He remains vigilant to the way several pairs of eyes linger on him as he walks down Maplewood Grove’s main street. One could say his uniform is why he sticks out like a sore thumb—if they didn’t know any better. It’s Maplewood Grove, though, so everybody already does. Knowing everybody’s (and their grandmother’s) business was just part of small-town territory, and he had moved here knowing that. He may have once had more naive notions about this place… but Colton didn’t ever talk about those, either.
There were a lot of things that permeated his life like that. Colton could live with them. He had been doing so for years, now. Besides, he had long since found his little ways to deal.
Like this: when he rounds the corner towards the Maple Grove, typically lush parkland that is covered in a picturesque dusting of snow where children shriek with laughter and play without inhibition, kicking about a football between them, boys and girls alike.
His brows are dark and severe, and his eyes naturally narrowed in menacing, serpentine slits; his mouth is the part that softens at the sight. A wind blows through town, biting, and he feels it so much more than any of the kids seem to.
“Sheriff!Sheriff–Look!” Young Jamie Green waves his hand with unbridled excitement there wasn’t an adult in Maplewood who’d understand. When he has Colton’s undivided attention, he kicks the ball with impressive intensity, especially since the little fella was only nine years old. Raised by a single mother who had grown up in this town and hadn’t been back in years on top of it.
Wild horses couldn’t have stopped him from soaking his winter-chapped mouth with his tongue before he pressed his fingers into it, blowing out a voracious wolf whistle that evolved into encouraging applause. “You’re doing great, bud!” Colton hollers back, his chest aching at the broad grin that scrunches the kid’s eyes shut.
He keeps it, the mental image he snaps of the sight—before he tucks it away like a business card slid one’s way that had nothing to do with the life one was currently living, but felt like a bad idea to dispose of because of what it represented with its very existence.
Then he keeps patrolling, trudging onward.
Paces away on the other side of the Grove, he comes across another gaggle of kids—older ones, this time, middle schoolers on the precipice of adolescence they were mistakenly giddy over hurtling towards—gathered around picnic tables. He zeroes in on the glitter and markers that pass hands while they work tirelessly at cards with love hearts and lopsided handwriting and bad rhymes. They are all so young, Colton thinks mournfully. They don’t know anything yet, and soon they will know too much. There was no way to stop it. It was the way of the world, no matter how much he couldn’t stand it.
He doesn’t linger at the sight for long. Can’t. Won’t.
Not just because the optimism with which they practically burst has his stomach roiling. He has a routine, too. A system. One he’s cultivated over his handful of years in Maplewood Grove. One he will not fail for a stupid holiday that isn’t even a holiday.
One that is heinously disrupted by the oodles of decorations that drip from every corner of the town. The chill worsens the farther he ventures down the streets. With the gray skies as his companion as he confronts all sorts of ridiculousness: not a local business in sight that isn’t littered with cheesy puns or heart-shaped window decals; windows all over cluttered with twinkling strings of lights that would drive up electricity bills folks would bemoan later; not even lamp posts or benches were spared, sporting unnecessary paraphernalia like red and white ribbons and gaudy wreaths of flowers that will be dead before February fourteenth even shows up.
Colton’s breath fogs in front of him with the heat of his aggrieved sigh. His head turns away from the cloud, his gloved palm wiping condensation that clings to his pallid cheeks.
Somehow, his eyes find another pair on the other side of window glass that was mostly obscured by something far more interesting than the same thematic doodads taken out of storage once a year. Postcards, as far as the eye can see. Strange and chaotic, except for how they seem to make total sense.
It isn’t the first time they’ve stopped him short. Patty Sullivan’s bookstore—though it wasn’t just that, by far—was a rare gem. It had made it onto magazine listicles of one-of-a-kind places to check out in whimsical towns to get lost in when the city drained you for good reason.
Every time Colton saw her, though,Patty…
Well, he couldn’t help but think it was her that was worth coming to see. She was a vision. Vibrant. Except,unlike the stinging red that lanced its way through Maplewood Grove, there was nothing off-putting about it. Her effect was the opposite. There is a balance between her willowy limbs draped in lustrous, flowy fabrics that rustled like an autumn breeze whenever she moved, her pores seemingly exuding warm cinnamon sweetness, like the woman was a baked good, wholesome as apple pie, even with those dark, delicate features that paired intriguingly with such a potent, passionate spirit. Colton hardly made it a habit of pontificating poetry about strange women. Only, he couldn’t imagine whose eyes wouldn’t have a hard time not lingering on Patty Sullivan. She is magnetic.
She looks like the keeper of an enchanted forest. There was a serenity to her movements, and a bravery in her grin whenever it sprawled, infectious and unnerving.
His heart stumbles in his chest when she looks back at him.
The Sheriff of Maplewood Grove had never before felt like the one caught red-handed.
Chapter Two
PATTY
By the endof the week, as it turned out, Patty hadn’t grown up quite as much as she had convinced herself she had. At least, not enough to be able to resist peer pressure any better than she had when she’d been the strange girl people laughed at more often than they laughed with in high school.
For all her adamance and well-reasoned copouts, all it had ultimately taken was the right person standing in front of her. When it was one of the only people who had been kind to her before she had learned how to be kind to herself to demand she participate in the name of town spirit, insisting it wasn’t all about romantic coupling, Patty had caved like a house of cards in a snowstorm. It was some comfort, at least, to remember she’d never met a soul with the nerve to deny Dot Simmons.
The woman wasn’t the mayor of Maplewood Grove, but Patty wasn’t certain Dot didn’t have more power than the stout, apple-cheeked sweetheart of an eccentric man who actually held the title. She believed in Dot’s dominion—which wasn’t political or authoritarian in nature—and she wasn’t the only one. No onecould deny it: if there was something to know in town, Dot Simmons was the first one to know it. She wore the title of the town’s unofficial historian with pride. Patty also happens to consider her the implicitly official Absolem of their little Wonderland on top of it, though Dot isn’t nearly as amused by that comparison as Patty remains.
“That’s okay,” Patty consoles serenely, motioning her on. “Just tell me who my random partner is, and let’s get this show on the road.”
Dot swirls her hand through what Patty can only describe as a gigantic fishbowl. From it, she plucks a white heart-shaped card that she opens. When she holds it up, it’s Dot who looks amused and Patty who wears dismay. In sturdy, block lettering is written the nameCOLTON P. RHODES. The man put an initial down for his middle name.That’s how serious a person he was. The red heart-shaped card with her own name on it featured only her first name in a cursive, sprawling font. There are stars whimsically doodled around it.
“Oh, theSheriff,” Dot says, sounding impressed in a way that sounds… a touch too theatrical for the woman Patty understands her to be. Then she adds, “That’ll definitely give you a leg up in the scavenger hunt, that’s for sure.” Rational, no-muss-no-fuss thinking.Thatis more the Dot she knows. Of course, there isn’t too much time to appreciate it before Dot is announcing to the crowd of townsfolk all over the Sip ‘n Saw bar they’d all gathered at, already paired off, or are waiting to be: “Sheriff Rhodes!Sheriff Colton P. Rhodes! You’re withPatty Sullivan!”
Patty gapes at the other woman. Or rather, is left gaping in general. She can’t comprehend it. Any of this.
Not that someone who was arguably the most sensible person Patty knew had talked her into this spectacle in the name of community advocacy. Not that she had just announced a man Patty spent most of the time feeling immensely wishy-washy infront of, waswithher, resulting in titters and poorly concealed whispers spreading through the masses.
