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Briggs reaches for the ignition again but doesn’t start the truck yet. “So what now?”

Excellent question.

Strategically speaking, there are no good answers.

Emotionally speaking, the situation appears even worse.

“She doesn’t know,” Torin says. “That we feel this way, I mean.”

“No,” I agree. “I don’t think she does.”

Briggs looks between us. “You think she’s gonna pick one of us?”

I look at him. “You think she’s going to stay?”

Nobody answers. Because none of us know. And maybe that uncertainty should make this easier. Cleaner.

Instead, it just leaves me with one deeply inconvenient realization.

I want something badly enough that losing it already feels painful.

Unfortunately, so do they.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Laurel

By Saturday morning, Lucy is standing beside my bed holding Bun directly against my face like a tiny stuffed animal hostage negotiator.

“Aunt Laurel.”

I crack one eye open.

The rain finally stopped sometime overnight, leaving pale watery sunlight slipping through the curtains in thin stripes across the room. My phone on the nightstand says 7:12 a.m., which feels disrespectful for a weekend.

Lucy continues staring at me.

Children truly possess the patience of emotionally determined owls.

“Yes?” I mumble.

“The market starts soon.”

I blink at her properly this time. “You want to go to the market?”

She nods immediately. “Miss said there’s caramel apples today.”

What catches my attention isn't the caramel apples, although I fully respect a woman capable of motivating people through sugar and seasonal produce. It's the fact Lucy is asking to do something at all.

For the last two weeks, she’s been really starting to come out of her shell. This is so different to the silent, unhappy girl who didn’t want to do anything when I first arrived.

I sit up beneath the blankets. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“You hate crowds.”

“I know.”