Chapter 5 #2
Vernon rises with the glow of a man about to use the word synergy.
He clicks a remote; the screen behind the council flickers to life with renderings—glass, chrome, careful trees that will die in their planters after the first salt truck goes by.
He talks in polished paragraphs about revenue and modernity and foot traffic that looks startlingly like the foot traffic we already have.
“Vibrant mixed-use,” he says. “Activated retail. Parking strategies.” Somewhere behind us, Mrs. Henderson whispers, “Activated my foot,” and Dolly snorts audibly.
He finishes with a rhetorical bow. The room hums. Council members exchange looks. Mayor Pickering thanks him and opens the floor for public comment.
I stand before I can think myself out of it.
My knees do a theater wobble as I walk to the podium, but my voice finds a register I didn’t know I owned.
“Good evening,” I say. “Harper Venn, owner of The Wandering Page.” A shuffle and a few murmured We love you, Harpers from the back row.
My cheeks flame; Dex’s steady gaze is a hand at my spine.
“I could talk about numbers,” I begin. “And I will briefly: last quarter we grew six percent. The florist grew eight. Mel’s Diner can tell you how many tourists ask for cinnamon sugar shakers and leave with a recommendation list. The library’s programming already overflows.
” I glance at the book club row—four heads nod like bobbleheads on a bumpy road.
“But what I really want to talk about is why those numbers exist. We are not blight; we’re beloved.
We are a street where a teenager wrote his first horror story and brought it to me, hands shaking, and I put it on our community board.
Where Dolly’s caramel fountain will be supervised by three fire extinguishers and half the PTA.
Where Gary from the co-op lends spider boxes because Eleanor bakes apple crisp.
Where a tuxedo cat with a mustache terrorizes grown men into buying poetry.
” Laughter bubbles and releases the room's tension; I ride it.
“We’re not against progress,” I say. “We’re for keeping what is worth keeping and making it stronger.
The Halloween Festival this week will bring visitors, donations, music, and—if I have anything to say about it—so much positive press your inbox will groan.
Give us a chance to prove it. Don’t trade something living for something glossy. ”
I don’t plan to look at Dex, but I do. He’s not smiling. He’s proud. The expression sits on him like purpose. My sternum does a small, treacherous ache, and a ridiculous part of me wants to bottle that look and keep it forever.
“Please,” I say out loud, making it clear I’m not just talking about myself but about the street that is my home and the people who fill it. “Don’t let glossy renderings erase something that’s still alive and beating.”
I finish, and the silence is a held breath. Then the room exhales all at once—applause, a few whoops, someone’s chair squealing like a violin. The mayor bangs for order, but he’s smiling into his papers like a man trying not to.
We sit. Dex leans in, shoulder warm against mine, and lets his temple rest against my hair for half a breath—steadying, private. “You were—” he begins, but the mayor calls for council discussion, and we both snap our attention forward, feigning an intense interest in parliamentary procedure.
Councilman Riggs—the same one Vernon was cozying up to earlier—clears his throat. “It seems prudent,” he says carefully, like he’s trying on a new tie, “to see what this festival does—traffic, donations—before we act.”
Councilwoman Trammel, immaculate and mildly bored, steeples her fingers.
“Delaying a vote is not a denial.” She glances at me, then at the book club row, where four sets of knitting needles have materialized like swords.
Her tone sharpens, a cool edge under the polish.
“But it is data we shouldn’t ignore, either.
We owe it to the town to see what this festival delivers before any bulldozers touch Main Street. ”
A murmur of assent. The mayor straightens. “Motion to postpone the redevelopment decision until after the Halloween Festival, pending a review of event outcomes and additional community input.”
“Second,” says Councilman Wu.
All in favor? Hands rise like a tide. Not unanimous, but enough that I can finally let out the breath I was holding.
The gavel falls. “Motion carries.”
Vernon’s smile freezes at the edges, like a pond pretending not to crack. He recovers fast, nods as if this was also part of his plan, and begins shaking hands again as if the motion were merely a delightful appetizer before the main course of him winning, eventually.
The room breaks into little clusters of celebration.
Mrs. Henderson hugs a bewildered teenager.
Dolly dabs at her eyes and insists it’s just the fluorescent lights making them water.
Beatrice, ever the dramatist, produces four zip ties from her pocket and waves them overhead like she’s leading a parade.
“Victory accessories,” she declares, grinning like she just won a pageant.
I turn to Dex—to thank him, I think, to say something clever—but he is already looking at me like I did something wild and beautiful and completely expected. It knocks the wind out of me.
“Good job, partner,” he says, low. His shoulder brushes mine. “One more thing.”
I turn. “Pact check?” His eyes don’t waver. “We do this together. Eyes open.”
My pulse kicks. “Eyes open,” I echo—and mean it.
He leans in and kisses me. It’s brief and public and absolutely deliberate; the room tilts, and my heart chooses the same moment I do.
Heat floods my cheeks, my pulse leaps into my ears, and for a dizzying second I forget how to breathe.
It’s reckless and steady all at once, and my body is absolutely betraying me by wanting more.
When Dex eases back, there’s a flicker in his eyes—like he almost regrets crossing that line, but he isn’t sorry either—and the look nearly undoes me.
A camera shutter pops from the aisle—The Hollow Creek Gazette’s freelancer already aiming for Page One—and across the room Councilwoman Trammel’s gaze turns cool and calculating. Near the door, Vernon lifts his phone and starts filming, smile thin as a paper cut.
Eleanor sweeps up, plants a kiss on Dex’s cheek, then squeezes my arm like I passed a test. “See?” she says. “Everyone loves a love story.”
Dex squeezes my hand, which I only then realize I never let go of. His voice is calm enough to make me believe I’m not about to become a puddle in a public building. “You ready?” he murmurs, and his eyes are so close to mine the rest of the room drops away like scenery.
I nod, assuming he means it’s time to leave, but instead he surprises me by leaning in and kissing me again.
It’s another quick kiss—appropriate for a council chamber—but the world still tilts on its axis.
Warmth, cedar, and the soft graze of his beard sweep over me, grounding and undoing all at once.
The contact flickers through my bloodstream and sets every exit sign in my body glowing.
When he pulls back, my hands are fisted in his shirt like I forgot what mine were for.
Next to us, Councilman Riggs pauses mid-text, eyes narrowing like he’s doing political math
A stunned beat; then the roomlets out a sound that is somehow a cheer and an aww and the fully satisfied sigh of meddling fulfilled.
Somebody claps. Eleanor clears her throat, which feels suspiciously like applause.
Mrs. Henderson fans harder. Vernon’s mouth does a complicated thing I’m cataloging for later petty joy.
“Optics,” Dex says, voice low and a little shaky, and I decide right then that I will not think about how much I liked it, not here under these lights that make everything a little crueler.
Outside, the air is chilly enough to sting and kind enough to clear my head. The stars do their best in the light pollution of the square. I inhale and exhale and try to locate my senses.
“We bought time,” Dex says, pressing our joined hands into his pocket because he’s decent and my fingers are popsicles.
“We bought time,” I echo. I look up at him, and it’s a mistake and a miracle. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For steadying the ladder. For the coffee. For… kissing me in front of half my customer base without laughing at how my lips forgot to function.”
He smiles without teeth, which is unfairly intimate. “Anytime.”
We duck into the shadow beside the bulletin board—half privacy, half cowardice. He braces a palm at my hip; the kiss we choose this time is unhurried and very not-for-show.
When we break, I feel a little wrecked. “Optics?” he asks, voice gone low.
“Optics with consequences,” I say, forehead to his.
Across the street, Vernon confers with a councilman in low tones, hands slicing the air like argument blades. He looks over once, catches us mid-handhold, and his expression does that frozen-edge thing again.
“Do you think he has a voodoo doll of me?” I ask.
Dex squeezes my hand, then—unhelpfully—brushes a thumb along my knuckles in a way that could be declared illegal in three counties. “If he does, I will buy every pin.”
The book club ladies spill down the steps, a shoal of competence. Eleanor flanks them like a proud admiral. “Go home,” she orders. “Sleep. Tonight we charmed them, tomorrow we lock down the festival details, and next week—we win.”
“Copy,” Dex says, saluting with our combined hands. I can’t feel my entire face in this cold, but I can feel a grin trying to happen there.
We walk toward my car, pace easy, steps syncing like they’re long-lost cousins. My brain tells my hand it can let go anytime now. My hand tells my brain to mind its own damn business.
At my car door, he hesitates. “Text me when you’re home?”
“Always,” I say, surrendering to the ritual because some habits are better than heart medicine. “Dex?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for… playing the part.”
His mouth curves, patient as weather. “Which part?”
I breathe out a laugh that sounds like the beginning of something and not the end. “All of it.”
He steps closer, the parking lot light catching in his eyes—dark, certain, hungry.
His hands cradle my face, warm and steady, and every nerve in my body braces for the inevitable.
No audience, no excuse, just him choosing me.
When his mouth finds mine, it’s slow and devastatingly soft, a kiss that steals thought and breath at once, and my heart stumbles into wanting more.
His lips linger just long enough to brand me before he pulls back, voice low and rough. “Good night, Harper.”
“Good night,” I echo. My legs feel shaky, my lips are still tingling, and my chest is a full marching band of nerves and want.
I don’t watch him walk away—except, of course, I do—because I am only human and he is built to be looked at.
And even as the distance grows, every part of me hums with the kiss still burning on my mouth.
When I get home, Mr. Darcy greets me with a string of indignant syllables that probably translate to ‘where were you and why is my food late, woman’. I scoop him up, bury my face in his fur, and let the adrenaline finally run out.
“Listen,” I tell him as I put him down and crack open a can of cat food. “We bought ourselves breathing room. This festival has to shine so bright it dazzles the council right out of remembering Vernon exists.”
He purrs, which I choose to interpret as consent for my diatribe and not for the cat food I just put down.
I text Dex.
Me: Home. Cat fed. Democracy mildly appeased.
Dex: Good. Get some sleep. You did great tonight.
I climb into bed with my laptop, open the spreadsheet named DONOR OUTREACH v. 6 FINAL FINAL ACTUAL FINAL, and stare at the blinking cursor until it looks like a heartbeat. The town council did not cave to Vernon—not yet. We have a few days to make the town fall in love with itself in public.
And if on the way there, we fake a love story so hard it becomes something else… well. Everyone loves a love story.