7. Chasity
CHASITY
Saturday dawns with an almost aggressive cheerfulness.
Sunlight slants across the misty valley, sharp and clean, carrying the scent of damp pine and cold earth.
I pull my sweater tighter and walk the short distance from the inn to the garage, my boots crunching on the gravel shoulder of the road.
This is a purely practical mission. I need an update on my car.
I need a timeline. I need to remind myself that this town is a layover on the route of my own self-implosion, not a destination.
The wide bay door of the garage gapes open, framing a scene of organized chaos. The air smells like the metallic tang of oil and the low drone of a radio playing a country song I vaguely recognize. Ben is a pair of legs sticking out from under the chassis of a massive, mud-splattered pickup truck.
I clear my throat. “Hi. Just… checking in.”
The legs slide out, followed by a torso clad in a faded navy hoodie, grease staining the front like a modern art piece. Ben sits up, rubbing a hand over his jaw and leaving a dark smudge of grease in its wake. His blue eyes squint against the morning light.
“Morning. I was just about to call Lachlan and have him track you down.” He gets to his feet, his broad shoulders blocking the sun for a moment.
He dries his hands on a rag that has seen better decades.
“Your Civic. It’s got more going on than I first thought.
The subframe’s bent worse than I first thought. ”
He gestures toward my sad little car, now propped up on a lift in the corner, its front wheel askew.
He explains the details in a low, even tone, something about control arms and axles, but the words blur.
It is the unhurried cadence of his speech that catches my attention.
For a man who fixed the town’s generator in the midst of a deluge, he sounds suspiciously relaxed about the delay.
“Oh.” The word feels small and inadequate. I clutch the sleeves of my sweater. “Okay. So… a few more days, then?”
“More than a few. I have to order parts.” He carefully avoids my gaze, focusing instead on a stubborn spot of grease on his knuckle. “Mountain logistics can be a pain. Things take a while to get up here.”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind.” The words rush out, too quick, too bright. I am trying to convince myself as much as him.
A small smile touches a single corner of his mouth before he presses it flat. He turns and reaches for a stainless-steel thermos sitting on a workbench, its surface gleaming amid the clutter. He holds it out to me.
“Figured you might be cold.”
I take it. The metal is warm against my chilled fingers.
The simple, unannounced gesture lands a direct hit somewhere under my ribs, a quiet warmth that is unrelated to the temperature.
He made me coffee. He just… thought to offer me coffee.
It feels far too considerate for a man I’ve known for less than a week.
I walk back toward the inn, the thermos still warm in my hands, a small anchor in the crisp morning. The walk is barely five minutes, but I have only made it halfway down Main Street when a voice cuts through the quiet.
“Possum Princess! Just the gal I was looking for.”
I turn to see Lachlan juggling two rickety wooden ladders and what looks like the entire autumn section of a craft store.
Garlands of fake, brightly colored leaves spill over his arms, and a string of tiny orange lights is tangled around his neck like a festive noose.
Before I can process the sheer volume of his cargo, he deposits one of the ladders and a heap of foliage into my arms.
“We’re behind schedule. Town beautification waits for no runaway bride.”
He grins and gestures down the street. It is a scene of utter, joyful chaos.
Children dart between piles of pumpkins stacked on hay bales.
Rosa, the diner owner, is in a heated debate with another woman over the proper mulling spices for cider.
Near the town square’s gazebo, a woman with a shock of white hair—Dottie, I think Lachlan called her—is loudly directing two teenagers on the proper stuffing-to-denim ratio for a scarecrow.
I am handed a bundle of corn stalks and pointed toward a lamppost, absorbed into the whirlwind before I can even form a protest.
The afternoon dissolves. The longer I work, stringing lights and wrestling with prickly garlands, the more I notice a strange pattern. A quiet, unobtrusive orbit of male attention. Lachlan appears at my elbow every hour or so, pressing a steaming cup of cider into my hand.
“Hydration is key. Don’t want you fainting from the sheer artistic exertion.”
When I ascend a ladder to attach a swag of leaves above the bookstore awning, it wobbles precariously on the uneven cobblestones.
A moment later, Ben is there, his large, calloused hands planted firmly on the wooden legs, his presence a silent counterweight.
He does not say a word, just watches the street with a calm focus until my feet are back on solid ground.
Later, I find myself tasked with giving one of the scarecrows a face. I am hunched over its burlap head, meticulously drawing a smile with a permanent marker, when a shadow falls over me.
“You’re taking that way too seriously.”
Taven stands there, arms crossed over his chest, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. His green eyes are fixed on my handiwork.
“He needs to look friendly, not like he’s plotting revenge.”
“Right. God forbid the crows feel unwelcome.” He shakes his head, but the smile grows.
Their attention should feel like a weight, a spotlight. Instead, it settles around me, light as dust motes in the afternoon sun, a strange and unfamiliar kind of safety.
As afternoon slips toward evening, the town square transforms. The sleepy street I have walked for days now glows, strung with little orange lights that stretch between awnings and lampposts.
They cast a warm, flickering halo onto the cobblestones.
Chilly gusts of wind send paper-dry leaves tumbling across the sidewalks, and the air thickens with the scent of caramel apples and woodsmoke from a chiminea set up near the gazebo.
Laughter rolls from folding tables where locals bundle leftover decorations, their voices a low, easy murmur.
I twist a stubborn knot out of a length of purple ribbon, my fingers numb from the cold.
A little girl with a missing front tooth holds up a paper bat, her expression impossibly serious.
I help her find a clean spot on the bookstore window and hold the tape while she presses it into place.
She gives me a gapped grin and darts back to her mother.
For a moment, I just watch her go, a small smile on my own face.
Then it hits me. In the middle of untangling ribbon and taping bats, I have not thought about home. Not once. Not for nearly two hours.
The realization is a physical blow. It steals the warmth from my chest, leaving a hollow ache in its place.
I freeze near the town fountain, my hand still resting on the cold stone lip.
The water splashes a steady rhythm behind me, but all I can see is the scene of simple connection ahead.
Rosa laughing with Dottie. Teenagers chasing each other around a pile of hay.
This small pocket of happiness feels suddenly, dangerously close to betrayal.
Panic, cold and sharp, curls beneath my ribs.
It is a betrayal of my mother’s frantic phone calls, of my father’s disappointed silence.
A betrayal of Jason, who is probably still telling people I just had cold feet.
Each laugh I have shared today, each quiet moment of peace, feels like another stone laid on the grave of the life I was supposed to fix.
I was meant to go home, to apologize, to smooth everything over and slot myself back where I belong.
But this place, with its quiet men and its chaotic festivals, is chipping away at that resolve.
This dangerous contentment is a treachery against the person I was just a week ago.
Later that night, I sit alone on the inn porch, swallowed by a thick wool blanket that smells of cedar.
The air is crisp and bites at my cheeks.
Below, the town lights glow like scattered embers against the deep, velvet black of the mountains.
The strings of orange bulbs I helped hang now cast a soft, intimate halo over the empty cobblestones of Main Street. It’s beautiful in a way that hurts.
Through the lobby’s wide bay window, I can see Lachlan moving behind the front desk.
The boisterous ringleader of the afternoon’s chaos is gone, replaced by a man moving with a quiet, efficient grace.
He wipes down the polished wood of the check-in counter, his movements methodical and unhurried as he puts his world back in order.
A low rumble shivers through the porch floorboards.
The distinct growl of a powerful engine cuts through the stillness.
Headlights sweep across the front of the inn, illuminating the dormant climbing roses on the trellis before continuing down the street.
Ben’s truck rumbles past, heading toward the faint light of the garage at the very edge of town. Still working. A steady constant.
From somewhere farther down the street, near the town’s only bar, a burst of laughter echoes, sharp and clear in the cold air.
I know that laugh. Taven. It’s deep and completely unreserved, so different from the grumpy man I first met.
Hearing it makes the hollowness in my chest tighten into a painful knot.
Lachlan inside. Ben driving by. Taven laughing with friends.
Three separate points on a map I have no business charting.
The terrifying truth sinks its teeth in, cold and heavy as the mountain night.
These people are already beginning to feel familiar.
Their patterns are starting to feel like a part of my own.
The comfort it offers is a dangerous current, pulling me away from the shore I’m supposed to swim back to.
I pull the blanket tighter, the rough wool a welcome friction against my chin, and repeat the words like a prayer.
This is temporary.