Chapter 35 Aurora
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Aurora
The next day, I decide I am going to be normal.
This is, objectively, a ridiculous plan, but I’m deeply committed to it anyway.
I get dressed like a woman who hasn’t recently held pressure on a stab wound in a storage unit at dawn.
I brush my hair like my nervous system isn’t currently operating like a smoke alarm with abandonment issues.
I put on lip gloss because if I’m going to spiral, I’d prefer to do it with some shine.
Then I head for Coyote Cup.
Because if fear thinks it’s going to turn me into someone smaller, it’s about to be very disappointed.
Also, because caffeine is cheaper than therapy and easier to carry.
Outside is crisp and piney and offensively alive, like Coyote Glen itself is incapable of reading a room.
Main Street looks exactly the same as it did before everything tipped sideways.
Same flower boxes. Same little shops. Same people moving around with coffee cups and grocery bags and absolutely no visible awareness that I am currently having a low-grade identity crisis in a thrifted leather jacket.
When I push open the door to Coyote Cup, warmth hits me first. Espresso. Sugar. The hiss of milk steaming. The low hum of people existing normally.
Lani looks up from behind the counter and narrows her eyes at me instantly.
“Well,” she says, already reaching for a mug, “you look like someone who needs a baked good and a beverage strong enough to knock loose a haunting.”
I slide onto a stool. “That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I know,” she replies. “What’s your emergency level today? Cute little wobble or full emotional landslide?”
I consider this. “Somewhere between ‘functioning’ and ‘feral.’”
“Excellent. So, a latte and a cake of some kind with frosting.”
She sets to work before I can answer, which is honestly amazing.
I wrap my hands around the edge of the counter and let the place settle over me. The rhythm of it. The normal of it. Cups clinking, milk steaming, someone laughing too loud at something that is probably not that funny.
I’m still clocking everything.
Doors.
Movement.
Who’s behind me.
It’s quieter here, but my brain is still doing that thing where it maps exits like I’m about to be graded on survival.
I hate it.
Especially when the whispers start.
Someone behind me says, “Founders Day’s going to be packed this year. Especially the bake sale.”
“Yeah,” another voice replies. “Long as that bar doesn’t bring trouble with it.”
A third voice cuts in, lighter. “Oh, please. They’ve done more for this place in two weeks than the last owners did all year.”
Shit.
A week ago, I would’ve heard that kind of conversation and felt like I was standing in the middle of something fragile. Like one wrong move, and the whole town would turn.
Now…
I just feel a little queasy.
Lani slides my latte across the counter and sets down a cinnamon roll that could double as emotional support.
“Eat,” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I take a bite.
I do, in fact, feel marginally more stable.
“I’m being normal today,” I announce.
Lani leans her hip against the counter and studies me like she’s deciding whether or not to humor that. “That so?”
“Yes,” I say. “I am simply a woman having coffee. Nothing has happened. Nothing is happening. Everything is fine.”
She nods slowly. “Mm. And how’s that working out for you?”
I take another bite. Chew. Swallow. “Deeply unconvincing.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You’ve got a little… edge.”
“Define edge.”
“You look like you’re waiting for something to go wrong.”
I stare at my latte.
“Well,” I say carefully, “statistically speaking, that feels like a reasonable position to take.”
Lani doesn’t laugh. “You don’t have to pretend in here.”
I exhale slowly. “I don’t want to become someone who’s scared all the time.”
“Good,” she says.
“I mean it,” I add. “I don’t want to shrink. I don’t want to start avoiding things or… changing everything I do just because something bad happened.”
“Also good.”
“But,” I continue, staring into my coffee like it might offer guidance, “I also don’t know how to not feel like something bad could happen again.”
Lani nods once, like that’s the most reasonable sentence she’s heard all morning. “Both things can be true.”
I glance at her. “That feels like a trick.”
“It’s not,” she replies. “It just means you adjust without disappearing.”
“I don’t like that I flinch now,” I admit quietly. “At stupid things. Doors. Footsteps. It’s… annoying.”
“It’s your brain trying to keep you safe,” she says. “Doesn’t mean it gets to run the whole show.”
“I’d like to fire it, actually.”
“Yeah,” she snorts. “Let me know how that goes.”
I smile a little.
Progress.
“I keep thinking I should know what to do next,” I say after a second. “Like there’s a correct move here and I’m just… missing it.”
Lani picks up a cloth and starts wiping down the counter, not looking at me while she answers. “There isn’t.”
“That feels like false advertising.”
“It’s honest,” she says. “You figure it out as you go. You keep showing up. You pay attention to what feels right and what doesn’t.”
“And if I get it wrong?”
She shrugs. “Then you adjust.”
I lean my chin into my hand. “You’re very calm about this.”
“I’ve lived here a long time,” she replies. “Nothing worth keeping ever comes in clean.”
Lani does make me feel better, but unfortunately, I can’t sit around in the café all day.
I have to organize The Hollow’s Founder’s Day event…
By the time I stop by Granger’s Goods later to pick up tape and string for the Founders Day board, Bill grunts at me from behind the counter and says, “You look less haunted.”
Which is, from Bill Granger, basically the equivalent of a warm hug and a homemade casserole.
“Thank you,” I say solemnly. “I worked very hard on it.”
He eyes me for a second longer than usual. “Town’s talking.”
I wince. “I gathered.”
“They’ll keep talking,” he says. Then, after a beat, “Doesn’t mean they’re right. And you know, it isn’t everyone. It never is.”
I blink at him.
He clears his throat immediately, like he regrets the moment of humanity, but he slips an extra pack of honey sticks into my bag and pretends he didn’t.
By the time I make it back to The Hollow, I’ve spent the whole day refusing to let myself vanish.
And I’m weirdly proud of that.
The Hollow is buzzing with Founders Day prep.
Arlo’s polishing glasses with the same expression he’d probably wear while disposing of a body or discussing the weather.
Lani drops off updated drink ideas and the cupcake menu she’s developing for our bake sale.
Beau Hartwell skates through at one point and mutters something about writing a poem for the festival that is either going to be brilliant or completely unbearable, possibly both.
I guess everyone wants to know which way this is going to go. Especially me.
Finn is still trying to act like getting stabbed was a minor scheduling inconvenience. “It was a graze.”
“It was a knife,” I reply.
“Details.”
“You are medically banned from being flirty about your own blood loss.”
He puts a hand to his chest. “That feels oppressive.”
“It should.”
Zane passes through with a box of supplies and gives me that look of his, the quiet one that somehow asks Are you steady?
without saying a word. Ryder clocks me from across the room, standing near the bar with that same controlled, impossible stillness that always makes him look like he’s already solved three problems and is just waiting for the world to catch up.
I nod at both of them before I can stop myself.
I’m okay.
Or close enough.
And the thing is… I mean it. At least while I’m moving. While I’m useful. While there are lists and people and reasons to keep my hands full.
It’s only later, when the town quiets and the apartment settles into that low nighttime hush, that everything catches up.
Of course it does.
Because apparently my brain prefers to save its emotional sabotage for after business hours.
I sit on the bed with my legs folded under me, the lamp casting that warm, low light Ryder always leaves on. The room feels soft around the edges. Too quiet. Safe enough that there’s room to think, which turns out to be both a blessing and a terrible design flaw.
I stare at my bag for a long moment before reaching for the letter.
Evie’s letter is already worn at the folds now. The paper is softer than it used to be, like even it has started to live in my hands. I unfold it carefully, smoothing it over my knee, and all I can do is look at her handwriting.
It always hits me first, that part.
The proof of her.
The shape of her thoughts, still here.
I read slowly because every time I read it, something different catches against my ribs.
Tonight it’s this:
If you ever find the place you can breathe again, don’t run from it.
I stop.
Read it again.
And then, because apparently I enjoy emotional self-destruction in delicate cursive, I read it a third time.
I can breathe here.
That’s what has me so messed up.
Not because this place is easy. It isn’t.
Not because it’s safe, exactly. Especially with everyone so undecided about the men, and I guess me too.
It doesn’t feel simple enough for that word anymore.
There’s danger here. Real danger. Men with old enemies and complicated pasts, and the kind of loyalty that comes sharpened at the edges.
And yet…
I can breathe here.
At Coyote Cup, with Lani making me drink my feelings.
At The Hollow, while Arlo pretends not to notice everything.
On Main Street, with flower boxes and gossip and the weird, stubborn magic of this town.
With Ivy’s bedlam and Olivia’s steadiness and Delaney’s dry honesty and Sloane’s quiet understanding.
With Bill Granger acting like affection is a war crime.
With Finn making me laugh when I don’t want to.
With Zane rearranging the world around me so gently, I almost miss the love in it.
With Ryder looking at me like I’m something that matters enough to protect and dangerous enough to ruin him.
I exhale too fast and laugh at myself under my breath, because wow, Aurora, that was an aggressively revealing internal monologue. Great work.
Still…
The truth is sitting there now.
I fold one edge of the letter between my fingers and stare at the words.
Was this what Evie meant?
Could it really be this place? Forever?