Page 50 of Bear Naked Truth
But the whisper had pierced deeper than she wanted to admit.
She grabbed the journal from her satchel in the corner and ran her fingers over the cover. Hollis’s story, the betrayal, the blood spilled to sever fate… it was still swirling in her head. Still settling.
The ghosts didn’t lie.
Not often.
But they didn’t always speak the truth, either.
The living could betray. That much was true.
And fate? Fate had teeth.
But so did love.
Autumn closed the journal, her fingers trembling, and pressed it to her chest like it could shield her from whatever storm was brewing next.
She wasn’t going to run. But she wasn’t ready to leap either.
She just hoped Dorian would still be there when she was.
26
DORIAN
Dorian didn’t know the first thing about planting roses.
But he knew Autumn liked them.
Not the kind you bought from the grocery store in a crinkly plastic sleeve. No, she liked the messy ones—wild and overgrown and so vibrant they looked like they’d bled through the seasons just to keep blooming. She liked them with thorns and scars and tangled roots. The kind of flowers that didn’t apologize for taking up space.
So he built her a garden.
It started with the idea in the middle of the night—after she’d fallen asleep in his arms, after the air had turned too quiet, and the whisper she’d mentioned had left a frostbite of doubt behind her eyes. He couldn’t fight her ghosts, not directly. But he could remind her every single day that she was wanted in the land of the living.
That she belonged here.
With him.
So while she spent the next two mornings pouring over Hollis Blackthorne’s journal, unraveling the house’s history page by haunted page, Dorian slipped out back and got to work.
He cleared the space behind the greenhouse—an overgrown tangle of briar and rock that most folks would’ve ignored. It was shaded by a massive red oak that still dropped acorns like confetti, and bordered on the edge of Echo Woods where the air always felt a little too alive.
But Dorian loved a challenge.
He brought in soil from Missy’s apothecary, charmed to keep spirits from leeching into the roots. Nico provided enchanted clippers that whispered compliments when he pruned (“Oh yes, trim it just there, you botanical beast.”). And Markus and Rowan gifted him a crate of bookish garden markers with labels like"emotional healing"and"regret-absorbing rosemary.”
It took him two full days, and he hadn’t told a soul, not even Autumn.
By the third morning, his hands were raw, his back ached, and he’d somehow managed to charm a trail of moonstone gravel into glowing ever so slightly at night.
And still, it didn’t feel enough.
Not until she saw it.
She came out of the house right around noon, mug in hand, curls caught up in a haphazard clip like she’d wrestled with sleep and lost. She wore one of his flannel shirts again—one he hadn’t even realized was missing—and the sight of it on her hit him harder than it should’ve.
“Hey,” she called out, lifting her mug in greeting.
