Page 1 of Where the Roses Bloom (Gospels & Grimoires #1)

Willow

The car died twenty miles ago. I was just too stubborn to admit it.

Now, I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, Georgia, sweat dripping down my spine and my heart wrecked six ways to Sunday.

The map had rerouted me off the interstate a while back, and I kept driving, even when the road narrowed to cracked pavement and oak-shadowed silence.

Because I didn’t have anywhere else to be…and I think my phone knew that.

You’re unloved, unwanted, and unknown, Willow Rhodes.

And home was three hundred miles behind me, along with a man who got someone else pregnant and called me obsessed for noticing.

The socks were what did it.

Pink. New. Still looped together by the little plastic hook. I found them in Carter’s glovebox while I was looking for gum. I turned them over in my hand like maybe they’d vanish. Like maybe if I stared hard enough, they’d belong to my baby and not somebody else’s.

“You looking for something?” he called from the couch, lazy as ever.

I walked into the living room and held them up. “Whose are these?”

He didn’t even glance up from his phone.

“Jesus, Willow…not again.”

“Not what again?” I asked.

“The obsession. The baby thing. The—you digging through my stuff like a psycho.”

I flinched. He saw it.

Didn’t give a damn.

Carter and I had been together since college, though he never used words like together—never called me his girlfriend until we moved in, never talked rings. He said labels complicated things.

He used to say he wanted a big family—someday. Used to laugh when I’d light candles for full moons or rub oil on my belly like it might help us have a kid one day. Said I was dreamy. Said I was sweet.

Said just enough to keep me hoping.

And like a fool, I stayed. I told myself I didn’t need a diamond or a ceremony. I told myself love doesn’t have to look a certain way. But deep down, I wanted more.

I wanted a baby…I mean, I worked with pregnant women, for fuck’s sake.

I wanted to be chosen.

And now here he was—shrugging.

“You always do this,” he said. “Get worked up over shit that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Carter,” I said quietly. “Look at me.”

He sighed. But he finally looked.

And the second he saw the socks, I saw it in his face.

A flicker.

Just enough.

“Well, they’re too small for you,” he said.

“Right.” My throat burned. “Why were they with your stuff?”

He laughed. “What, you think I’m the one with baby fever? That’s always been you.”

It hit me all at once. The late nights…showering as soon as he got home. The lies he fed me like sugar until I stopped asking for anything sweet.

I’d convinced myself the affair was over—he told me it was.

But I’d never really been able to trust Carter, had I?

“Did you get her pregnant?” I asked.

Her …the girl he’d never even named, the one he’d slept with at work for months. The one he said meant nothing. And now…now, there were a pair of baby socks in his stuff, and he’d been spending nights away again.

He’d wanted a family, he always said so.

Just…not with me.

I set the socks on the counter, Carter going back to whatever he was watching on TV. I thought he would just ignore me as usual…but he cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he said. “I just found out. Was trying to figure out how to tell you.”

I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, fists clenching at my sides. I didn’t know what he expected…for me to scream, cry, challenge him. Demand answers.

But I didn’t want any of that.

I just shrugged.

“Goodbye, Carter,” I murmured.

I turned before he could answer, walked down the hall toward the bedroom. My body felt floaty, weightless, like I’d just stepped off something high. I didn’t look back .

“Willow.”

I kept walking.

“Come on. Don’t be dramatic,” he called after me.

I opened the closet, grabbed my old duffel from the top shelf, and started folding clothes by muscle memory—loose tees, worn jeans, the threadbare sweater I always wore after hard days.

I reached under the bed and pulled out the old tin where I kept my oils and tinctures.

My kit was by the door, everything I would need to uproot my life and go somewhere new.

My whole life fit into a two bags and a pillowcase.

It was sad, really.

Carter appeared in the doorway, arms crossed. “You’re really leaving?”

I zipped the duffel. “Yeah.”

“You don’t even want to talk about this?”

I slung the strap over my shoulder and looked him dead in the eye.

“You’re having a baby,” I said. “And it’s not mine. What’s left to talk about?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

“You always do this,” he said again, like I was the one being crazy. “You throw a fit and bail instead of working shit out.”

I stepped past him, duffel bumping my hip.

“I begged you to work shit out, Carter. For years.”

He grabbed my arm—not hard, not bruising, just stupid . Just desperate. I froze and looked down at his hand.

His voice dipped. “Please, Willow. Don’t do this. We can figure it out.”

He was being nice right now…but I knew that could change. He’d shoved me more than a few times, and my college friends had told me it would escalate. I didn’t have those fr iends anymore; he’d told me they weren’t real friends, and I’d believed him.

So I gently, carefully pulled away, making him take his hand off me.

Like peeling off a leech.

“You already did,” I said.

And then I walked out.

And now I was here.

Stalled out on the edge of a road I didn’t recognize, somewhere past Savannah, the woods pressing in on me.

I blinked at the dashboard like maybe I could will it back to life. Turned the key again. Nothing.

My forehead hit the steering wheel.

And I cried.

Not loud, not sudden—just the slow, exhausted kind that spills out when your soul is too tired to keep up appearances. I cried until my head throbbed and the windows fogged and the last trace of Charlotte bled out of my system.

Eventually, I curled up in the driver’s seat with a blanket from the trunk. My whole life was in that car—herbal tinctures, dog-eared notebooks, a chipped mug wrapped in a scarf. One last vial of moon oil. A red thread.

The pillow from my old apartment still smelled like rosemary and regret.

I didn’t pray. I didn’t whisper to the trees.

I just closed my eyes and hoped—like always—that something, somewhere, would give me a sign that my life wasn’t over.