Page 59 of Bear Naked Truth
But love didn’t always matter when fear was louder.
And she was afraid. Not just of him, ofthem, but of believing that something good could actuallystay.Even after the evening they shared. He had hoped it had been enough, but something happened when she searched for the Hollow Man, something enough to think she didn’t deserve this happiness.
He could only wait.
“Come back,” he said quietly, the words spoken more to the empty room than anything else. “Whenever you’re ready. Just… come back.”
He didn’t expect an answer.
But somewhere down the hall, a door creaked open.
Not loudly. Not like a ghost with something to prove.
Just a gentle, steady creak like the house was listening.
Like it agreed.
31
AUTUMN
It started with the mug.
Not just any mug—the one from The Spellbound Sip, deep green with a faint gold ring around the rim and a handle that always warmed to her touch. The one that, for weeks, had tasted faintly like cinnamon and safety. Like comfort that crept in slowly and made a home between sips.
But that morning, after she’d spent her first full night away from Briar Hollow, it tasted like lavender and smoke.
A warning.
The first real one.
Autumn stared at the swirling steam until it faded, until the tea went cool and sour in the cup. Her hands didn’t shake, but her chest ached with something she hadn’t named yet. Something that whispered under her skin like the ghosts she tried so hard to ignore.
She didn’t drink it.
Didn’t have to.
Because the next message came quietly, the way all the real ones did—with rain tapping against the attic window aboveNico’s spare room, and a whisper curled beneath it, softer than her own breath.
“Go home.”
She sat frozen for several minutes, her knees tucked to her chest, the covers still drawn up like armor.
Home.
She didn’t know where that was anymore.
Briar Hollow had felt like it. Dorianhadfelt like it. But so had running. So had silence. She’d made homes out of half-emptied tea canisters and train station benches before. And yet… nothing had ever wrapped around her quite like that porch light flickering to life just before dusk. Like Dorian’s hand reaching for hers under the table without looking.
She’d stayed away for two nights.
Just two.
But every hour of it had dragged, thick with discomfort. The room Nico gave her above his shop was charming in its way—walls of potion jars, a tiny brass-framed bed, a window that faced the Moonshadow Apothecary roofline—but it never warmed.
The charm bags didn’t settle.
The air didn’t hum the right way.
