Avalon
After about ten minutes of trailing behind Clarke and pretending to be utterly fascinated by every fabric texture whenever she glanced my way, she finally headed toward the front of the store. An older woman stood behind the register, gently preening the flowers in a vase beside the till.
As we approached, the woman’s eyes slid right past me as if I were invisible and landed on Clarke. Her entire face brightened, cheeks turning a rosy pink. Her movements softened, her voice warmed.
Correction: she greeted Clarke warmly.
“Well, I’ll be—Clarke King, did they finally get you out of your little episode? I told your mama to get you outside. Glad to see she’s finally taken my advice.” Her tone was friendly, but the weight beneath her words was unmistakable.
Episode?
How long had it lasted?
And why did the entire town seem to know about it?
Clarke nodded enthusiastically, setting her basket on the counter. “Why yes, Mrs. Finch! Mama took your advice and got me out as soon as she could get through to me!”
She was laying it on thick — voice higher, sweeter, hand brushing the older woman’s arm.
Oh, she was good.
Mrs. Finch snorted, scanning a bundle of yarn. “She must not have been trying all too hard, considering no one’s seen your face in almost three months!”
Three months.
My stomach dropped.
Clarke’s smile stretched so far it looked painful. A faint silver sheen glossed her eyes, and her fingers curled into her palms. When she released her fists, tiny crescent-shaped indentations remained.
She was about to crack. Or at least fracture.
“Well, you know me! Stubborn, just like my daddy!”
Her voice wavered — a single, fragile note, like the sound of a dish cracking before it shatters.
Mrs. Finch kept scanning items, oblivious. “Right about that you are. Bless her heart, your mother — that house full of Kings.” She shuddered. “A bunch of stubborn, loud, hungry hooligans you lot are.”
Clarke rose onto her toes, her white dress swaying around the tops of her boots. “We thank the Good Lord every day for sending us a Mama who likes to cook, because we sure do love to eat!” She grazed Mrs. Finch’s arm again, still smiling.
“She was telling me just the other day how much she misses making meals when my brother was at home, because you know that boy loves him some fried catfish…”
There it was again—that forced laugh, that too-wide smile. Like a balloon stretched to the point of bursting. Like a watermelon wrapped in too many rubber bands.
I chewed the corner of my thumbnail, watching her.
How long had she been doing this?
How long had she been pretending?
Was Opal Springs not the safe place she’d made it sound like?
Was she performing even here?
“How is your brother? Is he still riding bulls in the city?” Mrs. Finch asked, finishing the last of the items—yellow and white yarn, black buttons, various charms—but making no move to end the conversation.
Clarke nodded, tapping her debit card against her palm. “Yes, he’s in Nashville for now but plans on being home in time for the Pelican Fly Day rodeo. Ethan should be coming with him—I know Arabella has been dying to see him.”
Mrs. Finch’s face flushed bright red. Flustered, she held out her hand for Clarke’s card.
“Well, you—you know how girls can be,” she said, running the card through the reader while Clarke stood there with a satisfied smile.
Whatever Clarke had said had clearly struck a nerve. I made a mental note to ask her about it later.
But first—I needed to know what Mrs. Finch meant about those three months.
Why had no one seen Clarke until now?
How bad had things gotten?
There was a new pep in Clarke’s step as we exited the fabric store. I walked around to the passenger side and tried the trick she’d shown me earlier.
“You look real pleased with yourself,” Clarke said with a little laugh as I climbed into the seat.
I smoothed my hands down my legs, settling in. I was proud of myself—a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
“I didn’t almost knock myself out this time,” I said.
She snorted and turned the key in the ignition.
“I saw.” Her smile stayed small, her eyes fixed on the road as we pulled away from town. “Oh, I forgot—did you actually want to check out the salon?”
I glanced down at my cuticles, then at the storefronts we’d passed. Nothing looked promising enough for me to trust them with anything involving my physical appearance.
Except for the Boot Barn knockoff, where I’d bought a wide-brimmed brown felt cowboy hat and a real pair of boots—mostly because Clarke didn’t seem eager to stop giving me shit about my Dr. Martens.
“No, I think my nails could use a break,” I said.
And I didn’t trust anyone here to do a Russian manicure.
But I kept that part to myself.
If I wanted to get on her good side—or at least off her bad one—insulting her hometown wasn’t the way.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clarke glance down at my hands before quickly looking away. Her grip tightened around the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “For what happened back there.”
Her apology was barely audible, but I heard it.
“What did she mean?” I asked carefully. “About you not being in town for three months. I thought Opal Springs was the one place you could feel most like yourself.”
Clarke hesitated. I braced myself for her to shut down or change the subject.
Instead, she exhaled deeply and adjusted in her seat. “What she said was true—I mean, not entirely true, but I really haven’t left the ranch since you—”
She stopped herself.
“—in three months.”
Since I.
Since I.
Since I.
Another half-confession.
It was starting to grate on me.
“Oh,” was all I managed.
Clarke shrugged, as if brushing off the weight of her own words. “Yeah, but it wasn’t just because of what happened that night. Melly needed me.” She exhaled. “It was nice, honestly. I wrote music and worked on healing for whenever I was finally ready to step foot in town again.”
Her words washed over me like cold water.
I had never once considered how my actions might have affected her life beyond that night.
I had never thought about the way she would have to face people.
Or avoid them.
Or hide.
She had secluded herself for almost four months.
Four months with no one but her parents and little sister.
I couldn’t imagine being trapped with my family for that long—even with all the space the Kings had. The thought alone made me shudder.
But she had written music, she said.
At least I hadn’t ruined that.
“What music have you worked on? Maybe we could listen to some demos when—”
Clarke cut me off with a raised hand. I stared at her fingers—slim, gold-ringed, nails short and clean.
“Woah, slow down there, California. We still have to work on this—” she motioned between us, the tension thick in the air, “—before we can even think about writing music together.”
She meant we needed to fix us—whatever us was—before we could co-write.
But how? She didn’t want to talk about it. She barely even wanted to be in the same room as me.
I was shocked we’d lasted almost three hours without one of us strangling the other.
I nodded, hoping my expression wasn’t betraying me. Fixing things with Clarke was supposed to come with the songwriting—not before. Now I was going to have to get creative. Desperate, even.
I opened my mouth to agree—and was immediately cut off by a loud, animalistic cry from under Daisy’s hood.
Oh, fuck me.