Page 28 of Stuck with the Hero Next Door

I’d just told my dad I was staying in Everwood. No caveats. No maybe. No “just until the car’s fixed.”

Which meant I’d actually done it. I’d said it out loud. I’d admitted—first to myself, then to him—that I wanted something different than the plan I’d been clinging to like it was a life raft in a sea of grief.

And instead of unraveling me, that truth felt like a new kind of oxygen.

Terrifying oxygen. Possibly helium. But still.

I stood, stuffing my phone into my jacket pocket like it might try to argue. Then I walked. Not in a purposeful, let-me-solve-my-life way. More like a person who just stepped out of a bookstore and realized the story in their head was still unfolding.

The sidewalk under my boots felt more solid than usual, like Everwood had been waiting for me to stop treating it like an accidental detour. I passed the hardware store, where someone had arranged the “SALE” sign to spell “SEAL” just for fun. Two middle schoolers argued outside the ice cream shop about whether sprinkles counted as a topping or a texture. A harmless debate, only a town this safe could make space for.

It hit me then—how gentle this place was. It wasn’t a sleepy, nothing-happens-here town. But it gave people room. Room to change their minds. Room to start over. Room to figure out who they were outside of someone else’s expectations.

Which, apparently, was what I needed.

Because for the first time in forever, I wasn’t moving because of someone else’s dream or timeline or absence. I was moving because I wanted to. I was walking back to the inn because I had somewhere to be—not as a guest or a visitor, but as someone who just maybe had a stake in this place.

And okay, sure, I didn’t have everything figured out. My resume still said, “in transition,” and my truck was still in pieces. But my heart?

My heart felt...braver.

It had finally stepped into sunlight after a really long stretch of shade.

By the time I reached the Everwood Inn, the shadows were longer, and the breeze had picked up just enough to make the wind chimes on Janet’s porch sing like they’d joined a whimsical barbershop quartet.

I opened the front door to the familiar creak and a waft of lavender and lemon polish—Janet’s personal blend of cleanliness and aromatherapy. She was behind the front desk, polishing the bell with the same devotion some people reserved for vintage cars or heirloom silver.

She looked up and smiled as if she’d known all along what I was going to decide. “Back already?”

“Just needed to clear my head,” I said, loosening my scarf. “Turns out walking helps when you’ve made a life-altering decision and don’t want to hyperventilate about it in public.”

“Tea?” she offered, as if the solution to emotional unrest was steeped in Earl Grey.

I smiled. “I’ll grab some later.”

The stairs creaked as I climbed, that old, familiar sound echoing behind me like a chorus of tiny, wooden cheerleaders. At the top, something had shifted. The hallway, the soft wallpaper, even the tiny window at the end with its lace curtain—all of it felt...known. I belonged here, just a little.

Inside, my room greeted me with the usual bouquet of cozy charm and slightly-too-floral bedding. The vase of wildflowers on the desk had a fresh daisy tucked in—Janet’s signature move. I didn’t even try to pretend I wasn’t touched.

I sat on the bed and looked around at everything that wasn’t technically mine but had somehow started to feel like it was. The quilt. The secondhand bookshelf was stocked with dog-eared paperbacks. The slightly crooked painting of a moose that I’d grown weirdly attached to.

I pulled out my laptop, opened the tab I’d been ignoring all week, and stared at the Miller’s Pass application page. The same hopeful language. The same crisp logo. The same plan I’d been following since before I even knew how much of it had been borrowed.

Then, slowly, I closed the tab.

It felt a little like exhaling after holding my breath for five years.

Maybe the biggest shift wasn’t that I was staying in Everwood.

Maybe it was that—for the first time—I was letting myself choose something without needing anyone else’s blueprint.

And honestly?

That felt like the bravest thing I’d done in a long time.

The kettle in the inn’s kitchen whistled like it had urgent gossip, and I padded over to it in my socks to silence it before Janet came running with her “that’s an antique, dear” face.

I poured the hot water over a lemon chamomile tea bag, resisting the urge to narrate my day like I was the heroine of a particularly cozy audiobook. Although considering the floral wallpaper and the warm clink of teacups, the setting was doing half the work for me.