5. Lila
FIVE
LILA
The Ember Falls Harvest Festival was the kind of event that made me understand why people willingly chose small-town life over everything a city had to offer.
Maple Street had been transformed. String lights crisscrossed overhead, casting everything in warm gold.
Booth after booth lined both sides, apple cider pressing, pumpkin carving, a kettle corn stand that perfumed the entire block, local honey in mason jars, handmade candles, and a face-painting station where a teenage girl was turning every kid in Ember Falls into either a cat or a superhero, no exceptions.
The mountains rose behind Main Street in a blaze of October color, red maple, gold birch, the deep rust of oak, and the air had that particular fall crispness that made you want to inhale until your lungs ached.
It was, objectively, a perfect evening. The kind you'd see on a movie poster with a tagline about finding yourself in unexpected places.
"Stop making your thinking face," Sadie said, appearing at my elbow with a caramel apple in each hand. She extended one. "You've been staring at those mountains like they owe you money."
"I was having a moment."
"Have a caramel apple instead. Mrs. Huang makes them with fleur de sel and they're unreasonably good."
I bit in. She was right. It was unreasonably good. The caramel was buttery and cracked under my teeth, the apple tart underneath, and the salt hit at the end like a tiny revelation.
Sadie and I had reached an understanding over the past few weeks.
She didn't give warmth freely. She measured it, tested you, watched how you handled pressure before deciding you were worth the investment.
But she'd started saving me a seat in the common room.
Had texted me a link to a podcast she liked with no commentary, which in Sadie language was practically a friendship bracelet.
We walked through the festival, weaving between families, couples, and dogs in bandanas.
Ty was somewhere near the ring toss, presumably trying to win a stuffed animal he didn't need through a combination of firefighter competitiveness and refusal to accept defeat.
Cole had brought Lily, his five-year-old, who was currently face-painted as a butterfly and vibrating with sugar-fueled energy.
"Lila!" Lily broke away from Cole's hand and flung herself at my legs with the full-body commitment of a small child who had decided I was her favorite person.
I'd won this honor by knowing the names of all the flowers in the Petal & Vine window, which Lily considered a critical qualification for friendship.
"Hey, butterfly girl." I crouched down to her level. "Let me see, wow, those wings are amazing."
"The lady did the sparkles too, see?" She pointed at her cheeks, where glitter had been applied with generous, chaotic hand.
"I see. You're the sparkliest butterfly in North Carolina."
She beamed and ran back to Cole, who mouthed thank you over her head with the tired gratitude of a single dad at a sugar festival.
Sadie and I found the cider booth. It was one of the larger ones, a long wooden counter under a canvas tent, with a hand-crank cider press that looked like it predated the town.
The smell was incredible, fresh apples and cinnamon and something darker, like clove.
I was studying the menu, regular cider, spiced cider, spiked cider, cider donut holes, when I became aware of a presence to my left.
Awareness was the right word. I didn't see him first. I felt him, the way you feel someone watching you in a quiet room, a shift in the air pressure.
Beck was standing three feet away, studying the same menu board.
He wasn't in uniform. He wore jeans and a dark thermal with the sleeves pushed up, and his hair was less ruthlessly controlled than it was at the station, a piece of it falling across his forehead.
He looked different. Softer wasn't the right word, because nothing about Beck Rawlings was soft.
But less armored. Like the civilian clothes had taken one layer of wall down, and the man underneath was someone you'd actually want to talk to.
He glanced sideways. Caught me looking. I didn't pretend I hadn't been.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
Sadie made a sound that might have been a cough and might have been commentary, then said, "I'm going to go find Ty," and disappeared so fast I was surprised she didn't leave a dust cloud.
I was going to kill her.
"You, uh," I gestured at the menu board. "Any recommendations?"
"The spiced cider. Rosie makes it with brown sugar and cardamom." He paused. "Two spiced ciders," he told the woman behind the counter, and pulled a folded bill from his pocket.
"You don't have to?—"
"It's three dollars."
"Then I'll get the next round."
The faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Pre-smile. A smile that hadn't committed yet. "You're assuming there's a next round."
"I'm an optimist."
He handed me a paper cup. Our fingers didn't touch, but they came close enough that I was aware of the near-miss. The cider was warm and perfect, sweet, spicy, with enough depth to make you close your eyes.
"This is really good," I said.
"Rosie doesn't do things halfway."
We stood there, side by side, facing the festival.
Watching Lily chase Ty through the crowd while Cole followed at a reasonable dad-pace.
Watching Mrs. Patmore navigate the booths with Lord Byron the cat in a harness, because of course she had her cat on a leash at a festival.
Watching the string lights sway in a breeze that carried the smell of wood smoke from somewhere.
"I didn't know you came to things like this," I said.
"I live here."
"You know what I mean."
He considered his cider. Took a sip. "Captain makes it a station tradition. We all come. Represent the department." He looked out at the crowd. "I usually leave early."
"It's six-thirty."
"Which is early by festival standards."
I turned to face him. He was close enough that I could see the scar above his left eyebrow, thin, silvery, the kind you got from stitches. Close enough that the string lights caught the gray in his eyes and made them look almost silver.
"Well, you're here now," I said. "And you bought me cider. That's practically socializing."
"Don't get used to it."
But there was something in his voice, the barest thread of warmth, or maybe amusement, or maybe just the absence of active resistance. I'd take it.
We walked. Not together, exactly. More like two people moving in the same direction who happened to be having a conversation.
We passed the pumpkin carving booth, where someone had carved an elaborate mountain landscape that deserved to be in a museum.
We passed the high school band playing covers that were enthusiastic if not technically precise.
We stopped at the kettle corn stand and Beck bought a bag, and we ate it walking, and I learned that he ate kettle corn one piece at a time, methodically, which was the most Beck thing I'd ever witnessed.
"You can grab a handful," I said. "That's allowed."
"I'm eating it how I’ve always eaten it."
He popped another single piece into his mouth and chewed it with the deliberate focus of a man performing a quality assessment.
I watched his jaw work, the angular line of it, the slight tension that was always there, even now, even at a festival with kettle corn and string lights and children in face paint running past us screaming with joy.
Beck Rawlings carried his vigilance everywhere.
He wore it like a second uniform. And watching him try to relax, try and partially succeed, which was more than I'd seen in seven weeks, felt like watching a fist slowly, reluctantly open.
"You're performing surgery on it."
That almost-smile again. Closer this time. "Has anyone ever told you that you have opinions about everything?"
"Frequently. It's one of my best qualities."
We ended up near the old bandstand at the end of Maple Street, where the festival thinned out and the noise softened to a hum. The mountains were dark shapes against a sky turning purple, and the first stars were appearing. Beck leaned against the bandstand railing and looked up.
"Jake used to run the cider booth," he said. Quiet. Casual. Like he was testing whether the name would burn his tongue. "He'd volunteer every year. Wore this stupid apron with an apple on it."
I held very still. This was the first time he'd said the name voluntarily, without it being pulled from him by Captain Harding or triggered by someone else's mention.
"The booth with the hand-crank press?" I asked.
"Yeah. He'd make people crank it themselves. Said it was a participatory experience." A pause. "He was an idiot."
The word was soaked in affection. The kind of love that survives loss and lives in the specifics, a stupid apron, a hand-crank press, the memory of a grin behind a cider booth.
"He sounds like someone worth knowing," I said.
Beck's jaw tightened. The wall threatened to come back.
I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hand gripped the railing.
But it didn't come. Not all the way. He breathed out through his nose, and his shoulders dropped a fraction, and he looked at me with those gray-blue eyes that carried so much weight behind them.
"He was."
We stood there. The festival hummed behind us and the mountains held the dark and neither of us spoke for a while. It wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that happens between two people who are learning each other's edges, figuring out which parts are safe to touch.
I turned to say something. I don't remember what. Something small, something safe. But he was already looking at me, and the distance between us had shrunk without either of us noticing, and the words died in my throat.
His eyes dropped to my mouth. Just for a second. Then back up. And the look on his face wasn't the closed-off blankness I'd gotten used to. It was open and raw and terrified, and it was the most honest thing I'd ever seen from him.
"Lila." My name, barely audible over the distant music.
"Yeah?"
He didn't answer. He kissed me.
His mouth was warm and tasted like cider and cinnamon, and his hand came up to the side of my jaw, tentative at first, his fingers barely there, like he was giving himself the chance to pull back.
I didn't let him. I leaned into it, my hand finding the front of his jacket, and he made a sound against my lips, low and involuntary, and then he was kissing me for real.
His other hand settled on my hip, pulling me closer, and I felt the heat of him through two layers of autumn clothing and it wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough.
The kiss lasted maybe ten seconds. It felt longer. It felt like the festival had gone quiet and the mountains had leaned in and the whole town was holding its breath.
He pulled back first. His hand was still on my jaw, his thumb resting against my cheek. His breathing was uneven. His eyes were dark in a way that made my stomach drop.
Then someone called his name from back in the crowd.
"Rawlings!" Ty's unmistakable voice. Beck dropped his hand.
Stepped back. The wall came up so fast I could almost hear it, brick by brick, and the man who'd kissed me like that was gone, replaced by Lieutenant Rawlings with the rigid shoulders and the controlled jaw.
"I should get going."
"Okay," I said, and my voice sounded steadier than anything inside me felt.
He hesitated. One second. Two. Like he was deciding whether to acknowledge what had just happened or pretend it away.
"See you at shift."
"See you at shift, Lieutenant."
He walked away. I watched him navigate the crowd, a head taller than most, moving with that controlled stride.
A woman stopped him, Mrs. Patmore, and she patted his arm with fond familiarity, and even from here I could see him soften under the touch.
He wasn't the stone wall he pretended to be.
He was something much more dangerous. A person who kissed you like you were the only thing left in the world and then walked away like it never happened.
I pressed my fingers to my mouth. It was still warm where his had been.
I walked home alone, past the darkened storefronts, past the hardware store with my apartment glowing faintly above it. The leaves crunched under my boots and the air was sharp with cold and my lips were still tingling and somewhere in the distance, a bonfire crackled.
I was in trouble.
The quiet, consuming kind of trouble that started in the chest and radiated outward. The kind I'd promised myself I wouldn't get into again, not for a long time, not until the scar tissue from Garrett had thickened into something sturdy.
But Beck had bought me cider and said Jake's name like it was a door he was trying to open, and then he'd kissed me like I was the answer to something he'd been asking himself for years, and my stupid, relentless heart had already made its decision.
"Don't," I whispered to myself, climbing the stairs to my apartment. "Don't you dare."
My heart, as usual, wasn't listening. And my mouth was still warm.