Page 72 of Wild Thorns

"This is the history of Magnolia Creek," Eli said, moving to stand beside me. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him, smell that familiar scent of old books and cedar. "The real history. Not the version in the tourism brochures."

I ran my fingers along a shelf of journals, feeling the texture of aged leather. Some of the spines were so old the titles had worn away entirely, leaving only ghost impressions in the leather.

"What's the difference?"

"The public version is about dates and events." He pulled a journal from the shelf, handling it with reverent care. "The real version is about why those events happened. Who made them happen. What they were protecting."

"Protecting from what?"

He was quiet for a moment, and something flickered across his face. The candlelight caught it: a tension in his jaw, a guardedness that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"That's a longer conversation," he said finally. "For another time."

I wanted to push, but something in his expression stopped me. The same careful guardedness I'd noticed in all three brothers, that sense of a door held firmly closed. They'd tell me when they were ready. Or they wouldn't, and I'd have to decide what that meant.

"Sit," he said, gesturing to a reading table in the center of the room. The wood was dark with age, scarred with centuries of use, and a brass lamp cast a warm circle of light across its surface. "Let me show you something else."

I sat. He pulled a chair close to mine, close enough that our knees almost touched, and laid a journal on the table between us. The leather was soft with age, the pages thick and cream-colored.

"My great-great-grandmother's diary," he said. "She was one of the first women in the family to document daily life here. Most of the earlier records are formal: property transfers, legal documents, contracts with neighboring families." He opened to a marked page. "But Margaret wrote about the small things. The ordinary magic of living in this place."

One of the documents caught my eye—a letter with a broken wax seal, the ink faded to rust. I couldn’t read most of it, but two words stood out in the cramped script: “blood betrayal.” Eli noticed me looking and turned the page quickly. “Old politics,” he said. But his jaw tightened in a way that told me it wasn’t old at all.

“There are families,” Eli continued after a moment, “who’ve been part of this town’s story since the beginning. Some are still allies. Some...aren’t anymore.” He closed the journal. “History has a way of repeating itself here. Especially the painful parts.”

His voice had that cadence again, the one that made me feel like I was being told a secret. Like he was trusting me with something precious and fragile. I leaned closer to read, and my shoulder brushed against his.

Neither of us moved away.

The entry was dated 1892, written in elegant, slanted script:

The preserve is alive tonight. I can feel it in my bones, the way I always can when the moon is full. Thomas says I am fanciful, but I know what I know. There are things in these woods that do not show themselves to casual observers. You must be patient. You must be still. You must be willing to believe.

"She sounds like a romantic," I said.

"She was practical, actually. Ran the entire household, managed the finances when my great-great-grandfather was traveling." He turned to another page, his finger tracing a line of text. "But she believed in... possibilities. Things that couldn't be easily explained. She documented the preserve's behavior during different moon phases. The sounds that came from the deeper woods."

"Do you believe in those things?"

He turned to look at me, and I realized how close we were. Close enough that I could see the individual striations in his dark irises, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Close enough that I could feel his breath stir the hair at my temple.

Close enough that if I leaned forward just slightly, I could taste him...

"I believe," he drawled, "that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

"Shakespeare," I said. "Hamlet."

"You know it."

"I was an English minor. Briefly, before I switched to design."

He smiled, that rare, genuine smile that transformed his usually serious face. The lines around his eyes deepened, and something warm kindled in his expression. "I forget sometimes that you had a whole life before you came here."

"I try to forget it, too."

The words came out more honestly than I'd intended. Eli's expression shifted, softened. His hand moved toward me, then stopped, hovering in the air between us like he was asking permission for something he hadn't yet named.

"You don't have to forget," he said quietly. "You just have to... integrate. Let the past inform the present without controlling it."