Page 44 of The Last Call Home (The Timberbridge Brothers #5)

Chapter Forty

Delilah

Birchwood Springs has always known how to throw a big party and forget the bad things—or the gossip.

At least while things are happening. Give her a few paper lanterns, some sugar-dusted pastries—maple flavor—and a lake to reflect all her glitter, and she becomes something almost magical.

Like nothing bad ever happened here. Like no one ever left.

I walk slowly through the main road, the buzz of the Moon & Maple Festival draped around me like a second skin. Warm lights dangle from every surface—porches, tent poles, even the food trucks—and the whole town smells like maple glaze, fried dough, and dreams that almost made it.

Kids dart around in face paint and with foam swords, their laughter streaking the humid night. I’m not a crowd person anymore. I fake it well—smile, wave, throw a “Happy Festival” like I haven’t been thinking about heading home.

I should’ve kept The Honey Drop open past midnight like the board begged.

More sales, more exposure, more townie approval.

But I ran out of fucks—and pastries—around six p.m. Closed the shop.

Cleaned every inch as if something inside me needed control.

Now I’m out here, cup in each hand, moving through the crowd toward the first-aid tent with a vague sense of guilt for not checking in sooner.

Simone’s probably swamped. The doctor is always on festival nights. And if I know anything about her, she’s not going to ask for help. Just suffer in silence and sarcasm until someone makes her sit down.

Simone’s tent is right by the lake. Her silhouette’s outlined in the gauzy white canvas, head bent over a cooler pack and a teenager’s ankle. She’s flushed and tired and looks like she’s been stuck in there all day without a break.

Her eyes are a little too tired for someone her age. There’s a smear of something—blood? Jam?—on her scrub sleeve. She doesn’t notice me yet. She’s finishing up with a teenager who looks ready to bolt.

She moves like she’s been doing this forever. Like every taped ankle and ice pack is some kind of penance.

When she finally glances up, I raise one of the paper cups like a white flag. “Hey.”

She exhales like she’s been holding it in for the past three hours. “My savior.”

I pass her the still-warm tea latte.

“Thought you weren’t coming tonight. Too busy to save my ass.” She eyes me, then the cup, and takes a sip. Her shoulders drop.

I wave a hand like she’s the one being too much. “I closed a few hours ago and just finished cleaning up,” I shrug, brushing a curl off my face. “The town board begged me to stay open past midnight, but I had zero fucks left for the day. Brought your tea latte. I owe you pastries. We sold out.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, lifting the cup. She takes a sip, and something in her face shifts—less strained, softer around the edges. “When I was away, this festival might’ve been the only thing I missed.”

I gape at her with mock horror. “Thank you, bitch. I feel all fuzzy and warm on the inside.”

She doesn’t laugh. Not really.

“You left before I did,” she says. Her voice is too careful, like she’s testing whether the words still sting. “So, what’s there to miss, right?”

It doesn’t come out bitter, more like a matter of fact, but she’s right.

I did leave first—but she left a week later.

Of course I have to ask, “Why did you leave before senior year?” I’ve been waiting for her story since I found out she was back.

She keeps avoiding the town. Whenever we get together it’s at her big ass home in a secluded part of the outskirts of town.

That’s something I don’t understand, and when I mentioned it to Cass and Malerick they change the subject. If they tell me she’s an agent, too, I might flip. Though, can you be a doctor and an agent?

“Mom told me you left only a week after I did,” I press, breath catching on the edge of something sharp inside me. She has to tell me. No more half-truths or cryptic silences.

She doesn’t answer. Not right away. Her gaze falls to her cup as if she’s hoping the heat seeping through the cardboard will anchor her, reminding her she’s here. Not wherever her thoughts have run to. Her thumb rubs over the half-smeared initials stamped in faded black ink.

“The same reason everyone left.” The shrug she gives me is too casual. Like the words aren’t trying to splinter me. “Even you bailed. I was just done. What I can’t understand is why you came back.”

I gawk, stunned she has the audacity to flip this on me.

“You’ve been to France. New York. Why come back to this backwards-ass town with its bake-sale politics and maple-flavored judgment?”

“Mom needs me.” My voice catches. I don’t mean to get caught in the ache of it, but I do. “I don’t know what’s happening to her. She keeps talking about the past—about my father. But not in a sweet, nostalgic way. It’s . . . weird.”

Simone’s brow creases. “Like she’s losing her mind, weird?”

I shrug, but the truth sits too close to the surface. I don’t say how I’ve started sleeping with the lights on. How I keep checking the locks twice, sometimes three times.

“Why haven’t you brought her to the clinic?” she asks gently. “I could run some tests.”

“We’ve seen doctors in Boston. They ran every test, and everything came back clear.

Clean bill of health, but Mom’s convinced he’s still around.

” I exhale. “She’s mad at me. Said I should believe her when she tells me she’s seen him.

He stood in the doorway, watching her sleep or spying on us outside The Honey Drop. ”

“Have you tried a psychic?”

I glare.

She holds up her hands in mock surrender, lips twitching. “Just offering alternatives. Some of them claim they can talk to the dead.”

“Cute joke,” I deadpan. “Like how you always detour the conversation when it starts to sting.” I narrow my eyes. “But you still haven’t told me why you left. And don’t say it was a coincidence because something tells me it has everything to do with Keir Timberbridge.”

The words land like a match. She’s thinking, probably trying to come up with some answer I’m not going to like, but I will press. Tonight, she’s telling me what happened. I’m not letting it go.

But before she can open her mouth?—

BOOM.

The sound shreds the silence. Everything tilts sideways. The floor hums beneath my feet.

“What the?—”

Through the window behind her, a burst of orange flares like the sun took a bite out of Main Street.

Then the screaming starts.

“The Honey Drop is on fire,” a male voice booms almost as loud as the explosion itself.

My heart stops. No. No, no, no?—

The cup slips from my hand and crashes into the grass, the lid popping off as lukewarm coffee spills across the ground.

I don’t stop to watch it soak in. My legs are already moving.

I tear across the green, shoving past a couple frozen in place.

The air tastes like fire—acrid and wrong.

Smoke climbs the sky in thick, gray ribbons, rising from the direction of Main Street like the whole damn town is exhaling grief.

It’s my shop. My bakery. My everything.

And it’s on fire.

“Mom,” I scream. “She was there—I left her there?—”

I don’t think. I just run. My legs pump like they’re chasing time.

Someone grabs me from behind. Arms around my waist, strong, immovable.

“Stop.”

Cassian’s voice slices through the chaos, raw and commanding.

“Delilah Mora—no. You can’t go in there.”

His grip tightens as I struggle. I claw at him. Elbow his ribs.

“Let me go, Cass. I have to go inside—I have to?—”

“No.” He lifts me clean off the ground like I’m nothing. Like I’m everything. “You don’t get to be the hero in a fucking inferno.”

I twist in his arms, my voice breaking. “It’s mine. My mother might be in there?—”

“Rosalinda left before you did.” His forehead presses to the side of my head, his breath hot against my skin. “Please. Del, let them do their job.”

I choke on a sob. Smoke curls around us. Sirens wail closer.

Cassian holds me tighter, like I might detonate in his arms. Like he already knows I’ve broken in places he can’t fix.

“Please,” he whispers, and his voice cracks in a way that unravels me completely. “Don’t make me watch you burn too.”

I barely register the shift in the air until I feel a new presence behind me.

Cassian’s arms are still locked around me, grounding me even as my brain short-circuits.

Then—another hand. Warm. Familiar. Calloused fingers settle at the back of my neck, not to pull me away or force me still, just . . . to remind me I’m not alone.

Malerick.

I don’t have to turn to know it’s him. I can feel the uniform. The heat still radiating off him. The scent of ash clinging to his collar.

“You gotta let the fire crew work,” he says, his voice low, close to my ear. Almost too soft to be real. “We can’t lose you too.”

My mouth opens, but it takes a beat before the words come out.

“My coffee shop,” I whisper. And it doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like something torn from my chest. Like someone else is speaking through the static in my skull. “It’s gone.”

Cassian keeps rubbing slow, steady circles into my back, over and over, like it’s the only thing anchoring me to this moment. Like his hands are the only language he remembers how to speak right now—and my body is the only place he wants to speak it.

I can feel the tremble in my limbs, the way my knees threaten to buckle, but I stay upright because he’s holding me like I matter. Like losing me would wreck him too.

Then I feel Malerick lean in. The warmth of him brushes against my side, his breath kissing the curve of my jaw. That familiar scent—smoke, cedar, and something distinctly him—wraps around me like a second skin.

“So sorry this happened, baby,” he murmurs, voice raw and intimate, meant for no one else but me. “I swear we’ll find who did it and make them pay.”

I nod once, barely, like that acknowledgment is the only thing keeping me from cracking open.

His hand presses against my ribs, warm and firm, like he’s holding me in place without making a sound.

Then his lips graze my temple—just a ghost of a kiss, soft and aching.

My breath stutters, caught somewhere between grief and comfort, memory and need.

He pulls back, just enough to look past me at Cassian. I can’t see his face, but I feel the tension shift between them.

“Take care of our girl. I’m going to deal with the crews. Contact CQS when you can,” Malerick says quietly, but there’s no mistaking the command beneath the plea. It’s not a question. It’s a handoff. A trust. A vow wrapped in smoke and old scars.

When did they decide this? That I was theirs to protect. Theirs to lose.

The thought hits sideways. Not cruel. Just confusing. Because if I’m not collateral, if I’m not an accident . . . then I’m the reason.

His voice dips lower. “Take her to the cabin where she’ll be safe. I think they targeted her because of me. Find an agent for Rosalinda. We might need to get them out of town soon.”

The words slam into me. Targeted. Because of him.

Something inside me cracks open.

Because that means this wasn’t an accident. That someone wanted to hurt me. That someone set my life on fire—and I don’t know who. Or why. Or how close they still are. The mafiosos are close.

Then Malerick is gone, cutting through the smoke like it’s just another day in the field. Barking orders. Snapping back into Sheriff Timberbridge like the intimacy of that moment didn’t just happen.

But it did.

And I’m not sure what’s harder to survive—the flames outside or the heat rising in my chest when they look at me like that.

I’m frozen. Numb. Grief and fear are building a nest in my ribs and I can’t get them out. I don’t know how to move.

Cassian shifts behind me. I feel the decision in him before he says it.

“Lilah,” he murmurs into my hair, “we need to go.”

My knees buckle slightly, but his arms tighten, catching me before I fall.

“I can’t just leave her—Mom might still be—” My voice breaks, throat raw from more than smoke.

“She’s not inside,” he says firmly. “As I told you earlier, she left before you did, but I’ll have an agent head her way to make sure she’s okay. Right now, I’m getting you out of here.”

I want to argue. I want to stay and scream and claw my way through what’s left. But I’m shaking too hard. I feel hollowed out and stretched thinly like one more shock might split me in two.

Cass leans in, brushing his lips against my temple, softer than breath. “Let me protect you this time, Delilah. Please.”

I nod because I can’t do anything else. And because some part of me—the part still stitched together—wants to let him.

He scoops me into his arms like it’s nothing like I haven’t spent years building walls too high to climb. And as he carries me through the smoke and the crowd, I finally let myself fold into him.