Chapter 28
twenty-eight
LAILA
We stay up longer talking than I wanted to.
Holden isn’t a stranger to me. Every time I came back for that one weekend, I let my guard down. For that one little snippet in time, he saw all of me, unbridled and free.
And that’s terrifying.
“I know you don’t want to talk,” he says quietly, “but I think I need to.”
His voice is soft, like the night we fell asleep, murmuring secrets and talking dreams in our honeymoon suite. It’s a memory I can’t shake, no matter how hard I try.
Across the room, the old Gumdrop plush he won for me at Peppermint Pines sits slouched in a chair, a little sugar-stained from the fairground and still loyal as ever. I brought him without thinking, the way you pack a piece of home you can’t bear to leave behind.
“I knew you were it for me from the first time I saw you at Autumn Enchantment.”
Okay, we’re doing this then.
I try to swallow around the lump in my throat, and before I can respond, he continues.
“You were off in a spot by yourself in the pumpkin patch—no Ella, no Bridget. Just quietly staring at something, the wind whipping your hair around. I knew in my heart that there was more to you than everyone else saw. And I was right, Laila. I just wish you believed in that more-than-enough version of you, too.”
Maybe it’s the proximity to him—or because I know I owe him more than he’s gotten—but I choose honesty instead of retreat.
“Ella kept talking about how magical the pumpkins were. It was always her place to escape, and I wanted a little of that magic for myself. She’d come back with dirt on her clothes from lying in the vines, and Mom would yell at her.
” Shame heats my cheeks. “It’s not like she bought them for her.
After her dad died, Ella paid for everything herself from Once Upon a Brew. ”
The bed dips as Holden turns toward me. He’s respecting the pillow-wall boundary, but I honestly wish he’d ignore it and pull me close. He won’t, though. Not unless I ask him to.
“Ella wasn’t the same after we moved to Colorado,” I whisper. “She got quieter. Like a piece of her stayed here—the bright part. The one that loves loudly, but softly, if that makes sense.”
Part of me stayed here, too, but I don’t think I’ve ever fully realized it until now. Not until I went back to Colorado and packed up my life there.
He studies me for a long beat. “You’re like that, too.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Ella’s love is selfless.”
“So is yours.” He exhales. “I know why you walked away in the fall.”
This ‘one bed’ situation just got a million times more uncomfortable. We haven’t talked about that night since it happened, and I’ve successfully evaded it all day.
“I told you—”
“Sure. You told me a lot of things. But none of them was the whole truth. You didn’t want to risk getting tangled up with your mother. You thought if you left, if you hit pause, it would keep me safe.”
His voice softens. “But I wasn’t asking you to stay because I needed saving, Laila. I’d still be here—even if we had to follow every breadcrumb back home. “
The word breadcrumb sparks like static—the same shimmer I’ve felt since that first letter reached me. He remembers every piece of it—maybe even more clearly than I do.
But then again, he always remembers.
“You said you’d wait,” I whisper.
“I meant it.” His thumb traces my cheek, the touch gentle and sure. “You needed time to find your way home. I get it. I just never stopped leaving the door open.”
He reaches toward me gently, slower than usual. He needs permission now, which hurts, even though I’m the reason for it. I inch closer—just two tiny movements—and tilt my face toward him.
Thankfully, he understands and rests his hand on my cheek.
The lump in my throat swells. I want to make it better, but I don’t have the words. “I want to marry you” isn’t something I can say to him yet, and we both know it.
“What are you so afraid of, La?” he asks, his tone dropping to an almost non-existent level.
Everything.
What if I don’t know how to be a good mom? What if my dreams don’t fit next to his? What if my wanderlust crashes into his roots and we both break?
“I don’t know how to be the woman you want, Holden.”
He smiles then, so big I think my heart might explode. “You just have to be you, Laila. I’ll be right here the whole time. Your partner in crime, and everything else. Have some faith? Believe in yourself, and in what we’re building.”
His words echo from the night on the dock, “Sometimes you have to stop running to get caught by the right person.” I’m paraphrasing, I’m sure, but the message is what matters.
He makes it sound so easy. It’s tempting to simply say yes.
Instead, I murmur, “I’m exhausted, and it’s been a weird day. Let’s talk about it in the morning, after we’ve both had some sleep.”
Practical. Safe. The lie I keep telling myself.
He strokes my cheek one more time, then withdraws back to his side of the pillow wall. I miss the contact immediately.
I’m so tired of feeling alone. Even here—with him in the same bed—I feel alone.
Then stop choosing lonely, my heart whispers, sounding suspiciously like Henry narrating one of his folklore essays.
With a sigh, I stare up at the ceiling. I consider wishing for soft music just to see what might happen, but I don’t think I want to know. Instead, the silence just stretches, broken only by the fire’s crackle and the storm whispering against the glass.
I glance over at him, considering all the ways I could get him to talk to me some more.
Even if it means being honest, because the quiet is worse.
I removed enough pillows to see him as we talked, which means I can see the broad line of his back and the flex of his shoulders beneath his shirt.
If I focus back on the ceiling, I can pretend I’m not attracted to him, and this pillow wall is flimsy.
But looking away doesn’t change how miserable I am temperature-wise. I need the blanket for comfort reasons, but it’s like sleeping in a sauna. His body heat.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore.
“Do you fuel your own oven, Holden? What in the world—you’re like a thousand degrees.”
He rolls back over, blinking. “What?”
“You’re radiating heat through this fortress. “
He tosses a pillow at me. “Must be a memory foam mattress.”
I snort. “Of course you’re comfortable.”
“La, this house adjusts to what you need.”
“Then it’s defective,” I grumble, flopping onto my side.
I might even readjust my pillow a tad violently.
The bed shifts again, and I can feel his gaze on me even before he says anything.
“What’s wrong, La? Can’t sleep?”
I stare at the bedroom door for a long moment, contemplating how much I want to say. When he stays quiet, I glance over my shoulder, surprised by the soft expression on his face.
“It’s just weird to be back,” I admit. “I thought it would feel like it normally does, but it doesn’t. Everything is different.”
Emma told me once that running doesn’t make the past disappear. She was right. It just makes it harder to recognize what’s waiting when you finally stop.
He props himself on his pillow. “Memories don’t leave just because the story changes.”
“Right.” I flop onto my back and refocus on the ceiling, my throat tightening.
“That’s not what I mean, La,” he whispers.
I turn back toward him, giving myself a regular workout as I rotisserie on this stupid mattress. The air thickens, warm and charged as I meet his eyes. If I were to destroy this pillow wall and seek refuge in his arms to sleep, I know I’d sleep soundly.
“You’re allowed to feel lost,” he murmurs. “A lot happened back in October.”
“Thank you.”
“I told you before—I’m not going anywhere, Laila.”
He watches me for a beat before he rolls over and tucks the blanket over his shoulder.
Usually, when people use my full name, I’m either in trouble or at work. When Holden uses it, I feel treasured. Seen. Understood. I love the nicknames he gives me, but sometimes, my name sounds like a promise.
“Goodnight, Holden,” I whisper.
“Goodnight, honey,” he murmurs, already drifting to sleep.
Honey. The word wraps like firelight—soft, golden, a little dangerous. Red once burned me; this feels golden.
Outside, the wind howls like ghosts rehearsing old lines, and the coin on the dresser hums faintly, steady as a heartbeat.
I’m in so much trouble.