Chapter 27 Lance
Lance
We’re almost to the truck when genevieve stops.
“Wait.” She grabs my arm, fingers curling into my jacket. “Apple cider.”
I stare down at her. “What?”
“Apple cider.” She points toward a small stand at the edge of the parking lot with an older woman serving steaming cups from a thermos, and a hand-painted sign reading Fresh Pressed Cider—$3. “I need some.”
“You need some.”
“Desperately.” She’s already tugging me toward it, and I let her, because apparently I’ve lost all ability to tell this woman no. “It’s October, Lance. You can’t have October without apple cider. It’s basically illegal.”
She lets go to dig through her purse, and I immediately miss the warmth.
Pathetic.
I hand the woman a ten before Genevieve can find her wallet. “Two, please.”
The woman hands us the cups, and right before we walk away she smiles. “Where’s Art today?”
We both freeze.
“You know how it is, ma’am.” I clear my throat. “He’s always doing something.”
She grins and shakes her head. “Good for him. Maybe you could convince him to follow in his father’s footsteps one day. Rosebrook Falls could use a leader like Arthur.”
I force a smile and nod, then hover my palm on Genevieve’s lower back and steer her across the square toward the gazebo before anyone else can remind me whose girlfriend I’m buying cider for.
Genevieve wraps both hands around her cup like a lifeline. The afternoon light catches her hair, turning it molten, and I have to look away before I do something stupid like brush that strand of copper off her cheek.
“There’s a bench,” she says, nodding toward a wooden seat near the edge of the square, partially hidden by a massive oak shedding gold and red leaves. “Can we sit for a minute? I want to enjoy this before we go back.”
I should say no. Should tell her the chicken’s going to go bad, that I have things to do, any of the thousand excuses that would put distance between us.
But when we go back home, she’s going to cook.
For Art. And I’ll have to think about how he’s coming over, how our bubble of fake reality is ending. How he didn’t tell me he was back.
“Yeah. Okay.”
We settle onto the bench, and I feel her warmth through my jacket. The cider is sweet when I sip it. Around us, the square hums with late-afternoon life—dogs being walked, a mother with a stroller, an old couple sharing a newspaper.
Normal life. The kind I stopped believing in a long time ago.
“This is nice,” Genevieve murmurs, tipping her head back to watch the leaves drift down. One lands in her hair, and she doesn’t notice.
I reach over and pluck it without thinking.
She turns, green eyes wide, and I hold up the leaf like evidence. “You had a leaf.”
“Thanks.”
I let it fall and take another sip of cider, my fingers tingling from where they wrapped around her hair.
“Can I tell you something?” she says after a moment.
“Depends.”
She shifts on the bench, angling toward me. “Alex got me thinking. That story question.”
“Alex gets a lot of people thinking. Usually about how to make him stop talking.”
She laughs, and it drips over me like honey. “Stop it. He’s charming.”
“Don’t tell him that. He’ll use it as ammunition on Felicity.”
“You heard him ask me what kind of story my life would be,” she says.
“The truth is, all my stories are about people letting me down. My mom, my dad, my career. Every time I thought I had something solid, it got pulled out from under me.” She stares into her cup.
“And I still keep going, because what else is there to do?”
Relatable.
“But sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to have one thing that actually stays.”
My mind builds it for her before I can stop it.
Saturday mornings with coffee and bare feet on the kitchen tile. A hand on her lower back, stealing bits of her food before she’s finished cooking. A dog at her feet, his tongue wagging because even he can’t resist her pull. Cider in October every year.
Normal, ordinary things that don’t disappear.
I can see it so clearly it hurts. And in every single frame, it’s me where someone else should be.
“You will.”
She looks at me, surprised. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?” she asks. “If your life was a story.”
I take a long sip. “Horror.”
She frowns. “Horror?”
“The kind where the monster isn’t some creature in the shadows. It’s the people you trust. The ones who are supposed to protect you.” I pause. “And sometimes it’s you. Sometimes you look in the mirror and realize the monster’s been there all along, wearing your face.”
She’s quiet for long enough that I think I’ve said too much. Maybe I’ve reminded her who she’s sitting next to—not just her boyfriend’s best friend, but a man who’s done things that don’t wash off. Things that stain my soul forever.
“You’re not a monster, Lance.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.” She grips my arm. “I know you’re training a scared kid so he has a chance at surviving something that shouldn’t exist. I know you’ve been protecting me when you had every reason not to. I know you let your guard dog carry around a pink duck because it’s his favorite toy.”
“Virgil.”
She blinks. “What?”
“The duck. His name is Virgil.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. “It was the only toy he didn’t destroy when he was a puppy. Pax gave it to him when he was eight weeks old. Carries it everywhere.”
“Virgil,” she repeats. “You named your dog’s pink duck Virgil.”
“Cavall named him. I just made it official.”
She presses her lips together, but her eyes are bright. “Monsters don’t name their dog’s toys, Lance.”
My throat closes up.
No one’s ever said anything like that to me before. Not Art, who carries his own guilt like a cross. Not my siblings, who don’t know the truth. Not Beverly, who saw more than anyone and chose to betray us anyway.
But this woman looks at me like she actually believes I’m worth something.
“Whatever they’ve made you do,” she says, quieter now. “That’s not who you are. That’s what they turned you into. There’s a difference.”
“You sound pretty sure about that.”
“I am.”
She leans against the bench, and her shoulder brushes my arm. I’ve got it stretched along the back. Not around her, but close enough that from the outside it might look like it is.
It would only take a fraction of an inch to make it true.
And maybe I should move it, but it’s comfortable in a way that feels illicit. Like stealing something small and convincing yourself it doesn’t count as theft.
“Okay, your turn.” She settles deeper into the bench, her hair grazing my arm where it rests behind her. “I used to play this game with my dad. People watching. You make up stories about strangers.”
“You did what now?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve never done that?”
I stare at her. “That’s unhinged.”
“A lot of people do it.”
“People with too much imagination.”
“You’re just boring.”
I chuckle before I can stop myself.
Her head snaps toward me, and for a second she just stares. Then her mouth curves into a slow, surprised grin, like she’s won something she didn’t expect to.
My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and grip a strand of her hair. I flex them against the bench and keep myself in check.
“There.” She points to a couple across the square who are clearly arguing, hands animated, voices too low to hear. “I bet he forgot their anniversary.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” She pops the “p” and takes a sip of cider, and my eyes drop to her mouth without permission. The way her lips curve around the rim. The faint sheen left behind.
I drag my gaze back to the couple like my life depends on it.
“He does this every year,” she continues. “When they first got married, everything was amazing. He showered her with gifts, celebrating who they were. But then he got a big promotion. Probably one of your family’s minions at Calloway Enterprises.”
“Please.”
“Fine. A Montgomery.”
“More like a Voltaire,” I chime in.
“Anyway, he got a taste of money. Maybe a wandering eye for his assistant.”
“That sucks.”
“It happens. That’s why they’re fighting. Third year in a row he’s forgotten. She feels alone. Unseen. And she’s done putting up with it.”
“Good for her.”
“Right?”
I don’t tell her the couple is Charlie and Marlene, and they’re probably fighting about Marlene feeding the pigeons again. I don’t want to ruin her story.
She jerks her chin toward a guy sitting alone beneath a birch tree, picking at blades of dying grass. “Stood up. By the girl he’s been in love with for years. He finally asked her out, spent hours getting ready, prepping conversation starters. And she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Your stories are pretty depressing.”
“Not all of them.”
I twist toward her slightly, my arm still behind her. “You haven’t made up one about us yet.”
She stills, cup halfway to her lips. “What?”
“If someone was watching us right now.” I nod toward the square. “What would they say?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it. Her gaze drifts to the people around us. When she finally speaks, her voice is quieter.
“I think they’d see two people trying really hard not to look like they’re enjoying each other’s company.”
The words hang in the cold October air.
“And they’d probably say we’re failing.”
I can’t breathe.
She’s staring at her cup, cheeks flushed pink, and I should deflect. Make a joke. Remind us both this can’t happen.
But I don’t.
I just sit there, my arm behind her, close enough to touch, and let our uncomfortable truth settle between us like a confession neither of us meant to make.
Eventually she stands, brushing invisible lint off her jeans, and I follow, tossing our cups in the nearest trash can. The walk to the truck is silent, but different now. Charged. Full of everything we’re not saying.
When we get to the cabin, Cavall is at the window, tail blurring as it wags. Genevieve smiles at the sight of him, and she slips him a baby carrot while she unpacks the groceries. She thinks I don’t see it.
I do, though.
I see everything when it comes to her.
But it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Because Art saw her first.