Page 4 of Wild Thorns

The Louisiana heat was getting to me. That, or the sleep deprivation. Or the constant low-grade anxiety that hummed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, making everything feel slightly off, slightly threatening, slightly wrong.

"Small town," Mel said, sliding my coffee across the worn wooden counter. The surface was scarred with decades of cup rings and carved initials, the kind of finish you couldn't fake. "Plus, you're renting from the Voss boys. That's news."

"Why?"

"They've never let that place out to anyone that wasn’t family before." Her eyes danced with something that might have been amusement, might have been something else entirely. "That makes you special. People are curious." A pause, weighted. "Envious too, I'd wager."

"Oh?" I reached for the coffee, but she didn't release it immediately. Her fingers brushed mine on the cup, and I felt that same strange warmth I'd felt when Rowena touched me. A flicker of something, recognition or assessment or both, passing between us in a heartbeat.

Then she let go, already turning to the next customer, and the moment dissolved like sugar in hot water.

I stood there for a moment, coffee warming my hands, turning her words over like stones in a riverbed. That makes you special. Such a small phrase. Such a simple sentiment. It shouldn't have landed the way it did.

But I'd spent three years being told I wasn't special at all. That I was difficult, ungrateful, impossible to love the right way. That I asked too many questions, had too many opinions, took up too much space. That I'd be nothing without him, that no one else would ever want me, that I should be grateful he put up with me at all.

Marcus's voice slid through my head like oil, that particular tone he used when he was explaining, for the hundredth time, why I was wrong. Why I was too much. Why I needed to be less.

I gave myself something physical to focus on. The burn of too-hot coffee on my tongue. Pain resetting my brain. A trick I'd learned in the bad years: when the thoughts got too loud, give yourself something physical to focus on. Something real. Something that couldn't be gaslit or explained away.

The coffee was excellent. Dark roast with chicory, locally sourced according to the chalkboard menu, with that slight bitterness that meant the beans had been roasted recently. My designer brain catalogued the details automatically: the hand-lettered signs, the mismatched vintage furniture, the way the morning light fell through windows that hadn't been replaced since the building was new. Someone had put thought into this space. Someone had cared about the details.

Outside, the morning sun was doing its best to convince me that everything was fine. That I was just a woman in a new town, starting over. No triggers. Nothing chasing her. The kind of fresh start that happened in movies, where the protagonist drives away from her problems and finds herself in a charming small town full of quirky locals and romantic possibilities.

I wanted to believe it. I'd driven across multiple states to make it true.

But I could still feel Mel's eyes on my back as I walked out the door.

She'd directed me to a design studio two doors down, a converted brick building that had probably been a general store or a bank in another century. The exposed beams were original, dark with age and oil. The floors were wide-plank pine, worn smooth by generations of footsteps. And the windows, tall and arched and facing north, let in the kind of light that photographers and artists would kill for.

My designer's heart sang.

The owner, Lila Tran, had the energy of someone running on coffee and pure determination. She was small, sharp-featured, with ink-black hair cut in a severe bob and glasses that kept sliding down her nose. Her hands were never still, always gesturing, adjusting, reaching for something.

"You do branding? Thank God." She clasped my hand with both of hers, pumping enthusiastically. Her grip was stronger than I expected, her palms callused in ways that spoke of more than desk work. "I've been drowning in client work since my last contractor moved to New Orleans. Couldn't take the small-town thing anymore, she said. Not enough culture." Lila rolled her eyes. "As if New Orleans isn't just a bigger small town with better food. When can you start?"

"I—today?" The conversation was moving faster than I could track. "I just came to introduce myself. I wasn't expecting—"

"Perfect. I'll show you the studio." She was already pulling me inside, not quite dragging but close. "Fair warning: the Wi-Fi gets spotty during storms. Something about the old wiring in this part of town. The Voss place too, I'd imagine. Those buildings are all connected to the original Thornwood Estate lines. Been here since the town was founded."

"How long ago was that?"

"1832. Though the Thornwood family's been here longer, if you believe the stories." She said it casually, tossing the words over her shoulder as she led me past a reception desk that was really just a repurposed farmhouse table, but something flickered in her expression.

"What stories?"

Lila stopped walking. Turned to look at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Oh, you know," she said, and her voice was lighter now, deliberately so. "Old families in old towns. People talk. Speculate. Make things more interesting than they probably are." She waved a hand, dismissive. "Now, let me show you where the good snacks are hidden. That's the real important information."

Something in her tone made me mark it. Added to the list I was building: the too-sharp teeth, the golden eyes, the howling in the preserve, the way everyone seemed to know exactly who I was and where I was staying. The way they looked at me like I was expected, like I was part of a story they'd been telling for a long time.

I let Lila show me the snack drawer, the coffee maker that was temperamental but produced excellent results, the corner desk that would be mine if I wanted it.

I wanted it.

I worked until late afternoon, losing myself in color palettes and typography the way I always did when I needed to stop thinking.

There was a logo that needed refining: a local restaurant rebranding for the tourist season. The existing design was cluttered, trying to communicate too many things at once: we're authentic, we're modern, we're family-friendly, and we're sophisticated. The visual equivalent of someone talking too loud at a party, desperate to be heard.