Page 53 of Shattered Promise

We follow the music down a side path, toward the quieter edge of the festival.

The music tent is more lean-to than structure—reclaimed barn wood lashed together under faded banners. Most of the instruments are props: dulcimers, old accordions, and a battered tambourine for kids to bang on while their parents shop for candles or buy another bag of kettle corn.

But in the far corner, behind the table and underneath a sun-bleached sign that reads Vintage Scandinavian Stringed Wonders, there’s a guitar.

Not a cheap beginner’s special. An old, honey-brown Martin. The top is worn smooth by decades of sound. It isn’t displayed like the others—it sits alone, cradled in a battered stand, like it knows it’s out of everyone’s league.

I feel the pull before I can talk myself out of it. It’s like the world dials down, the noise and color softening, just to make space for the thrum of want in my chest.

I step toward it. The vendor—an older man with a beard so white it looks almost blue in the light—sees me and waves.

“Come on over. You play?” he asks, already grabbing it off of the stand.

“A little,” I say, but my voice betrays me. A second later, the guitar is in my hands. Heavier than I expected. Cool, whisper-smooth wood against my fingers.

Mason’s watching me with that look again. The one that makes me feel like he’s seeing something I didn’t realize I was showing.

“Take ‘er for a spin,” the guy offers.

I strum the open strings. Just once. A soft sweep. The sound is warm and low and resonant—it climbs up my ribs and settles behind my throat. The air around us hushes, the noise of the crowd falling away like it knows this moment isn’t for it.

“You should play something,” Mason suggests.

I stare at him. “I don’t remember anything,” I lie, heat blooming up the back of my neck. “And I’m sure he doesn’t want me toplayit.”

The vendor smiles, slow and sure. “It’s alright, go ahead.”

I nod and perch on the low wooden stool, awkward at first, then settle the guitar into my lap. My fingers curl over the neck. One hesitant chord, then another. The muscle memory unspools quietly, like film. It feels different than my guitar back in Seattle, not better or worse. Just different in a good way.

The shape of a song I used to play when I thought no one was listening. The noise of the festival fades, replaced by something quieter. My own breath. The soft rasp of strings beneath my touch.

I know Mason’s watching. I canfeelit.

It almost makes me stop. The crowd in my head—the weight of being witnessed—surges so loud I nearly fumble the chord. But then, I glance up.

He’s not smiling. His expression is something else entirely. Something fierce and bright andundone.

My fingers falter, and the chord buzzes off-key. I open my mouth, close it again. Something unspools in my chest. I feel bare and exposed—and weirdly safe. Like I’ve been cracked open and nothing bad happened.

Then his voice—low, rough, stunned—cuts through the silence. “Youare exquisite, Abigail Carter.”

The way he says it wrecks me. Not just the words, but thewonderin them.

I feel like I’ve waited my entire goddamn life for someone to look at me like this.

No, not someone.Him.

Goddamnit, it was alwayshim.

He holds my gaze until the rest of the world stitches itself back together, noise and color and chaos all bleeding in around the edges while we just . . . stay there. No one moves. I could live a thousand years in that look, the air between us strung as tight as a guitar string.

Then the vendor coughs, as soft and polite as a church usher. “She’s got a gift,” he says, beaming at me like I’ve just made his afternoon. “If you want to keep her playing, I’ll knock a hundred off the price.”

I laugh, a startled, genuine noise, and hand back the guitar. “I’m rusty,” I say, trying to make it a joke. But it comes out too soft. “But yeah, it plays like a dream.”

“Sounded perfect to me,” Mason says, his voice so low I’m not sure anyone else even hears it.

I feel the words in my chest, not my ears.