Page 13 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll

TESSA

T hey say the Harvest Gala was the best we’ve had in years.

Miss Fenley wept into her lace gloves during the lantern lighting.

Bramley claimed the cider was “damn near holy.” Even Tara—who once described the gala as “a slow-burning disaster with a dress code”—couldn’t stop grinning as the bonfire roared and children ran around with apple slices on sticks like they were carrying sacred relics.

The whole town glowed.

And so did I. But not because of the twinkle lights or the cinnamon candles or the four dozen wreaths I hung from every available surface. I glowed because Drogath Thornhold touched the small of my back as he guided me through the crowd, and my heart hasn’t quite recovered since.

It wasn’t even a grand gesture. Not a sweeping kiss or a scandalous declaration or one of those whispered, melt-your-knees confessions I sometimes read about when the bookshop gets a new batch of smutty romance novellas. No. It was his hand. Just there. Just… steady. Warm. Grounding.

We barely spoke all evening.

And yet I could feel his gaze on me like firelight, constant and quiet and burning just the same.

He didn’t cling. Didn’t crowd me. He stood back while I danced with Bramley’s nephew, nodded politely as I flitted from conversation to conversation like a woman held together by cinnamon sticks and to-do lists.

But when he left early, I felt it.

Like the air thinned out around me, and something had stepped away.

Now it’s past midnight, and I’m sitting on the worn wooden steps of my porch with a mug of lukewarm chamomile and a stubborn ache under my ribs.

The lanterns are all extinguished, the guests long gone, the path littered with gold-flecked leaves that look like the night forgot to clean up after itself.

My dress is wrinkled, my curls are slipping free of the careful braid Tara forced on me, and my feet are throbbing from dancing in those absolutely criminal boots I insisted were “practical.” But none of that matters.

Because there’s a package sitting beside me.

I found it on my doormat just after I got home—plain brown paper, twine tied in a careful knot, no name but mine inked in the corner in his handwriting.

That impossibly neat, rigid script I used to tease him about for being too precise, like he thought he could charm the universe into behaving if his lines were straight enough.

I haven’t opened it.

Not yet.

I’ve just been staring at it like it might start whispering the answers to every question I’ve been too scared to ask.

I set my mug down and untie the twine, fingers trembling like the wind knows something I don’t.

Inside is a single rolled blueprint.

And a note.

I unroll the paper first—slow, reverent, careful like I’m handling something holy—and feel the breath catch in my chest.

It’s the conservatory.

My conservatory.

Redesigned. Refined. Built on the bones of that messy, ink-smudged dream I once scribbled on the back of a seed catalog after too much mead and not enough sleep.

Every detail is there—arched glass panels, copper gutters for rain collection, heated beds for winter basil, even a tucked-away bench that’s shaded in the morning and sunny by dusk.

It’s the kind of structure you build not for profit, but for peace. For planting things that outlive you.

My fingers shake as I reach for the note.

His handwriting is steady, the ink dark and unhurried.

“Every dream is a seed. I’ll plant whatever you wish. —D”

That’s it.

No pressure. No plea.

Just… an offering.

Like he’s laying it at my feet and saying, You don’t owe me anything. But if you want this, it’s yours.

And gods help me, I want it.

Not just the glass walls and herb beds and copper-trimmed gutters. I want him.

The man who remembers what I dreamed when no one else bothered to ask.

The man who didn’t just listen—but built it in silence, piece by piece, and waited until I was ready to look.

I carry the blueprint inside like it might fall apart if I breathe too hard. I set it gently on the kitchen table, right where the morning light will hit it. I don’t fold it. I don’t hide it.

Then I go to the pantry, fingers trailing over the row of tins until I find the one that rattles.

The tea tin.

I open the lid.

Inside, nestled among faded rose petals and a hint of old lemon balm, are the acorns.

The first one he carved for me when we were barely more than teenagers—before ambition and fear and the ache of growing apart split us down the center—and the second, newer, neater, but no less filled with meaning.

I press my fingers to both, side by side in my palm.

Old and new.

Worn and whole.

He didn’t say love. He didn’t say forgive me. He didn’t ask for anything but the chance to give.

And right now, staring at those two little carved pieces of wood, I don’t know whether to fall into him completely or run until the breath leaves my lungs.

Because my walls are cracking.

And part of me still wants to patch them.

But the other part—the louder part—is tired of pretending I don’t feel like spring when he’s near.

I tuck both acorns back into the tin, close the lid, and press it to my chest like it might anchor me.

I whisper into the quiet, too afraid to say it out loud but too full to keep it in any longer.

“I think I’m falling.”

Not with fireworks.

Not with screaming.

But quietly.

Like roots threading deep through soil that’s finally soft enough to hold.