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"What about them?"

"They're terrible."

I stare.

"They are not."

"They look like a haunted house exploded."

Rhett looks at me.

"I mean..."

I gasp.

"Whose side are you on?"

"His."

"Traitor."

Sayer grins. And suddenly I understand. This is what normal looks like. Not perfection.

Not endless happiness. Arguments about decorations. Breakfast. Paperwork. Repairs. A teenager criticizing my taste. A man who thinks he can cook. A life that is messy and complicated and real.

I thought that part of my story ended. I was wrong. It was only interrupted. And now…

Finally…

I get to write the next chapter.

30

RHETT

OCTOBER 31 ~ HALLOWEEN

October 31

Halloween

The first thing I notice about Halloween is that nobody in Sleepy Hollow knows how close they came to having a very different story to tell. The town wakes up covered in orange lights, fake cobwebs, carved pumpkins, and enough plastic skeletons to make it look like the entire population of the graveyard decided to relocate downtown.

Children run through the streets in costumes. Families take pictures beneath the Headless Horseman banners. Tourists buy coffee in souvenir cups and laugh about ghosts they don't actually believe in. They have no idea. They have no idea that the Hollow was real. That the thing they came here hoping to glimpse in the shadows almost destroyed a family. That the legends they treat like entertainment were built around something much older. Much darker.

Much more dangerous.

And maybe that's how it should be. Not every monster needs to become a story. Some things are better left as the nightmare you survived.

I stand on the porch of the cottage, watching the sunrise paint the trees gold. The repairs are still unfinished. The front window has been replaced temporarily. The porch railing is being held together by the kind of determination Carys would call "structurally questionable but emotionally effective."

The house is imperfect. But it is standing. Like us. Behind me, the door opens.

"Coffee."

I turn. Carys holds out a mug. She has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her hair is still messy from sleep. The woman who spent years appearing perfectly composed online looks completely different when nobody is watching. Real. Human. Mine.

The thought still catches me sometimes. Not because I don't believe it. Because I do.