Page 57 of Bear Naked Truth
She didn’t answer.
She looked up and saw them again—Nerissa and Walin laughing over steamed milk. Rowan sliding a note into Markus’s book. Rollo catching Deliliah’s smirk like it was a gift.
All these people. Alltheselittle moments. And all at once, it hit her.
She hadn’t run from Dorian.
She’d run from happiness.
From the idea that she couldwantsomething and actuallyhaveit. That she could choose a life that didn’t revolve around pain. Around ghosts. Around always waiting for the other shoe—or the ceiling—to drop.
Tears sprang to her eyes, unbidden, and Nico’s expression softened.
“You know,” they said, “love doesn’t make you weaker, Autumn. It roots you.”
“I’ve never been rooted,” she whispered.
“Then plant yourself somewhere good. Somewheretrue.”
The rose garden Dorian planted for her came to her mind as she took a long sip of her tea. The flavor curled on her tongue, bittersweet and bright, like new beginnings steeped in regret.
“I’m not sure how to fix it.”
“You don’t,” Nico said. “You just go back. Tell the truth. Let it be messy and honest and real.”
Autumn looked out the window.
The fog had lifted. Sunlight was breaking through, scattering gold across the street like breadcrumbs.
She stood, setting a few bills on the table beside her mug.
Nico didn’t say anything—just winked as she passed.
She let the cold kiss her cheeks, let her breath fog the air in small, uneven clouds. The town around her moved slow, like it knew not to rush her—just shop signs swaying gently, the distant clink of glass from the Everglen Market stalls, and the occasional crow overhead that sounded more like commentary than warning.
Autumn stood at the end of the street, hands deep in her pockets, staring at nothing.
She didn’t head back to the inn.
She didn’t head anywhere in particular.
Her feet carried her forward, not with purpose, but with instinct. One block. Then another. She didn’t need answers yet. She needed space. A moment. A breath that didn’t belong to Dorian’s world or hers or anyone’s ghosts.
She didn’t know where she was going.
But she knew it wasn’t time to go home yet.
Not until her heart had caught up with everything else.
30
DORIAN
Dorian had never minded quiet.
As a forest ranger, he’d once spent entire weeks without hearing anything louder than a deer’s hooves against fallen pine needles. Silence was sacred then—clean, useful. But the quiet in Briar Hollow this morning was the kind that got into your bones and made youache.
The kind that reminded you something was missing.
