Page 4 of Knot the Last Chapter

I smile, thumbs tapping quickly.

I won the carrot battle. Jake’s licking his wounds in the corner. Kitchen smells amazing. Feels like being a kid again… and also not. Funny how everything’s the same but I’m different.

His reply comes a few seconds later.

Yeah. I know that feeling.That hit me hard when I lost my parents. Everything familiar, but nothing fit the same after.

I go still, rereading that line.

I’m sorry, Pine. You lost both of them?

Yeah. My adoptive parents, who are the only parents who ever counted, really. They passed a few years ago. Me and my brothers stayed in the house though. Tried to keep it up like they would’ve wanted.

A heaviness settles in my chest. I type slowly, deliberately.

My dad’s been gone three years. We still talk about him like he just stepped out of the room.

I’ve never talked to anyone about my dad being gone like this. My city friends were sympathetic, but we were never that close. And my Starling Grove friends…well, I was closest to Harper, and she changed her number without telling me. But I feel like I can tell Pine anything. Maybe it’s the anonymity of it all. Either way, I feel like a connection is forming between us, warm and comforting.

I’m sorry about your parents. It sounds like they were really special.

They were. Yours too, I bet.

I swallow. Jake nudges me with a grin, eyeing my screen.

“Who’s got your attention all dreamy-eyed?” he asks, too loud.

“Shut up,” I mutter, but I’m smiling.

Jake whistles. “An alpha, maybe?”

My cheeks flush. “He’s a friend.”

“Oh ho,” Jake says, delighted. “A friend.”

Mom doesn’t even turn around. “Leave her alone, Jake. She’s allowed to have friends.”

“She is. I’m just saying… she’s never smiled like that at her phone before.”

“I smile at my phone all the time.”

“Not like that,” he says.

I toss a dishtowel at him.

But the thing is, Jake’s not wrong. There’s something different about texting Pine. He makes the world feel smaller in a good way. Like the ache in my chest for my dad can coexist with the flutter in my stomach when I talk to Pine about nothing and everything.

I don’t know his real name. I don’t know his face.

But I know his heart.

And right now, that’s enough.

I slip the phone in my back pocket and go back to stirring, the warmth from the stove creeping into my limbs like a blanket. Jake keeps teasing me under his breath, and I elbow him when Mom’s not looking.

The three of us move around each other in the kitchen the way we always have, the way people do when they’ve lived too many years under the same roof. It’s messy and loving and loud. We talk about everything and nothing. About my old teachers, and how Mrs. Langridge still talks about my short stories. About the time Dad burned the stuffing and tried to blame Jake. About the cat we never did replace.

And all the while, my phone pulses quietly against my hip, a thread connecting me to someone who understands the loss and the return. The way your roots call you back even when you swore you’d cut them.