Page 53 of Wild Thorns

"It's how he shows affection." Jasper handed me a lemonade. "Would you prefer he write you sonnets?"

I looked back toward where Callum had been standing, but he'd disappeared into the crowd.

"I have no idea what I'd prefer," I admitted.

“That’s fair..” Jasper chuckled as he settled back onto the wall beside me, closer than before. “You don’t have to know anything yet.”

“Yet implies I’ll have to decide, eventually.”

“Does it?” He took a sip of his lemonade, watching me over the rim of the cup. “Maybe. Or maybe some things don’t require deciding. Maybe some things just… happen.”

“That’s very zen of you.”

“I have hidden depths.” He grinned. “Also, Mrs. Henderson’s grandson got into LSU, if you were wondering. I now know more about his application essay than any human should.”

I laughed, grateful for the shift in tone. “She kept you that long?”

“She’s thorough. And she wanted to know if I was ‘courting the pretty new girl at Thornwood.’ Her words, not mine.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I was working on it.” His eyes met mine, playful but sincere. “Was I wrong?”

I should have deflected. Should have made a joke, changed the subject, done any of the things I’d learned to do when conversations got too close to the truth.

Instead, I said: “No. You’ve done a pretty decent job so far.”

His smile softened into something that made my chest ache. “Good. That’s… good.”

We sat there for a while after that, watching the festival, not quite touching but aware of each other in a way that felt new, fragile and important. The bluegrass band finished their set, and a country singer took the stage. The sun started its slow descent toward the tree line.

And across the square, I caught glimpses of Callum, appearing and disappearing in the crowd, always watching, never approaching. A shadow with dark eyes and an intensity that followed me wherever I went.

Two different energies. Both of them pulling at something inside me I was only beginning to understand.

* * *

Eli found us as the sun was setting.

He appeared without warning, the way he always did, one moment absent, the next standing beside the stone wall with his hands in his pockets and his glasses catching the golden light.

“Jasper, Serena.” He nodded at each of us‌. “Enjoying the festival?”

“Serena’s been sampling the local cuisine,” Jasper said. “I think she’s had four different types of barbecue. I’m impressed and slightly concerned.”

“Three types,” I corrected. “And a funnel cake.”

“The funnel cake was a good call,” Eli said. “The Henderson booth?”

“Is there another?”

“No. Mrs. Henderson has held the funnel cake monopoly for thirty years. There was an incident with a rival booth in ’04, but we don’t talk about that.”

I looked between them, trying to tell if he was joking. With Eli, it was hard to know.

“This festival has a lot of history,” I said.

“Everything in Magnolia Creek has history.” Eli sat down on my other side, so that I was bracketed between the two brothers. “That’s either comforting or claustrophobic, depending on your perspective.”