Page 114 of At First Spark
“Yet,” she says, straightening, “you still have twenty minutes.”
“For the plan.”
“For the plan.”
Rook stands, stretches long enough to make a production of it, then trots to Hadley and leans against her leg like he’s already chosen his side.
Traitor.
“What if I say no?”
“You won’t.”
“You seem very sure.”
She tilts her head, studying me with a kind of easy confidence I don’t think she’s even aware she has. “I am,” she says. “Because I know exactly what happens if I leave you here. You’ll go to the inn, you’ll work until your shoulders lock up, you’ll pretend that qualifies as coping, and by tonight you’ll be so wound tight no one can have a conversation with you without risking bodily harm.”
“That feels dramatic.”
“That feels accurate.”
I start to tell her she’s wrong and stop halfway through because, unfortunately, she isn’t.
Hadley smiles slowly, like she knows she’s won before I’ve admitted it. “Exactly. Twenty minutes. Wear something cute enough that Bailey won’t sigh at you.”
Then she’s gone, just like that. Leaving the door open behind her and the room full of the kind of restless energy that means she’s made herself impossible to ignore.
I stand still for a second longer, one hand braced against the edge of the dresser, and look around the room like the answer might be hidden somewhere obvious. Holt’s room still doesn’t feel like mine, and maybe that’s part of what keeps catching me off balance. The quiet is his quiet. The bed is his bed. The air carries traces of soap and clean cotton and something warmer beneath it that I stopped pretending not to recognize sometime last week.
That should make this easier. It doesn’t.
Rook huffs once like he’s tired of waiting for me to keep up.
“Fine,” I mutter. “We’re participating in friendship.”
He blinks. Unmoved.
I end up in jeans and a soft cream sweater because Hadley would absolutely call me out if I tried to pass off work clothes as town clothes, and because some part of me knows she’s right. About all of it, really. About the inn swallowing whole days. About work becoming a hiding place if I let it. About how quickly I’ve defaulted to action every time something emotional gets too close to the surface.
Maybe that’s what scares me most about this place. Not the inn. Not the fire. Not even Holt, though he should probably rank higher on the list than he does. What scares me is how easy it would be to settle into something here. To let people care without having to earn it first.
By the time I make it downstairs, Hadley waits by the front door with Bailey and Ivy, all three of them holding coffee like they came armed for this exact mission. Lila is there too, one hip against the wall, pastry box in hand and sunglasses hooked into the neck of her sweater. The sight of all four of them together—comfortable, bright, entirely too alive for this early in the day—hits me with a strange, immediate warmth that I don’t know what to do with.
Bailey’s gaze sweeps over me, approving. “Good. You look like a person.”
“I have always looked like a person.”
“Debatable,” Hadley says.
Lila lifts the pastry box between us. “I brought backup in case the hostage negotiation got difficult.”
Ivy glances down at Rook, who hid in the corner when the girls arrived, but after a soft pat on the head no weaves through everyone’s legs like he’s known them forever. “He seems willing.”
“He would sell me for a croissant,” I say.
Bailey smiles. “Then we’re all set.”
The morning air outside feels lighter than it did when I first woke up. Cooler too, carrying the scent of salt and cut grass and the faint sweetness from whatever Claire must’ve planted near the porch years ago. We pile into Bailey’s SUV because, according to Hadley, “it has the best music and the least amountof judgment,” which says more about their group dynamics than any of them probably realizes.
