Lily Halloway's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Lily Halloway wanted one thing that felt simple: someone who loved her wings, her softness, and her quiet plans all at once. Instead she got the neighbor. The wiry red-haired woman leaned across the clinic counter, phone in hand, before Lily had finished her first cup of tea. "His name is Clayton," Eleanor said. She set the sleek new phone down and slid it across the wood. "Rancher. Good with his hands. He saw you at the market last week." Lily's wings shifted behind her and knocked a stack of intake forms off the desk. She bent to gather them. "And what did he say about me?" Eleanor didn't soften it. "He said you were the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. Said the wings alone were worth the drive." There it was. Lily straightened. That word again. Pretty. The wings alone. Every man Eleanor found her wanted to look, not stay. The last one had asked her to spread the wings wide for a photo and never asked what she did all day. "Eleanor," Lily said. "I don't want someone who wants my wings." "I know." Eleanor tapped the phone screen once. A message glowed there, half typed. "That's not the whole of it. He also asked what a clinician does. He asked if the work tires you. Nobody I set you up with has ever asked that." Lily stopped. A six-year-old had touched her wing that morning and gone quiet mid-cry, and she'd wanted, badly, to tell someone at dinner. She had no one to tell. "He talks plain," Eleanor went on. "Says a thing once. Doesn't dress it up. You'd hate the flattery, but he doesn't have much." She pushed the phone closer. "He drove out to the market twice hoping to see you again. Then asked me instead of bothering you." Lily looked at the glowing message. The safe answer was no. No wasted evening, no man cataloguing her wings like a rancher pricing stock. But no was also another quiet dinner alone, telling no one about the boy who forgot why he was crying. She picked up the phone. Her wings folded flat, still, for once not knocking anything down. "Tell him yes," Lily said. "But I pick the questions. If all he does is stare, I leave." Eleanor's mouth twitched. She took the phone and typed. "Tomorrow, then. He's free tomorrow." "Tomorrow." Lily heard the word leave her and felt it lock into place. She'd said yes. To a man she'd never met, chosen by the neighbor whose taste she didn't trust. Eleanor slid off the stool and paused at the door. "One thing. Clayton's fixing a fence he can't seem to finish. Whole east line's been fighting him since spring." She shrugged. "Man doesn't quit, though. Figured you'd want to know what you're walking into." The door swung shut. Lily stood alone with the forms and the empty tea, one date away from finding out if Eleanor was right or wrong.