7. Festival Flames
Chapter seven
Festival Flames
"You're coming to the festival, right?"
Jasper had appeared at my door again, this time with coffee instead of pie, steam curling from two cups balanced in one hand. His grin suggested he already knew the answer, or at least knew what the answer was going to become.
"What festival?"
"The Magnolia Creek Founder's Festival. Happens every year, first weekend of June.
" He leaned against my doorframe, casual in a way that highlighted how his shoulders filled the space, how the morning light caught the gold flecks in his amber eyes.
"Food, music, fireworks. Best ribs in three parishes.
Games that are definitely rigged but in an endearing way. General small-town chaos."
"That sounds..."
"Amazing? Life-changing? Like exactly what you need?"
"Loud."
"Also, yes." He handed me one of the cups, his fingers brushing mine in a way that sent warmth up my arm.
That same electric hum I felt whenever any of them touched me, like static before a storm.
"Come anyway. Lila's going to drag you if I don't. At least this way you'll have a guide who knows where all the good stuff is. "
"Is this you asking me on a date?"
"This is me saying you should experience the festival.
With me. As your dedicated guide." His eyes sparkled; that mischief I was learning to recognize dancing beneath the surface.
"If that happens to involve spending several hours together eating delicious food and watching terrible local theater, well. That's just coincidence."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm very persuasive. Ask anyone."
"Anyone? Or just people who've already agreed with you?"
He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-wounded. "You doubt my track record? I'll have you know I once convinced Callum to compete in a pie-eating contest. Callum. The man who considers dessert a moral failing."
"Did he win?"
"Demolished the competition. Looked furious about it the entire time." Jasper's grin turned fond, something softer moving behind his eyes. "That's the thing about my brother. He doesn't do anything halfway, even the things he's doing against his will."
I tried to picture Callum, dark, serious, monosyllabic Callum, covered in pie filling. The image was so incongruous with the man I'd been studying all week that I laughed out loud.
The sound surprised me. Surprised Jasper too, from the way his expression shifted. He looked at me the way someone looks at an unexpected sunset—like he wanted to memorize it before it faded.
"You should do that more," he said, his voice dropping to something almost reverent.
"Do what?"
"Laugh." He seemed to catch himself, and the grin was back, bright and deflecting, armor sliding into place. "Anyway. Festival. Three o'clock. Comfortable shoes. I won't take no for an answer."
I smiled despite my better judgment. "Fine. But I reserve the right to leave whenever I want."
"Deal." He straightened, that grin widening. "I'll pick you up at three. Wear comfortable shoes. There's a lot of standing. And dancing, if I have anything to say about it."
He was halfway down the stairs when he called back: "Oh, Callum and Eli will be there too. Just FYI. Not a big deal."
"You could have led with that!"
"Where's the fun in that?"
He was gone before I could argue, moving down the stairs with that fluid grace that I'd stopped trying to explain as merely athletic. He moved like something wild wearing a human suit, comfortable in his body in a way that went beyond confidence.
I stood in my doorway, holding coffee I hadn't asked for, thinking about three brothers at a small-town festival and the way this felt more like a coordinated campaign than a casual invitation.
I took the coffee inside and sat with it on my couch, staring at nothing in particular.
A date. Was it a date? Jasper had danced around the word like it was something dangerous, but he'd also shown up at my door with coffee and asked me to spend several hours with him at what was essentially the town's most prominent event. That felt date-adjacent, at a minimum.
But then he'd mentioned his brothers would be there. Which made it... not a date? Or a very strange date? Or some kind of family outing I'd been absorbed into without my consent?
I thought about calling Tara, but I already knew what she'd say. Three hot brothers want to take you to a festival? This is not a problem. This is a fantasy.
She wouldn't be wrong. But she also didn't understand the particular terror of wanting something after you'd spent years being punished for wanting things.
Marcus had hated when I wanted things. Hated when I had opinions or preferences or desires that didn't align perfectly with his.
Every time I'd expressed enthusiasm for something, a restaurant, a movie, a weekend trip, he'd found a way to diminish it.
To make me feel stupid for caring. To twist my excitement into something shameful, something that proved I was frivolous, shallow, not serious enough.
Until eventually I'd stopped caring about anything at all, because it was easier than the constant small rejections.
And now here was Jasper, practically begging me to come to a festival, looking at me like my laugh was something precious. Here was a whole town that seemed determined to include me in things, to make me feel like I belonged.
It felt good. Too good. But underneath the good feeling was the old fear, whispering that this couldn't be real. That something this nice must have a cost. That I was missing the catch because I wanted so badly for there not to be one.
I drank the coffee Jasper had brought me. It was exactly how I liked it. Black, one sugar. A hint of cinnamon.
I tried not to read too much into that.
Later that afternoon, Eli walked me home from The Daily Grind.
We'd happened to be leaving at the same time, though "happened" was starting to feel like a generous word for the way these brothers appeared exactly when I was thinking about them.
"Different route today," he said, falling into step beside me.
"Do you always just appear?"
"I was in the area." His hands were in his pockets, his pace matching mine without apparent effort. "I thought you might like to see the old part of town. It's historically interesting."
"Historically interesting." I couldn't keep the smile from my voice. "Is that Eli-speak for 'I want to give you a tour, but I'm pretending it's about architecture'?"
He glanced at me sideways, and I caught the edge of a smile beneath his usual composure. "Maybe."
"Lead the way, then. I'm a sucker for architecture."
We walked in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
There was something different about being with Eli, a quality of quiet that didn't feel like absence.
When Callum was silent, it felt heavy, charged with things unsaid, electricity building before a strike.
When Eli was silent, it felt peaceful. Like he was simply comfortable existing beside me without the need to fill every moment with words.
I found myself relaxing into it, letting my shoulders drop from where they'd crept up toward my ears. My therapist in Atlanta had talked about this, the way trauma lived in the body, the constant low-grade tension of waiting for something bad to happen. With Eli, that tension eased.
I didn't know why. I just knew it did.
The route he took wound through streets I hadn't explored, past buildings that had clearly been standing since before the Civil War.
Their facades were weathered but maintained, the kind of careful preservation that spoke of old money and older pride.
The streets here were narrower, shaded by oaks draped in Spanish moss, the light filtering through in golden-green patterns that shifted with every breeze.
He pointed things out as we walked: the original general store, now a café with a hand-painted sign.
The church where the founding families had worshipped, its white steeple sharp against the deepening blue of the sky.
The courthouse with its distinctive ironwork, those same strange symbols I'd seen on the fences throughout town.
I paused at the ironwork, studying it. The symbols seemed to move in my peripheral vision, shifting like something alive, though when I looked directly at them they were perfectly still. Cold metal. Unchanging.
"You know a lot about this place," I said.
"I'm the family archivist." He said it matter-of-factly, like it was a normal job description. "Someone has to keep track of where we've been. What we've done. What we've... learned."
The pause before learned felt deliberate. Like he'd chosen the word carefully from several options.
"That sounds like it comes with responsibility."
"It does." He adjusted his glasses, that thinking tell I was learning to read. "Our family has a long history. Longer than most people realize. Keeping that history accurate and accessible matters more than you might think."
"Accessible to whom?"
He looked at me then, really looked, and there was something in his expression I couldn't read. His eyes, gray in some lights, silver in others, seemed to catch the fading sun and hold it.
"To the people who need to understand it."
Before I could push further, we'd reached the courthouse, and he was pointing at the ironwork.
"The Thornwood crest," he said. "The founding family. Our ancestors, technically. The line's been continuous for more than a thousand years. Settling in this area almost three hundred years ago."
"Those symbols." I traced one with my finger, not quite touching the metal. It seemed to hum faintly, like a tuning fork struck at a frequency just below hearing. "What do they mean?"
"Protection." He watched my hand hover near the ironwork. "At least, that's what the historical records say. The Thornwoods were very concerned with protecting their territory. Their people."
"From what?"
He was quiet for a moment. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, or something that sounded like a dog. The sound echoed strangely, bouncing off the old buildings.