Page 48 of Shattered Promise

I nod, gripping my empty coffee cup tighter. “Let’s do it.” But it’s not just caffeine making my pulse jump. It’s him and all of this. The easy rhythm we’ve fallen into. The fact that he asked me to come today, like it was simple. Like it was just this thing we did.

Like we're friends again. Or maybe we're finally friends. Maybe this is what friendship with Mason Porter looks like these days.

I don't hate it.

We fall into step side by side, a rhythm that feels instinctive.

It takes three seconds before I realize what this looks like to everyone else: a family outing. I tell myself it’s fine. It's one day. A festival between friends. But then Theo catches my pinky in his fist and doesn’t let go. And something in my chest tips, slow and irreversible.

We wander through the vendor booths first—honey in sunlit glass jars, hand-carved bowls, embroidered towels in deep reds and soft blues. The air smells like fried sugar and grass, warm and a little wild. I keep my sunglasses on even in the shade, hoping the bruise under my eye isn’t as obvious as it feels. I put a healthy amount of concealer on this morning, but the insecurity still hums under my skin like a low-voltage current.

“Free sample?” a woman calls from the first table, already holding out a tray stacked with crackers topped in something magenta and glossy. Her red gingham apron flaps in the breeze, her grin bright.

Mason slows the stroller beside me, flipping down the sunshade so Theo’s in the patchy bit of shade that cuts across the vendor row.

“Lingonberry jam,” she says, chipper. “Want to try?”

Theo slams his palms against the stroller tray and babbles something incoherent. I laugh, but my eyes flick to Mason, automatically checking for a nod.

He dips his head. “Let him try it.”

"Sure, thanks." I reach for a cracker, breaking off a soft corner of it before holding it to Theo’s mouth.

He grabs my fingers, pulls them closer, and gets it everywhere—mouth, chin, fingers. He looks like he’s been fingerpainting in jam. He pauses, his eyes growing wide as he stares at me.

"Does that taste good, buddy?" I murmur, taking a small bite of the other side of the cracker. Sweet and tart and smooth. It's delicious. I think I'm going to enjoy the Fyr Bal festival.

“Think he likes it,” Mason murmurs, amusement tugging at the edge of his mouth.

“I can't blame him. It's delicious,” I say, wiping jam from Theo’s lip with the edge of a napkin the vendor hands me.

The woman beams as she looks from Theo to me. “He looks just like you.” She gestures toward the jars on display. “Three for ten, by the way. I make all the preserves myself.”

The assumption lands awkwardly around my neck, sticky and sweet, just like the jam.

Mason doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at me. But I can feel him waiting.

I open my mouth before I really think about it. “Oh, I—I’m just the nanny.” I push to my feet and toss the napkin in the small garbage can in front of the table.

The woman chuckles, smoothing her apron as her cheeks flush pink. “Well, coincidence then.”

"Yep. Thank you." I flash her a smile.

Mason starts to push the stroller forward again with a gentle nudge, and I let him. But the heat rising up my neck isn’t from the sun.

“You could’ve just pretended,” he murmurs once we’re out of earshot, not looking at me.

“I didn’t want to make it weird,” I say, quickly. Too quickly.

His gaze skims my profile, unreadable. “Weirder than pretending to be a family?”

I don’t answer. Just fix my eyes on a booth selling block-printed dish towels and pretend to read a price tag. My palms are damp. I wipe them down the skirt of my dress, twice. It’s not just the heat. It’s him. It’s this. The fact that my body hasn’t gotten the memo that we’re pretending to be friends today.

We let Theo charm his way through vendor row, collecting a torn piece of sourdough here, a pretzel chunk there. He grins at everyone like he’s been elected king of the festival, his joy so effortless it cracks something soft and private inside my chest.

We stop at a booth filled with hand-carved wooden pieces—platters, ladles, bowls—all etched in delicate Scandinavian folkart. Tiny flowers swirl up the handles, bright paint layered over the grooves like someone took a paintbrush to memory.

“I love this kind of stuff,” I say, smiling without meaning to, fingers trailing over the edge of a pale birch cutting board.