Page 7 of Mate Night Snack (Hollow Oak Mates #2)
KATNISS
K atniss tossed her duffel onto the bed and flopped down with a huff. The mattress was firmer than she liked, the headboard had a suspicious wobble, and the lace curtains gave off a vibe that screamed your grandmother’s doilies are watching.
She’d been moved— upgraded , according to Miriam—to a larger room at the back of the inn. Quieter. Private. Which, Katniss suspected, really meant within earshot of Emmett Hollowell’s patrol route.
The window faced the woods. Not the picturesque part near Moonmirror Lake, but the old trails that sloped into mist and shadow. She could hear the trees groaning softly in the breeze. Sometimes they sounded like they were whispering to each other.
Or maybe she just needed more sleep.
She dropped onto the bed and exhaled, letting the floral quilt puff up around her.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew what this was.
A soft kind of surveillance. The room happened to be along the path Emmett walked every day during patrols.
The same Emmett who hadn’t spoken more than five words to her since carrying her through the woods last night. Or really since she had gotten there.
And those five words had been: “Don’t make me regret this.”
Charming.
She rolled onto her side and looked toward the window. Just past the garden, the woods waited. And somewhere in that blur of green and gold, Emmett Hollowell was probably scowling at a squirrel and pretending he didn’t care she existed.
A knock pulled her out of her thoughts.
She sat up. “Come in.”
Miriam peeked in, holding a plate and a half-lifted brow. “I figured you didn’t eat anything yesterday that didn’t come with emotional trauma, so I made cheese biscuits.”
Katniss blinked. “You’re a saint.”
“Careful,” Miriam said, setting the plate on the dresser. “I’m only sweet on days that end in biscuits. Which, around here, is most days.”
Katniss smiled and reached for one, then hesitated.
“It’s just butter and love. Eat.”
She did. Warm, flaky, a hint of thyme. She closed her eyes for a second longer than necessary.
“I put you back here because you’ll have more privacy,” Miriam said, watching her carefully. “But also because the back porch is on Emmett’s path. You’ll see him most mornings. And evenings.”
Katniss nodded slowly. “How... convenient.”
“Careful with him,” Miriam said softly. “He’s still learning to come back to people.”
“I’m not trying to unravel him.”
“No. But you’ve already started.” Then the woman left, door clicking shut behind her.
Katniss stared at it for a beat, then looked back down at the half-eaten biscuit in her hand.
“Great,” she muttered. “I’m a walking existential crisis magnet.”
She pulled her boots back on, shrugged into her jacket, and headed downstairs.
No point in pretending she wasn’t going to follow Emmett.
She needed a guide and he was insisting on being that to her, whether he wanted to or not, she couldn’t tell.
But if she was going to get any answers for her podcast and this case, then she needed a guide.
She found him kneeling near the garden, stacking chunks of broken stone into a neat pile.
“You digging a grave or fixing something?”
He didn’t look up. “Marker stone fell in the wind. I’m resetting it.”
“Can’t have crooked markers,” she said dryly. “What would the squirrels think?”
Emmett stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “You planning to follow me all day or just heckle from the sidelines?”
“That depends. You planning to ignore every warning sign I point out along the way?”
His eyes flicked toward her, sharp and a little tired. “You mean your ‘vibes’?”
“Yes, my vibes. It’s called intuition.”
“It’s called seer magic,” he muttered, turning toward the woods.
She frowned and fell into step beside him. “I’m not magic.”
“Never said you were.”
“You just did. You said seer magic.”
He didn’t slow. “I said what you’re doing has a name. Doesn’t mean you’re throwing fireballs or glowing under the moon.”
“Well, thank god for that.” She exhaled. “I’ve never even held a crystal, Emmett. I don’t meditate. I believe in ghosts because I’ve seen them. But all this talk about visions and ancient walls whispering to me? It sounds like the start of a mental breakdown.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then explain it to me like I didn’t just walk out of a fantasy novel.”
He paused, eyes scanning the tree line before speaking again. “Some people are born with one foot on either side of a wall. They can’t see it, not at first, but they feel it. That tug. That gut-deep knowing something’s wrong before it happens. It’s the Veil, trying to get through.”
She squinted at him. “The wall is called the Veil?”
He nodded. “Separates what you know from what you don’t. Most folks never get close to it. But you… you brushed up against it hard enough that it cracked something open.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “But stop pretending everything’s either fake or explainable.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m just not ready to believe I’m the ghost-whisperer prophet of Hollow Oak.”
Emmett stopped walking and turned to her, jaw set. “You collapsed. Twice. You saw things before they happened and things that already had. And you still think this is just a coincidence?”
She hesitated. “I think trauma does weird things to people. Stress. Neurological spikes. I’ve been digging through cold cases since I was twenty. This town’s creeping under my skin, that’s all.”
His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes shifted. “You don’t have to believe it for it to be real.”
She looked away, pulse tapping on her throat. “I just don’t want to lose control of my own head.”
He was quiet for a long beat. Then, softer, “Neither did I.”
She glanced back. He didn’t offer more, and she didn’t push, but something in his voice left a quiet echo in her ribs.
They started walking again.
He led her down the northern trail, one she hadn’t seen before. The trees were younger here, thinner, with honeysuckle climbing their trunks and sunlight breaking through the canopy in long, gold slants. The air smelled like damp cedar and something sweet she couldn’t place.
A red fox darted across the path up ahead. Instinctively, Emmett threw an arm out, catching her just shy of the shoulder.
She blinked, heart racing. “Fox. Not a dragon.”
“You weren’t looking.”
“ You were staring at a tree.”
He didn’t move his arm. She didn’t duck out from under it.
Eventually, they fell into rhythm. The path wove gently downhill, and she slowed once, pulled off course by a lopsided cluster of mushrooms.
“Feel that?” she asked, crouching. “The air’s colder here.”
Emmett looked annoyed. “You’re going off-course again.”
“There’s a shift in the soil.”
“There’s always a shift.”
She stood. “You know, for a guy who's worried I might trigger a town-wide haunting, you're not exactly curious about what I’m picking up.”
“I am curious,” he said flatly. “I’m just not reckless.”
They bickered the rest of the trail. About methods. About logic. About whether “vibe science” was a real field.
But she noticed the way he stayed close. The way his hand brushed hers when he handed her a water bottle. The way he waited when she paused to scribble something down in her field journal, even if he pretended not to care.
That night, the sky turned pale lilac with dusk as they returned to the inn.
Katniss leaned on the porch railing and stretched her arms overhead with a groan. “I think I have splinters in muscles I didn’t know existed.”
Emmett leaned beside her, arms crossed, one eyebrow lifting. “You whine a lot for someone who insisted on coming.”
“I’m not whining. I’m narrating . And how else was I going to get the lay of the land to get a grasp on this cold case? No one is talking and you kept stopping me every time I went out on my own.”
His mouth twitched. The first hint of a smirk she’d seen.
“I’ll be back before dawn,” he said after a pause. “Miriam wants fresh warding laid by the east field.”
“Cool,” she said, trying not to smile. “I’ll bring the vibes.”
He started down the steps but hesitated halfway. Turned.
“Katniss.”
She looked up.
“If something doesn’t feel right, you tell me. You don’t chase it. You don’t go it alone. You tell me .”
The words hit soft and firm, like the hand he’d held to her elbow back in the clearing. Like a tether.
Something in her chest tugged at that.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
He nodded and walked into the dark, swallowed by trees and silence.
She stayed where she was, arms folded against the railing, watching the mist curl along the garden path like it was listening too.
She didn’t believe in fate. She still wasn’t sure she believed in magic.
But the pull toward him? That felt real.
And she wasn’t sure if that scared her more than any ghost ever could.