away from myself.
“They are. But they’re fixated on a version of Holly that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
I plant my hands on the dock so I can straighten my back. A quiet moan escapes as I stretch the aching muscles there. Wordlessly, Holden swings his legs around and adjusts so he can talk and rub my back.
“When Holly got here—at least when I first came across her—she didn’t look like someone who escaped a castle.
She looked more like someone who’d been chased out of one.
Granted, I didn’t see her every day, but Sam told me she barely ventured anywhere without a hat and sunglasses.
If she even left her room. She didn’t want people to see her. ”
“Well, she’s got a handful of Grammys. That makes sense.”
Holden shakes his head. “I think it was less about being recognized as Holly Everheart and more so about being seen. You know how this town is.”
Not for the first time, I wonder if people can feel the undercurrent here.
If they come seeking a respite from life or tragedy or fear, and somehow just know.
Enchanted Hollow never hesitates to swoop in and protect what needs to be protected, and I’ve always wondered if someone who doesn’t have a connection here can feel that.
That could be overwhelming, I think.
Instantly feeling like you’re home without understanding what that means.
His voice softens. “I was doing a delivery one day, and I saw her walking back from the orchard. She had a basket full of apples, and she looked like she’d gone ten rounds with a tree. But she had this look on her face like she’d just remembered what breathing felt like.”
“That’s when everything changed.”
“People like to say it was when she ran into Cade in the sunflowers because, again-they love their romance. It gives a great angle to leverage and get people here.”
I chuckle. “You’d do better on social media than you think. That’s a heck of a hook.”
He squeezes my sides. “She’d sing in the orchard, too. It sort of became her haven—it was a place she could be herself, without performing. Like the trees were old friends, and she finally felt like herself again.”
“That’s why I wanted to hear your version,” I say. “You notice things no one else does. I’ve never heard her talk about it that way.”
“She probably didn’t notice. At least not at first. And Cade was a piece of that—I’m not denying the romance aspect. I’m just saying that for them to work, Holly had to follow her own path first. So there’d be room to love him.”
I feel something shift in my chest, the way words do when they take root.
“You’re good at this,” I murmur. “Maybe you should be the one telling the story.”
I think back to what Henry said about meaning disguised as aesthetics, and realize Holden’s been showing me that lesson all along—steady hands, simple words, all substance.
“I see people every morning who are up too early to filter, La. Five o’clock in the morning breakfast runs before school or work. People are grabbing dinner after an all-night shift, bleary-eyed and exhausted. I’ve learned to see through the cracks.”
“The unfiltered version,” I supply, thinking back to our conversation last December.
His hands move slightly on my back as he nods.
“That’s the version you should write about, and I think Henry would agree.
Not the dress or the ring—even though I know that’s part of the formula.
Tell the story of how Holly learned to be quiet again before her voice came back.
How she stopped running long enough to get caught—but by the right person this time. ”
“I think I love that version,” I whisper. “Finding someone who lets you stop running.”
Holden’s thumb traces small circles against my back, an absent, grounding rhythm. “Then maybe it’s time you stopped too,” he says, his voice a gentle hum.
Something about the way he says it feels like a promise—one that lands right between my heart and my hands, in that space where all my unsent words live.
The words hit harder than I expect. I stare out at the pond—the glimmer of the stars, the golden orbs from the lanterns, and the moon all dancing in a trembling reflection.
I think about Holly’s laughter earlier, bright and unguarded.
How she danced to whatever music the DJ for this “hangout” spun, barefoot and singing loudly like someone living her life for herself.
Without fear, without running away from anything.
Not from fame or fear or anyone’s version of her story.
She just decided she liked her version better.
Maybe that’s what love does—it quiets the noise until you can finally hear your own heartbeat again.
Last winter, I told Holden marriage wasn’t for me—that I wasn’t built for something that always ended in leaving.
He never argued. He just looked at me like he could already see the day I’d change my mind.
And maybe he was right. Sitting here now, the idea doesn’t feel like a cage anymore—it feels like a choice.
A promise you keep remaking every day, even when no one’s watching.
I think I’ve been so unhappy with the world I’ve built online because I was focused on the wrong part of it. I was looking for the wrong proof that happiness exists. It doesn’t live in likes or engagement, or shares. I couldn’t find it there because it’s madness and chaos and inauthentic.
It lives in the stillness. The moments that act like heartbeats between words.
Holden shifts so he’s back beside me, his knee brushing mine. “You’re quiet all of a sudden. You okay?”
“I think so,” I say. “I’m just thinking about stories. Henry says that sometimes we need to change the ending when the story’s purpose changes. But maybe they change when we stop trying to make them perfect.”
He smiles at that, and I feel it—steady, certain, the same way the light spills over the water.
Henry would probably call this a ritual.
I think it’s just life.
Or maybe love.
A breeze rolls through the trees, soft as breath, and the lanterns above us flicker. For a heartbeat, everything stills. The pond, the air, me.
And somewhere deep down, I know the truth I’m still too afraid to say out loud—
I’m not running either.
I just finally stopped long enough to notice where I am.
And who’s still sitting beside me.
The story isn’t over. Maybe it’s just finally catching up with us.