Page 189 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Eventually she noticed the small wooden box attached to the inside of the fence. “What’s that?”

“Carving knife.”

She stared at me in surprise. “Willow Creek supplies a weapon?”

“It’s attached to a steel cable.”

“Oh, well. Completely safe then.”

I laughed and opened the box. The old knife sat inside, its wooden handle polished smooth by decades of hands. Carson picked it up. Her gaze moved from the blade to the tree. Then to me. My heartbeat changed. Not because I expected her to carve our initials.

There was something about this tradition that deserved more than the rush of whatever was happening between us.

“What would I even carve?”

“Whatever you don’t want to forget.”

Her eyes held mine. The sounds of Willow Creek felt farther away beneath the branches. For a moment, Carson looked like she might say something. Instead, she returned the knife to the box.

I closed the wooden lid. “Not yet is fine.”

Her brows pulled together. “That’s it?”

“What else would there be?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want me to pressure you into vandalizing a historic tree?”

“It’s not vandalism if the town provides a knife.” She smiled and I held out my hand. Carson looked down at it before slipping her fingers through mine again. And something about that small choice affected me more than it had any right to.

We walked back toward Main Street slowly. Neither of us seemed particularly interested in getting anywhere.

When we reached the first strand of orange lights, Carson stopped. She stepped close enough that our joined hands pressed between us. For a second, I thought she might kiss me. I wanted her to. Instead, she rested her head against my shoulder.

“Thank you for showing me.”

I looked back toward the willow through the trees. “You’re welcome.”

We stood there while Willow Creek carried on around us. A truck rolled slowly through the intersection. Someone laughed outside the tavern. Rosie’s voice rose above Jax’s somewhere in the distance.

The mechanical witch screamed again, and Carson laughed against my shoulder again. I lowered my cheek to the top of her head. Years from now, I knew there were things about tonight I wouldn’t remember perfectly.

I wouldn’t remember what song had been playing from the tavern or what Carson had ordered from Sugar and Pine that afternoon. I probably wouldn’t remember which cars we’d worked on or what Rosie and Jax had been arguing about.

But I knew I would remember the feeling of Carson’s hand sliding into mine without me having to ask. I would remember the way she’d recognized James’s handwriting in a scar cut into an old tree.

For most of my life, I’d thought the willow tradition was stupid.

Jax and I had teased Clover mercilessly for believing a tree could remember anything. Standing beneath Willow Creek’s orange lights with Carson pressed against my side, I finally understood that wasn’t really the point.

The tree didn’t have to remember.

We did.

And when my eyes drifted back toward the old willow, I knew exactly which two letters I would have carved into its bark if Carson had asked me.

I was just willing to wait until she wanted them there too.