Page 11 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll

TESSA

T he sky outside my kitchen window is soft with that watercolor light you only get after a hard storm.

The kind that drags the clouds low and streaks the horizon with muted pinks and sighing blue, like the world is catching its breath.

The leaves are still dripping, the gutters along Maple Street gurgling with leftover rainwater, and the wind has finally gone still.

But me? I am anything but still.

I’m a mess of thoughts tangled like twine, each one fraying worse than the last. My apron’s wrinkled, my curls are halfway to war with gravity, and my chest feels too full with something that isn’t just panic—but hope, too. Which might be worse.

Because Drogath Thornhold didn’t just kiss me last night.

He didn’t just take me to pieces with those ruinous hands and make me feel like I was blooming right there in my own damn skin.

He made me feel safe.

And that’s the part that truly undoes me.

I wake before the sun, tangled in quilts that still smell like woodsmoke and rosemary and him, and I reach across the mattress on instinct.

He’s not there.

For one long, heartbeat-skipping moment, my mind gallops straight to the worst—of course he left, of course it was a moment, a fever dream, a story I made up in the dark.

But then I smell it.

The faint curl of pine sap and ash and warm cedar. My hearth fire is going.

I sit up, heart thudding.

He lit a fire before dawn. In my hearth. In my home.

That’s… something.

I pad out into the kitchen, toes curling against the warm floorboards, and stop when I see it.

Sitting by the teacup I left out last night—right on the edge of the table, in the morning light that slants across my windowsill like a blessing—is a carved wooden acorn.

Another one.

Smaller than the last. Neater. More precise. It’s pale pine, smooth as anything, with a tiny swirl on the cap just like the one he gave me all those years ago.

I stare at it, my chest tightening, my fingers curling at my sides like I don’t trust them not to shake.

Then I slide it into the deep pocket of my apron—right next to the original—and press the fabric flat over my heart.

I don’t say a word.

I don’t have the breath for it.

By the time Tara shows up, I’ve already scalded the first round of syrup and dropped a jar of cardamom pods on the floor.

“Oh good,” she says, strolling in like a breeze that smells suspiciously of sass and strong opinions. “You look like someone just proposed with a dead squirrel.”

“I’m fine, ” I say, too fast. “Totally fine. Peachy. Overflowing with composure.”

She leans her elbows on the prep table, chin in her hand, and grins. “You know what I love about that sentence? Every single word is a lie.”

I roll my eyes and start chopping apples with more force than necessary.

“You slept with him.”

“I did not —” I begin, but she cuts me off with a bark of laughter.

“Oh honey, come on. You’re glowing. Your cheeks look like you blushed so hard it stained, and your curls are doing that post-storm satisfied heroine thing.”

“That is not a thing.”

“It is absolutely a thing. You look like a woman who got kissed into next week and then wrapped in a blanket made of grumpy orc satisfaction.”

I slam the knife down and glare at her. “It was just a moment. A very… stupid, ill-advised moment of weakness.”

Tara blinks. “Was it, though?”

I hate how gently she says it. Like she’s reaching under the armor I haven’t even had the decency to finish re-lacing yet.

I scrub at my wrist with a damp towel and stop when I see the faint smudge of pine sap still there. Right where he held me against the wall, hands gentle, lips reverent, like he was afraid I might vanish if he stopped touching me for even a second.

“I don’t know what it was,” I admit softly. “I just know that I let him in again. And now I can’t figure out if I feel like flying or bolting for the hills.”

Tara watches me for a long moment, her gaze unusually quiet.

“Do you love him?”

My breath catches.

She doesn’t let me dodge it. Just raises an eyebrow and waits, like she always does when she’s aiming straight for the heart of the thing.

“I think I always did,” I whisper. “I just… buried it. Like bulbs in winter. Told myself it died.”

“And now?”

I press my hand over my apron pocket, feel the outline of that wooden acorn, warm from where my body’s held it close.

“Now I think it never really stopped growing. Just… waited. And I’m scared that if I let it bloom again, I won’t survive if it withers.”

“Sweetheart,” she says, crossing to wrap her arms around me without hesitation, “maybe it’s not about whether the bloom lasts forever. Maybe it’s about knowing you finally let it bloom in the first place.”

I sniff. “You’ve been reading the seasonal poetry rack again, haven’t you?”

“Shut up and stir your damn cider.”

I laugh into her shoulder, watery and uneven, but real.

Later, after Tara’s gone and the shop has opened to the usual stream of leaf-coated locals and overcaffeinated tourists, I pause by the front counter and run my thumb over the acorn in my pocket.

Drogath didn’t leave a note. He didn’t wait for thanks. He didn’t ask for forgiveness or promises or answers.

He just gave. Something small. Something careful. Something him.

And now my heart—soft, stubborn, stupid thing that it is—feels like it’s cracked wide open.

And that terrifies me more than losing him ever did.