Page 86 of The Pumpkin Spice Spell
Because when I look at you, I see a life I never thought I deserved. Laughter in a kitchen. Cobweb stealing my pillow. Coffee on slow Sunday mornings in bed, and your sleepy voice reading to me from a romance novel you claim is “just okay.”
And I want it. All of it. But I don’t know how to trust that I get to have it.
Everywhere I’ve ever landed, the ground’s eventually crumbled beneath me. My dad. My mom. My home. The ocean, I thought, was where I belonged. And even more things I can’t tell you yet. I feel like it’s all been washed out to sea.
You were the first person that felt like I could have something real and safe. Maybe I couldn’t loseyou, because you were the one real thing. The one that mattered.
And then I panicked because I kept thinking, this is too good. This can’t be mine.
I reached for the life I knew to survive. Not the one I want. Not the one I’d give anything to keep.
And worse, I know I hurt you to protect myself. I never want to hurt you. I love you so much it hurts.
You didn’t deserve any of it. You are the softest thing I’ve ever known. And yet somehow the strongest.
I just don’t know how to believe. But I’m trying.
And if there’s even a sliver of you that still wants me, if you ever read this, just know that I would spend a lifetime undoing what I broke. That I would carry your fears with mine, and your grief. I promise I will never stop fighting to get things right.
I love you. And I will always choose you, even if I have to do it quietly, from a distance. Even if I never get to hear you say it back again.
I will never leave again. I am your anchor. And you are my harbor.
Tate
I don’t bottle the message. I fold it once, twice, three times until it fits in the pocket of my coat.
And I keep it there. Close to my heart. I’m going to show her everything I was too afraid to say.
Until then, I’ll carry it like a compass, pointing me home.
Chapter 25
Willa
There isn’t a place in this town that doesn’t remind me of you.
I don’t want to belong to Wisteria Cove unless I belong here with you.
-Tate
The rain comes down like punishment, and it pounds on the windows of the bookstore in rhythmic slaps, as the wind howls through Wisteria Cove. The shop lights flicker once, then again. This storm is a bad one and feels like it will leave a mark.
I’m restocking a display of fall reads near the front window when the door bursts open with a bang. The wind slams it against the wall, and a drenched silhouette stumbles in, frantic and calling out for me.
“Donna?” I run to her, and she’s soaked from head to toe, her hair plastered to her cheeks, eyes wild.
“Willa. It’s Pete,” she struggles to catch her breath, her eyes wild with worry. “Pete didn’t come back in. He went out to check traps, and no one can get ahold of him. Something is wrong! I just know it.”
My blood freezes. Not again. Not someone else.
“Where’s Tate?” I ask, already sprinting around the counter.
“He’s heading to the harbor,” Donna calls frantically after me. “He said he’s going out to look.”
I’m gone before she finishes the sentence. The wind nearly knocks me over the second I hit the street. My boots slip on wet cobblestones as I run, cloak whipping behind me like wings.
The harbor is chaos. Rain lashes sideways. Waves slam against the docks. A group of townspeople stand in huddled silence under the bait shop porch, watching with wide, worried eyes.
