Chapter 6
Pumpkins And Poor Decisions
~ROWAN~
She's going to be the death of me, and she'll probably do it with a fucking cinnamon roll.
The Pumpkin Patch Pop-Up sprawls across Oakridge Town Square like autumn vomited its entire contents and someone decided to charge admission.
Orange everything—orange bunting, orange balloons, orange tablecloths that'll be stained brown by day's end.
Hay bales stack like fortifications between vendor stalls, already shedding their golden guts across walkways that'll be ankle-breaker territory by noon.
The air reeks of competing scents: apple cider warming in industrial vats, kettle corn popping somewhere to my left, damp leaves rotting under tables, and underneath it all, the sticky-sweet smell of suburban desperation masquerading as community spirit.
And her.
Always fucking her.
Hazel Holloway arrives like she's declaring war on my sanity, hauling boxes that she shouldn't be lifting alone, her auburn hair catching morning sun like copper wire conducting electricity straight to my hindbrain.
She's wearing that green cardigan—the one that brings out the gold flecks in her eyes, not that I'm cataloguing her wardrobe choices like some lovesick teenager.
You're thirty-four years old. Get your shit together.
But watching her set up her stall is like watching art in motion, if art involved a lot of muttered profanity and aggressive pastry arrangement.
She's draped orange burlap over her table with the precision of someone defusing a bomb, every fold deliberate, every corner squared.
Her sign—"Hazel's Hearth & Home"—gets propped at exactly the right angle to catch the light.
She hasn't looked at me once.
Which means she knows exactly where I am.
Three years of nothing, and now she's everywhere. The universe has a sick sense of humor.
I adjust the firehouse fundraiser banner for the fifth time, pretending I'm not tracking her every movement in my peripheral vision.
My uniform jacket hangs over the back of my chair—too hot for October, but the chief insisted on "professional presentation.
" Like anyone gives a damn about professional when there's a gorgeous Omega arranging pumpkin pies ten feet away.
Not gorgeous. Just... Hazel.
Christ, who am I kidding?
She bends to retrieve something from a box, and her jeans pull tight across her—
"Cambridge! You planning to help or just stand there looking constipated?"
Derek Fischer, my lieutenant and professional pain in the ass, drops a box of fundraiser calendars on our table hard enough to make the whole structure wobble.
"I'm supervising," I tell him, definitely not watching Hazel arrange cinnamon rolls in perfect spirals.
"You're pathetic," he corrects. "She's been here twenty minutes and you've reorganized our booth six times."
"The layout was inefficient."
"The layout was fine. Your brain's inefficient when she's around."
He's not wrong, but I'll die before admitting it.
Hazel chooses that moment to stretch, rolling her shoulders back, and her cardigan pulls across her chest in ways that should be illegal at a family event. The movement sends her scent wafting over—vanilla and cinnamon, but underneath, that hint of smoke that says she's not as calm as she pretends.
She's nervous.
Good. She should be.
Not because I want her scared—fuck, that's the last thing I want. But because it means she feels it too, this thing between us that three years couldn't kill. The thing we don't talk about. The thing that existed even when she was married to that piece of shit ex of hers.
Don't think about Korrin. Not here.
The fair builds momentum around us. Kids shriek through the corn maze, their voices high and sharp. Parents chase after them with that particular exhausted desperation of October weekends. Vendors hawk everything from goat milk soap to "artisanal" dog treats that cost more than human food.
Mrs. Chen from the flower shop stops by Hazel's booth, cooing over the pies. "These look divine, dear! You always did have the best hands in town."
Hazel laughs—that bright, genuine sound that hits me in the sternum like a fist. "Just lots of practice, Mrs. Chen. And maybe a little spite-baking."
"The best kind," Mrs. Chen agrees, then her eyes slide to me. "Oh, Rowan! I didn't see you there. How convenient, the two of you so close together."
Subtle as a heart attack, Mrs. Chen.
"Pure coincidence," Hazel says quickly, but there's pink creeping up her neck.
"Of course, dear." Mrs. Chen's smile could power a small city. "Pure coincidence."
She leaves with three pies and a knowing look that'll have the whole town talking by lunch.
Hazel turns back to her display, and our eyes meet for half a second. Just long enough for me to see the panic there, the same flight response she's been wearing since she came back to town.
She's going to run again. I can see it building in her like a storm.
The thought makes something violent twist in my chest.
"Rowan!" Mayor Harrison's voice booms across the fairground. "Need you to judge the pie contest at noon!"
"That's a conflict of interest," I call back, not taking my eyes off Hazel.
"Why's that?"
Because I'd give Hazel every prize just for existing.
"No reason," I say instead. "I'll be there."
Hazel snorts—a delicate, dismissive sound that shouldn't be attractive but is. She's rearranging her cinnamon rolls again, each one positioned like she's creating a pastry army.
"Something funny?" I ask, moving closer to the invisible line between our booths.
"Just wondering how you'll judge pies when you once told me sugar was a weakness."
She remembers.
"People change," I say carefully.
"Do they?" Her voice has an edge sharp enough to cut. "Or do they just get better at pretending?"
Before I can respond, chaos incarnate arrives in the form of seventy pounds of golden retriever puppy.
"BISCUIT! NO!"
The shout comes too late. The dog—because calling it a puppy is generous when it's the size of a small pony—barrels through the fairground like a furry missile. Hay flies in its wake. A kid drops his candy apple. Someone's craft display goes airborne.
And the dog's trajectory?
Straight for Hazel's perfectly arranged table.
Fuck.
I move before thinking, but I'm three seconds and ten feet too late.
Biscuit hits Hazel's display like a wrecking ball made of enthusiasm and bad decisions. The table rocks. Pies slide with the slow-motion inevitability of disaster. Hazel lunges to save them, her feet hit the straw-covered ground, and—
No.
She's falling.
I catch her just before she hits the ground, my hands finding her upper arms, hauling her back against my chest. The impact rocks through me—soft curves against hard muscle, her back pressed to my front, the perfect fit of her in my arms that my body remembers even if we're both pretending it doesn't.
Time stops.
Or maybe that's just my heart.
She's breathing hard, little puffs of air that I can feel through my shirt.
Her scent explodes around us—vanilla and cinnamon and that smoke-sweet undertone that means aroused-frightened-safe all at once.
My own scent responds without permission, cedar smoke and bourbon wrapping around her like I'm trying to mark her through proximity alone.
Let go. You need to let go.
My hands won't cooperate.
She's warm and real and here, fitting against me like she was carved from my missing pieces. Her heart hammers against her ribs—I can feel it through our clothes, rabbit-quick and wild. Her hair smells like vanilla extract and dawn baking, and I want to bury my face in it and breathe until I die.
This is how you went wrong before. This is exactly how—
Camera flashes explode around us like fireworks.
"IT'S LOVE AT FIRST SPILL!"
Dottie James pushes through the suddenly-gathered crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, if Moses was seventy-three and armed with a bedazzled phone case.
"Did everyone see that?" She's practically vibrating with gossip euphoria. "He caught her! Just like in those romance novels at the library! The ones in the back corner that we don't talk about but everyone reads!"
Jesus Christ.
Hazel stiffens in my arms—going from soft to stone in half a heartbeat. She pulls away, and I let her because the alternative is holding on and never letting go, and that's not an option. Never was.
"I'm fine," she says to no one in particular, her face the color of the pies currently decorating the ground. "Totally fine. Just... gravity and dogs and..."
"And Alpha heroes!" Dottie crows. "Someone call the newspaper! This is front-page material! 'Local Firefighter Saves Baker from Puppy Peril!'"
"No one's calling anyone," I growl, but Dottie's already got her phone out, probably live-tweeting the whole thing.
Hazel turns on me, and there's murder in those hazel eyes. "You're everywhere I turn lately," she says, brushing flour from her apron with violent efficiency. "Like some kind of Alpha stalker GPS."
"Right, because I commanded the dog to attack your pies," I shoot back, already kneeling to salvage what we can. "Clearly this was my master plan. Destroy baked goods, catch falling Omegas. I've got it written in my day planner."
"Wouldn't put it past you." She drops beside me, gathering pie tins with shaking hands. "You always did like dramatic entrances."
"Says the woman who once drove her car through Korrin’s garage door."
"That was an accident!"
"You reversed. Twice."
"The accelerator stuck."
"Sure it did."
We're cleaning up together, bodies moving in sync despite the bickering. Our hands brush as we reach for the same pie tin, and she jerks back like I'm made of live coals. The rejection stings more than it should.
Three years. Three years and she still can't stand my touch.
But then I remember five minutes ago—her body against mine, the way she'd relaxed for just a second before reality crashed back in. The way her scent had gone sweet and wanting before the fear took over.