Page 137 of Book and Ladder
None of that matters.
I pull up the draft I had composed to Daisy and click send. The screen blinks, and it’s gone.
For a moment, I stare at the word SENT.
Now she has the address and a confirmation of the time. In my email, I asked her to wait to see me tomorrow. I explained that I want her to have the full experience I planned. I’m not sure if she listened tonight—if she’ll want to kill me or come storming over here and give me a piece of her mind. Maybe she has questions she wants answered. I don’t want to field any of that until she sees what I have done. Then she can choose, knowing everything.
I don’t check for a response from Daisy. I simply log off and hope for the best.
Chapter 36
Daisy
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
My name is Patrick O’Connell.I’m a firefighter in a small town in Tennessee.
His voice pierces through my phone—steady, familiar, unmistakable—straight to my heart. My mug of hot tea slips from my hand and shatters on my kitchen floor. I stand there, breath caught, as his every word punctures what I believed about him. Shards scatter across the floor, but they’re nothing compared to the splintered thoughts ricocheting through my head.
I sink into a chair, heart thudding, trying to piece together the story I thought I knew with the one he’s confessing to the world.
When he signs off, I’m left with a gaping silence and more questions than answers. I crouch to gather the jagged pieces,fingers trembling as I wipe the spill. Then I practically sleepwalk into my living room and collapse onto the couch.
Patrick is the host of Burning Through the Pages?
My head spins. No. No way.
He never told me. He let me believe in someone who didn’t exist—pouring my secrets into a voice that lived only in airwaves and sound bytes.
Or he might have been trying to become that version of himself—first online and now maybe for real.
And he knows who I am. I tug the blanket from the back of the couch—the one he left for me this week—and wrap myself in it, needing a shield against the exposure.
He left me at the corn maze. Is that why? Because he saw me?
He recognized me and walked away—even though he knew how deeply being stood up would cut through my heart. He, of all people, knew.
I curl into myself, thoughts spinning wild—his soothing voice in my ears, our banter at the shop, late-night DMs, him waiting on the porch, hesitant, restrained. Every fragment turns into proof I should’ve known. The cookies. Fixing my pilot light. The podcast confession that probably cost him more than I’ll ever know.
And our kiss—still sends a shiver through me every time I remember the way his lips felt against mine.
My laptop waits on the coffee table. His unopened email is a dare I’m not yet brave enough to accept. For a second I imagine slamming across the porch and forcing him to explain, but I’m anchored to the couch—pride and fear weighing me down.
I need to get my bearings before I face him—sort my scattered thoughts, tame my unruly emotions.
He has a plan. I need one too.
After a few steadying breaths, I muster the courage toread the email. It’s simple—an invitation to meet him tomorrow. A location. A time. And whitespace I’m filling with a hundred possibilities.
I paste the address into maps. It’s a house on a residential street where some homes have been converted to businesses. Why there? Why not here?
I stay up far too late, reading through all our emails and messages until my eyes burn—each one a puzzle piece clicking into place.
He must’ve known at the corn maze—hiding behind that ridiculous book-dragon head. He saw me and left. Anger flashes but dies just as quickly. He could’ve ripped the costume off and told me the truth right there.
I probably would have rejected him. His dad’s development had stripped me of all clear thinking where Patrick was concerned. I’d lumped him in with his family—assumed he was just another O’Connell, siding with them instead of having my back. Seeing his face when my heart was still so raw would’ve sent me straight into a rage—and he knew it.
