Chapter 16
sixteen
LAILA
The air is cool and still. There’s barely even a breeze.
It’s exactly the night that you’d want for a wedding reception. There’s no danger of tents flying away, unruly decorations, or toppled over easels. It’s the kind of fall night that pretends the world isn’t shifting and begs to be remembered.
Which is great for literally everyone else but me.
Ella and Luke are having a moment under a nearby oak tree, dancing to Holly and Cade’s first dance song.
Normally, I’d think something like that was in poor taste, but they’ve earned this.
It truly feels like a fairytale on the farm tonight, with golden light spilling from the bulbs strung between trees and the battery-lit candles onto all the rust and terracotta details.
It’s beautiful.
Too beautiful for how heavy my chest feels.
I’ve smiled so much my whole face hurts. Worse, my insides ache. There hasn’t been time to really process what I witnessed, and the pressure from holding it inside hurts.
There should be relief from pulling off this wedding without Holly and Cade being any wiser, and I suppose there is. Despite my mother’s best efforts, we beat her. Love won.
Relief should feel lighter than this. I said it out loud—told them it was her who called the press. There’s no taking that back. I didn’t just cut the cord tonight; I burned the bridge she built to control me.
And even from miles away, she’s not done. She’ll lick her wounds and come back sharper. I saw it in her eyes tonight, the satisfaction of watching me flinch. She doesn’t need to lift a hand to break what I built; she just has to remind me she still can.
I know what that means for Bridget and me. The line we’ve walked for years—between survival and loyalty—is gone.
For a long time, I thought starting over meant losing everything.
Now I see it for what it is. Grief.
I wanted this choice to be mine, and she took that from me. But she can’t take the knowing. I see her for what she is now—and that’s where her power ends.
The music swells, low and steady, drifting
through the trees. I tilt my head back and watch the lights spread through the trees like constellations. From here, I can almost imagine I’m looking at another life. One where none of this hurt exists.
I’m standing at the edge of the pumpkin patch, a safe distance from the dance floor, when I hear footsteps crunching over the leaves behind me. But I knew it was him before he got close by the scent of cinnamon that clings to him like static.
“Figured I’d find you out here.”
Holden’s voice carries the faintest smile. He stands beside me, his jacket folded over an arm, his sleeves rolled, messy hair against his forehead. For someone who’s been running a dessert table all night, he looks entirely too perfect.
“You’re supposed to be mingling,” I say, forcing a smile. “Your mini apple pies have been a hit.”
Everything he brought was a hit. But this is where Holden shines, and I hope tonight doesn’t tarnish that for him.
“Maybe I’m only interested in mingling with one person, and I had to come find her because she’s hiding in the pumpkins.”
“I’m not hiding in the pumpkins. I’d get dirty, and I’m not hiding at all.” It’s a lie. Not just a white one. It’s blatant and ugly because I’m absolutely hiding.
He steps closer, following my gaze toward the golden blur of the reception. “I never doubted for a second that you’d pull it off, honey. Everything looks perfect.”
“Thanks.”
The word tastes bitter. He hears it; I can tell.
I hate that we’re standing here instead of slow dancing on the dance floor, eager to talk about what tomorrow holds without a ticking time clock in the distance.
This moment is just the slam of the snooze button, begging for a few more minutes to delay the inevitable.
“Your mom didn’t stick around,” he says quietly. “Sam said she left before the toast, and he sounded like it wasn’t early enough.”
“It wasn’t. She never should have been here to begin with,” I bite out.
He’s quiet for a long beat, then: “Laila, you can stop pretending this didn’t shake you.”
“I’m fine.” The words come out too fast and too dishonest. “Everyone’s fine. That’s what matters.”
“I’m not worried about everyone, honey. And you don’t look fine.”
Something inside me wobbles. I press my lips together, but my silence says more than I mean it to. He watches me the way he does when he’s timing bread in the oven, with that unflinching patience he’s so good at.
Finally, he offers his hand. “Dance with me.”
I blink at him. “Out here?”
Memories of a slow dance in the snow intrude on my heartbreak, and I grab hold like it’s a lifeboat and it might save me from being sucked down with the sinking ship.
It felt a little ridiculous before, but only because I was scared of how it made me feel.
Now it feels like prolonging more pain, and I need as much of that as I can get.
“Right here.” He gestures to the ground between us. “No audience. Just us.”
A laugh slips out, small and broken. “You really think a dance fixes everything?”
“No,” he says. “But it slows the world down long enough for you to breathe.”
When I slide my fingers into his, the air shifts.
My heartbeat slows more, settling into a less frantic pace. Holden has always been home, but this moment is tainted now. Sugar sweet like the gumdrops that line the gingerbread house, only they’re laced with poison.
I have to figure out how to replace them with the old gumdrops—the ones that look exactly like what they are.
He pulls me close, his arm wrapped around my back instead of casually on my back. We lace our fingers together, like perhaps it might keep what’s coming at bay if we’re connected. I don’t know how long we stand here and sway, gentle and quiet, like a heartbeat.
It steadies me for what I have to do.
I tuck my head under his chin, wishing he could hear my heart and the promise it’s making. This isn’t goodbye. I’ll be back when I figure out how to fix what she’s ruined. For the first time all night, I let myself lean in. Not enough to lose balance, but enough to feel what it’s like to be home.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“I’m memorizing. This moment belongs in the vault,” I answer.
It’s something we say before we prepare to be apart for a year, but that’s not my intention. I’ll be back before Christmas. Luke will propose to Ella within the month, and it’s not just because he pulled me and Bridget aside and asked for our blessings.
I can feel it in my bones.
He exhales slowly, his breath stirring the hair near my temple. “Then memorize this, too.”
His hand slips to my chin, tipping it up so our lips meet.
He knows. I can feel the quiet mourning in the way he takes his time, reverently moving his lips against mine like it’s the last time.
It won’t be. I want to scream it because I hate the way goodbye feels almost as much as silence. But I need to figure out who I am without performing. Without someone pulling the strings behind the scenes. This version of me can’t be who Holden needs.
Maybe before tonight, I stood a solid chance, but not now.
She took more than I could have ever imagined. I think she’d been doing it so long that I’m only just now noticing how fragile everything is that she left behind.
When the song fades into another, I pull away.
“Holden—”
His eyes search mine, his words barely audible when he says,“Stay with me, honey.”
It’s not desperation; it’s yearning. It’s sure and steady in a world that won’t stop tilting and I wish I could just cling to him instead of dealing with what comes next.
“I want to,” I whisper, and it’s the first time I’ve genuinely meant what I’ve said all night.
I do want to. I also want to rewind and seek all the clues that led to tonight, so I could prevent it.
I’m tired of getting lost in the woods.
“Then stay.” His thumb traces slow circles on my wrist. “We’ll rebuild together.”
But that’s just it, our foundation was never strong to begin with. We started as teenagers, and that made it shaky at best. People make it work all the time, but that’s because they worked through the hard parts.
I kept him a thousand miles away and gave him one weekend a year.
I want to do this right, and that means time and space. If she taught me anything, it’s how to build a cage. But maybe I can learn how to build a home instead.
It means letting the dust settle and collecting what’s left of the rubble from my life first, then seeing what pieces of our life still fit together. Once I make sure she won’t touch Holden.
Or can’t.
We need a new foundation because I don’t know how to fix what’s there.
But I think I also need to fix myself, because Holden deserves more than his broken woman, who’s spent her whole life emotionally anticipating outcomes before they even happen. I’ve lived my whole life in a cage, and while I think I knew—to a degree—I didn’t realize how small it really was.
He’s looking for something I told myself I couldn’t give him.
Marriage. Sunshine. Comfort.
The kind of forever I used to call impossible.
I have to figure out who Laila Mitchell is.
He wants a wife and the life that comes with it—I have to start my whole career over, because it’s all attached to her.
He’s literal sunshine. He’s golden light spilling through the clouds, and I’m the epitome of a dark and rainy day.
He’s comfortable in his life—his family, his job—and all I can feel right now is pain.
Deep, aching pain that nothing is what I believed it to be.
I don’t know if I can protect him from my mother, or if she even cares. I hope that’s a worry that doesn’t even exist—borrowing trouble, as Luke’s Gran would say.
But I can protect him from me, and the maelstrom my life has become in a blink.
“You’re scared,” he says after a prolonged silence.
“Yes,” I answer honestly. “But that’s not all of it, Holden. You deserve someone who isn’t still flinching at ghosts.”
“Why are you trying to tell me what I deserve, Laila? Maybe I want your ghosts. And every flinch they cause.”
“You don’t want these ghosts,” I say, firmer this time.
His grip tightens on me, just a little. Like he knows.
“Then we’ll hire ghost hunters, or ghostbusters, or whoever we need to flush them out. I’m here for the mess, remember? Filter-free life with you.”
I laugh once, the sound catching in your chest. “Holden, my mother—”
“I know.” His eyes soften. “She burns what she can’t own. But I’m not kindling.”
The wind stirs the trees above us, scattering gold leaves across his shoulders. He doesn’t brush them off.
“I just need time,” I whisper. “I’m so lost and confused and hurt…”
He nods, jaw tightening. “Take it then, honey. Whatever you need.”
It should make it easier. It doesn’t.
I know what he’s not saying; let me help you figure it out. Let me carry some of the load. Let me hold your hand while we wander a few moonlit paths. We’ll find our way eventually.
But I don’t know how to do any of that.
And most of all, he doesn’t deserve more of this. I’ve been dragging him along in my mess for over a decade now.
“I want to make one thing clear,” he says after a beat.
“I know what you’re doing. No matter what happens, it was all worth it to me.
One weekend a year, pretending to be married, the last ten days—being with you.
It was worth it. And I know you don’t believe me when I say that, so I’ll wait until you do. ”
My throat tightens. “What if I don’t know how to believe you, Holden? What if it’s too broken to fix? If I’m too broken?”
“Then we take the pieces and make something new, honey.”
There’s his sunshine again, warm and golden in my dark clouds.
He kisses me again, slow and steady, like he’s pressing a promise into my bones.
Like maybe I’ll finally believe him this time.
He pulls back first, forehead resting against mine. “You know where to find me when you come home,” he murmurs. “Four a.m. The lights are always on.”
The glow from the reception lights flickers across his face as he steps away, and I realize the ache between us isn’t an ending.
It’s a pause between chapters.
The breath before the story starts again.