Page 52 of Wild Thorns

Then someone called Jasper's name, and he turned away, and the spell was broken.

“Duty calls,” he said, and there was regret in his voice. “Mrs. Henderson wants to tell me about her grandson’s college applications. It’ll take approximately forever.”

“Go. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m a grown woman at a festival. I think I can manage five minutes alone.”

He grinned, the easy Jasper mask sliding back into place. “Ten minutes, tops. Save me some ribs.”

He disappeared into the crowd, and I was left alone on the stone wall, my heart beating faster than it should have been. Get a grip. You’ve damn near publicly made out with an entire family of brothers. Fuck me.

But I felt it still. That pull. That thread connecting us, drawing tighter with every shared moment.

I sat there for a while, watching the festival flow around me. Couples danced near the stage. A group of teenagers clustered around a game booth, cheering as someone won a stuffed animal. Two older women sat on a bench nearby, their heads bent together in what looked like serious gossip. Everyone here had a place. A role. A web of connections that anchored them to this town and to each other.

I had that once, before Marcus. I’d had friends who knew my coffee order, family who called on Sundays, and a sense of belonging that I’d taken for granted until it was gone.

He’d taken all of it, piece by piece. It had happened so slowly that I hadn’t noticed until I was standing in the rubble of my life, wondering how I’d let it happen.

Rebuilding was harder than I had expected. Trust didn’t come back just because the threat was gone. The habit of isolation, of self-protection, of keeping people at arm’s length, that was harder to break than I’d thought.

But here, in Magnolia Creek, it was happening anyway. Despite my best efforts. Despite my walls. Mel knew my coffee order. Lila treated me like a partner. Rowena fed me casseroles and saved me seats at Sunday dinner. Dex had appointed himself some kind of gruff protector. And the brothers…

The brothers were something else entirely.

I was thinking about that, about them, about what it meant, about what I wanted, when I saw Callum.

I saw Callum before he saw me.

He was standing near the edge of the square, alone despite the crowd around him. His dark shirt was untucked, sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing forearms that flexed as he lifted a drink to his lips. Even relaxed, or as relaxed as Callum ever got, he radiated a contained intensity that made people give him space without seeming to realize they were doing it.

He looked different out here, away from the house. More visible, somehow. At Thornwood, he blended into the shadows, the quiet corners, the spaces between conversations. Here, in the golden festival light, there was nowhere to hide.

And he was beautiful. I could admit that now, to myself if not out loud. The sharp line of his jaw. The dark hair pushed back from his forehead. The way his shoulders filled out his shirt without any apparent effort.

He was also, I noticed, scanning the crowd methodically. His gaze moving with the precision of someone who was always assessing threats, memorizing faces, and noting exits, even at a festival. While surrounded by people he’d known his entire life. When his eyes found me, they stopped.

For a long moment, we just looked at each other across the crowded square. The noise of the festival seemed to fade, the music and laughter becoming distant, muffled. There was only Callum, watching me with that barely leashed intensity, and me, unable to look away.

And I thought: What is happening to me?

The pull I’d been feeling, the one I kept trying to explain away, was almost overwhelming now. Like a hook behind my ribs, tugging me toward him. Like gravity had shifted, and he was the new center.

I should have looked away. Should have broken the connection, waved casually, done something to dispel the tension building in my chest.

Instead, I held his gaze. Let him see I was looking back. That I wasn’t intimidated by his intensity, or if I was, I wasn’t going to let it show.

Something flickered in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition.

Then Jasper appeared at my elbow with two cups of lemonade, and the world rushed back in.

"Callum's standing there scanning the crowd for threats," I said unnecessarily.

"Callum takes festival security very seriously." Jasper's voice was amused, but I was picking up a different vibe, an awareness that he knew exactly what he’d interrupted. "I suspect he's been watching you since we arrived."

"That's not unsettling at all."