Page 3 of Mate Night Snack (Hollow Oak Mates #2)
KATNISS
T he Griddle & Grind smelled like cinnamon sugar and secrets.
Katniss sank into a corner booth with her mic clipped to the neckline of her faded Zeppelin tee, her satchel open beside her and her notebook already filled with half-legible scrawl. She’d interviewed three townsfolk this morning, each more charmingly evasive than the last.
The butcher had smiled like she was a puppy asking about taxes.
The woman at the quilting shop claimed to have moved here after the nineties and wasn’t “one for gossip.” And the local librarian had mysteriously “stepped out for a spell” the moment Katniss mentioned the name Mabel Dorsey , the missing girl from the old article.
Hollow Oak was tight-lipped. Polite, too, which made it harder.
Folks here didn’t slam doors or raise voices.
They just… shifted the subject. Smiled around corners.
Changed directions like wind over water.
And unfortunately, Katniss hadn’t had to work this hard in a while due to everyone wanting their piece to be heard or five minutes of fame.
But Katniss had been digging into cold cases for years. And if this town thought it could out-charm her, it didn’t know who it was dealing with.
A delicate clink of porcelain snapped her from her thoughts. A tea cup—blue and gold-rimmed, with steam curling like ribbon—appeared in front of her.
“I call this one Moonshadow Blend,” the woman said, sliding into the booth opposite Katniss. “Good for clarity. And making people just talk a little more than they meant to.”
Twyla.
Up close, the woman looked like a storybook come to life.
Her wheat-blond hair was braided over one shoulder, wild bits tucked with sprigs of dried lavender.
Her eyes, soft brown with flecks of something brighter, twinkled like they knew the punchline to a joke the rest of the world hadn’t caught up to.
Katniss raised a brow. “You drugged this?”
Twyla grinned. “Only with intention. Nothing illegal. Just persuasion in plant form.”
Katniss narrowed her eyes but took a sip. It tasted like honeyed smoke and something vaguely citrus. A warmth bloomed behind her eyes.
“What kind of plants are we talking about?”
“The kind that grow wild and whisper if you listen close.”
Katniss opened her notebook slowly, pen tapping against the paper. “You always this cryptic?”
“Only with people who pretend they’re not magical.”
“I’m not.”
“Yet.”
Katniss leaned in. “What do you know about Mabel Dorsey?”
Twyla didn’t flinch. Just lifted her tea, eyes not leaving Katniss’s.
“She was too curious for her own good. Like someone else I know.”
“That a compliment?”
“That’s a warning, sugar.”
Katniss blinked. “Based on what little there is to go off of, I assume maybe a wild animal? Like a wolf?”
The word hung between them like static.
Twyla didn’t answer. Instead, she reached into the apron tied around her waist and pulled out a small cloth bundle. She unwrapped it slowly, revealing a pale sprig of dried thistle bound with silver thread.
“Keep this on you,” she said, sliding it across the table. “If you keep sniffing where no one wants you, you’re gonna need it.”
Katniss picked it up. “I’m not scared of fairy tales.”
“You should be. The best ones are warnings wrapped in pretty language.”
A bell jingled near the counter, and Twyla rose like fog dissolving into sunlight.
“Walk the trail past the lake,” she said softly, turning away. “Some things want to be found.”
Katniss followed the winding trail out of town, past Moonmirror Lake, which shimmered like it had swallowed the sky. The water was unnervingly still, framed by weeping willows and moss-covered rocks. The kind of place you could swear was watching you back.
The farther she walked, the more the world around her seemed to shift. The path narrowed, wildflowers thickened, and her phone lost signal three steps past a bent wooden sign marked only with a hand-carved crescent moon.
Her boots crunched against fallen leaves, her breath growing shallower as the trees closed in. The light here was different. Dimmer but golden, like sunlight filtering through something old.
She pushed through a veil of hanging vines and stepped into a clearing.
It wasn’t large. Maybe fifteen feet across, ringed with ancient stones, their surfaces etched with unfamiliar symbols that seemed to be half-faded, half-glowing.
The air smelled strange. Not rotten or sweet. Alive.
She crouched near one of the stones, fingers brushing the carved groove. It pulsed faintly beneath her touch.
Not possible.
Katniss reached for her mic. Then a low growl stopped her cold.
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
She spun, heart hammering.
Emmett Hollowell stood at the far edge of the clearing, arms crossed, flannel sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He looked like he'd been carved out of the mountain itself, solid, weathered, and severely displeased.
Katniss straightened, chin high. “Walking.”
He stalked closer. “This isn’t a damn park trail.”
“You don’t own the woods.”
“Here?” His jaw ticked. “It sure as hell feels like I do.”
She turned back toward the stone, mic forgotten. “What is this place?”
“Nothing you need to be messing with.”
“Wow, I must really just bring out the fun in you, huh?”
He stopped beside her, too close. His presence was all heat and tension, and the scent of cedar and something storm-wild clung to him.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Is that because you think I’ll trip and scrape my knee, or because you’re hiding something?”
He bent slightly, voice low. “Because this place remembers blood.”
She flinched before she could stop it.
His gaze dropped to the charm in her pocket—Twyla’s bundle of silver and thistle.
“You went to see Twyla.”
“She does run the cafe. Plus, she offered,” Katniss said coolly.
“And you just took it?”
“Most people offer coffee. This town hands out curses and riddles.”
He didn’t smile. “You think this is a joke?”
“No,” she said, quieter now. “I think I finally found the reason everyone keeps dodging my questions.”
He stared at her like he was weighing something invisible.
“The clearing,” she said. “Mabel Dorsey—she came out here, didn’t she?”
Emmett’s hands clenched at his sides.
“I don’t have answers for you,” he said. “Not the ones you want.”
Katniss stepped closer, her voice softer. “Then what kind of answers do you have?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But something in the air shifted between them. Like the space narrowed without them meaning it to. Her shoulder brushed his arm, and the contact sparked heat down her spine. She should’ve stepped away.
She didn’t.
Emmett looked down at her. His eyes weren’t just gray-blue. They were storm clouds full of regret and warning. Of don’t come closer and I’ll catch you if you do.
His expression didn’t flicker. “This isn’t a game.”
“I never said it was. But I’ve got a missing girl from the 1990’s, a half-dozen evasive locals, and a clearing that feels like it remembers something ugly. You want to explain why this place hums like a live wire?”
“Turn around.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t belong here. And I’m done repeating myself.”
“I asked a question?—”
“And you won’t like the answers.” His voice dropped, a low growl beneath the words. “So stop digging where you don’t understand the dirt.”
Katniss bristled. “You don’t get to tell me where I can stand.”
His eyes darkened, storm-grey and set, his hair falling slightly into his eye giving him a more deadly look then it should have. “I do when where you’re standing’s soaked in old blood and worse things that haven’t had names in years.”
They locked eyes for a beat too long. And then, without touching her, without raising his voice, he took a step forward. That was all.
Something in the air snapped tight.
“You’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but the look on his face wasn’t up for debate. The command in it thrummed through her bones, ancient and wild and impossible to ignore.
Heart pounding, she backed away.
Not because she was afraid of him. Because whatever lived behind his eyes, whatever was stirring now wasn't just him .
Katniss turned and pushed through the trees, branches slapping her arms, the clearing disappearing faster than it should’ve. Her boots hit the path again only after she broke through a curtain of vines she didn’t remember walking past on her way in.
She looked back once.
He was still there, standing like stone in the clearing, watching. Not moving. Not following.
Her breath came fast. Her hands shook. She didn’t get answers. She got chased out. And she’d be damned if that didn’t make her want them even more.
Whatever he was guarding out here, it wasn’t just a place.
It was himself.
And now Katniss wasn’t sure which mystery she wanted to solve more—the missing girl, or the man walking two steps ahead with the weight of the woods on his shoulders.