Page 8 of Claimed By My Exiled Alphas
I handed her the collection of essays, noting the way her fingers traced the cover like she was greeting an old friend. “I know her work. I used to have all her books, before I had to sell them to pay rent.”
The casual way she mentioned selling her books hit me harder than it should have. Books were tools of survival for people like us, maps for navigating difficult territory. Having to sell them was like a musician pawning their instrument.
“You can borrow anything from here,” I said, meaning it more than she could know. “For as long as you need.”
She looked up at me, and I saw something shift in her expression. A kind of cautious gratitude that made me realize how long it had been since anyone had offered her something without expecting payment in return.
“Why are you being so kind to me?” she asked. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough,” I said. “I know you’re someone who understands that feeding people is an act of love. I know you recognize good writing when you encounter it. I know you’re trying to rebuild something that was important to you.” I paused, thinking about my grandmother’s stories about the curious little girl who’d spent summers in the children’s section. “And I know my grandmother saw something special in you when you were eight years old. Her judgment was rarely wrong.”
She was quiet for so long I started to worry I’d said too much, pushed too hard into territory she wasn’t ready to explore. But then she said, “I’ve been thinking about cooking again. Actually cooking, not just throwing together whatever’s in the refrigerator.”
Something in her voice made me pay closer attention. There was more she wanted to say, I could tell. I waited, refilling her teacup from the pot and giving her space to find the words.
“I made an offer on the old bakery space,” she said finally, the words coming out in a rush like she needed to say them before she could talk herself out of it. “On Main Street. It’s pretty perfect the old owner left the kitchen appliances in when they moved to their new premises so it’s mostly functioning already. They accepted my offer this morning.”
I felt a smile spreading across my face before I could stop it. “Talia, that’s wonderful. That space has been empty for almost two years. It needs someone who understands food.”
“Does it?” She set her teacup down with careful precision. “Or is it a terrible idea? Opening a bistro in a town where everyone probably still remembers me as the kid who burned cookies at the fourth grade bake sale?”
“I doubt anyone remembers that.”
“I remember it.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “And that’s not even the real problem. The real problem is that I’m not sure Hollow Haven wants a bistro run by an outsider who left fifteen years ago and only came back because she had nowhere else to go.”
I thought about this carefully, recognizing the fear beneath her words. “You’re not an outsider. You grew up here. Your grandmother lived here her whole life. People remember you.”
“Exactly. They remember the girl I was, not the chef I became. What if I open this place and nobody comes? What if they thinkI’m putting on airs, trying to bring big city pretension to a town that just wants comfort food and reasonable prices?”
“Is that what you’re planning to serve? Pretentious food at unreasonable prices?”
“No, of course not. I want to do seasonal menus, local ingredients, the kind of cooking that makes people feel cared for.” She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was smaller. “But what if I can’t? What if Vincent was right, and I was never as good as I thought I was? What if I get into that kitchen and realize I’ve forgotten how to cook?”
Healing isn’t about forgetting the hurt. It’s about learning to carry it differently.
The thought came to me from somewhere deep, from all the books I’d read about trauma and recovery, from watching my grandmother help people find their way back to themselves. But I knew Talia didn’t need platitudes right now. She needed honesty.
“You haven’t forgotten how to cook,” I said. “That’s not how skill works. But youhaveforgotten what it feels like to trust yourself in a kitchen, and that’s different.”
She looked at me, really looked at me, and I saw the fear she’d been trying to hide. “What if I fail? What if I open this place and it’s a disaster and I prove Vincent right about everything he said about me?”
“Then you’ll have failed trying something brave instead of succeeding at playing it safe.” I leaned forward, willing her to hear what I was really saying. “But I don’t think you’re going to fail. I think you’re going to create something beautiful, because that’s what you do. That’s who you’ve always been, according to my grandmother’s stories.”
“Your grandmother told stories about me?”
“She told stories about everyone she thought had potential. You were one of her favorites.” I smiled, remembering. “Sheused to say you had the kind of mind that understood both art and science, and that people like that were rare. Worth paying attention to.”
Talia was quiet for a long moment, processing this. Then she said, “I haven’t even told anyone else yet. About the bistro. You’re the first person I’ve said it out loud to.”
“How does it feel? Saying it out loud?”
“Terrifying.” She took a deep breath. “Also kind of exciting. Like maybe I could actually do this. Maybe I could build something here that’s mine, that nobody can take away from me.”
“You can,” I said with certainty. “And you will. But it’s okay to be scared. Starting something new is always frightening, especially when the last thing you built got destroyed by someone else’s cruelty.”
“How do you know what to say?” she asked softly. “How do you always seem to understand exactly what I’m feeling?”
I thought about my grandmother, about fifteen years of watching people heal through the right stories at the right time, about my own journey of learning to trust my instincts about what people needed. “I don’t always know what to say. But I know what it looks like when someone’s trying to talk themselves out of something they desperately want. And I know that courage looks a lot like fear with better marketing.”
