Page 18 of For My Finale

L ilah walked carefully down the path, scanning her surroundings like a soldier on high alert.

Given that she was now no longer allowed to call herself an animal lover, she needed to be aware.

But given also that she lived in the country, she thought she might as well take advantage of the clean air.

It was good for the skin, so she’d heard.

A distant baa made her shoulders tense as she crested a small hill and spotted George Thompson leaning on a wooden fence, watching over his sheep. He looked completely at ease in his surroundings, which just made Lilah feel like an alien.

“Morning,” Lilah said, stopping beside him.

“Morning,” said George, tapping his flat cap but not moving his eyes from his flock.

Lilah sighed. “I hate them, you know, I really do.”

George cackled. “Sheep?”

“Yes,” Lilah said firmly. “They’re evil. They tried to kill me, remember?”

George rubbed his chin. “I like ‘em. Simple creatures. They want something, they go for it. Hungry? Food. Tired? Sleep. Frisky? Well, you know. They don’t overthink things. Don’t mess around like people do. Life’s easier if you’re a sheep.”

Lilah leaned on the fence. “I suppose. I mean, they don’t have existential crises about what they want in life, do they?”

“Mmm,” agreed George. “We could all learn something from sheep.”

“Oh, please,” Lilah said, rolling her eyes.

George turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “You could learn from a stone wall, far as I can tell. You’ve got a lot to figure out.”

“Yeah,” Lilah sighed, settling back down to the fence. “I suppose you’re right. I’m pretty bad at this whole living in the country thing.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said George. “There’s more to life in Bankton than being a farmer. You’re popular enough, from the sounds of it. You just got to work out what it is you want.”

“Yeah, that’s the difficult part,” Lilah said, looking at the sheep.

“Not for them, it’s not,” said George.

“Great, now I’m being outdone by a flock of sheep. Perfect.”

George chuckled again, but said nothing more. He simply leaned back on the fence, content to watch his animals as if the answers to life’s mysteries were hidden in their woolly heads.

“Am I popular?” Lilah asked, after a while.

“You won’t be if you ask questions like that,” grunted George.

Lilah groaned and stood up. She had a walk to finish. And things to think about. What did she want? The problem with that question was that increasingly the answer was becoming Blossom. Which was a problem. Wasn’t it?

???

Blossom sat at her kitchen table, the dim light of the single overhead lamp casting a glow over the scattered papers in front of her.

They were a mess. Notes scrawled in the margins of bank statements, half-formed ideas on napkins from the cafe, a print out of an article about running a small business.

She needed a plan. Something real, something that could keep the cafe afloat.

The bank loan was a start, but it wouldn’t last forever.

She couldn’t tread water forever. If she wanted the cafe to survive, she needed to make it different enough from the chain store coming in.

She had to make it something people would choose over Coffee-To-Go.

“What goes well with coffee?” she muttered to herself, tapping her pen on the table.

Pastries? Well, yes. But if she made them, half the village were likely to go down with food poisoning. Music? Again, yes. But she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and her music tastes stopped somewhere around enjoying ABBA and knowing vaguely who Chappelle Roan was.

“What about books?” she said.

Books and coffee?

The pen-tapping got faster. It wasn’t a new idea, but it could be a good one.

There wasn’t a bookshop in Bankton. It could be a cozy place where people could browse a small selection of books while getting their coffee.

There could be events, book clubs, something that made the cafe more of a community space.

“Books,” she said thoughtfully, tasting the word.

But then reality crashed in. A bookshop was a big thing. Too big. It would take money, organization, risk. She couldn’t pull off something like that. She wasn’t a business mogul. She was no confident Lilah Paxton.

The thought of Lilah made Blossom’s skin tingle with warmth.

Lilah could do something like this. Lilah had confidence, drive, energy. Lilah. Blossom sighed. She really shouldn’t be thinking about her, but it was sort of impossible not to. The way she looked, the way she’d felt when Blossom had hugged her. Yeah, that had been a mistake.

A mistake, because she obviously had feelings for Lilah. Feelings that she was pretty sure Lilah didn’t reciprocate. Not given how quickly Lilah had stepped out of that hug.

Blossom shook her head, trying to clear it. She needed to focus on the cafe, not on impossible crushes.

A noise from outside made her jump.

Her breath caught, ears straining to catch the sound again. A rustling, something moving just beyond the window .

It was probably an animal. A fox, perhaps, or one of George’s sheep, lost again. But the sound made her uneasy somehow.

She stood up, grabbing a torch from the drawer by the sink, and moved toward the door. She took a deep breath and one step outside. The night air was cool against her skin, a sliver of moon cast a faint silver light. She stood still and listened.

Something was out there.

???

Lilah startled awake, the sound of something shifting outside pulling her from a restless sleep. The couch cushions pressed uncomfortably into her back. How had she fallen asleep here? She must have drifted off.

She sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes. Then there was another sound, rustling, heavy. Definitely not the wind.

Lilah swallowed, glancing around the darkened cottage.

It was probably a fox, right? Or one of those one-eyed badgers?

But as she sat there, heart thudding in her chest, the possibilities started multiplying in her mind.

Burglars, deranged fans, she’d had her share of stalkers, the press.

Christ, the last thing she needed was some journalist hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to stumble out looking like she’d partied way too hard, way too long.

And yet, despite every logical thought screaming at her to stay inside, she found that she was standing up, that her feet were moving toward the back door before she could stop them. Lilah Paxton was no coward. She gritted her teeth and opened the door.

It was a cool night, the scent of rain was in the air, and Lilah hugged her arms around herself. Silence stretched out in all directions. The kind of silence that only really happened in the country, deep and endless.

She was just about to convince herself that she was imagining things when something in the air shifted. Something closer this time.

Lilah’s breath caught in her throat. Her stomach clenched. Fear began creeping up her spine, immobilizing her legs, making goosebumps stand taut on her skin.

A light flickered on, bright and blinding, and she flinched.

“What are you doing out here?”

Lilah blinked against the glare, squinting to see Blossom standing by her own back door holding a flashlight, her expression somewhere between irritation and amusement.

“I—” Lilah began. Then she stopped herself. Saying, ‘I thought I was about to be murdered so I came outside to see’ didn’t seem like the best way of saving face. “I, um, heard noises.”

Blossom arched an eyebrow and the tiny movement made Lilah’s pulse start to race. “So you came out here? Alone?”

“So did you,” Lilah said, starting to register the fact that Blossom was in pajamas. Scanty ones at that.

“I’ve got a torch,” Blossom pointed out.

Before Lilah could reply to this, something moved.

And then something warm and wet brushed against the back of her neck.

There was a heavy exhale, hot breath against her skin.

She froze. Every horror movie she’d ever watched flooded back to her in vivid, terrifying detail.

All rational thought vanished and pure instinct took over. She opened her mouth and screamed.

She spun around, arms flailing, ready to scratch and fight and run. Only to come face to face with a broad, curious snout, and a pair of bright eyes.

“Billy!” Blossom said. “What are you doing out at this time of night? Did George forget to lock the gate again?” She looked over at Lilah. “You sounded like you were going to be murdered,” she said casually.

“I’d like to see how you’d react to a giant beast breathing down your neck,” said Lilah, whose pulse was still pounding in her ears.

Billy huffed and swished his tail and Blossom patted his haunches. “Come on Bill, back we go.” She grinned at Lilah. “This whole country life thing is going great for you, huh? ”

“I resent that,” Lilah muttered, as Blossom took Billy by the halter and began leading him away.

She was still watching as Blossom let Billy out, and turned back again.

Watching the way she moved, watching the shape of her body, the length of her legs, the curve of her waist. Watching and breathing and…

thinking about sheep. Which wasn’t exactly what she wanted to be thinking about, but there was something there.

Something about wanting and taking. Something about not overthinking or second-guessing. Something that made her take a step out of her way, made her grasp Blossom’s wrist just as she walked by, made her pull her in.

For a millisecond, there was only the surprise in Blossom’s wide eyes. That and the panic in Lilah’s stomach as she pulled Blossom even closer, as she tilted her head, as she brushed her lips against Blossom’s.

The world stilled. The night, the cool air, the distant sound of Billy rustling in the grass, it all faded away as their lips met.

And then Lilah wasn’t thinking. For the first time in a long, long time, she was just feeling.