Chapter 9 #2
“Let me try again,” he says. “I’m a man who left things he loved because I had to.
I came home with a knee that complains when the weather turns and a head that likes to wake me up at four in the morning.
I built a life where I can fix things. This,” he nods toward the square, “feels like fixing something that matters. Being next to you while I do it feels like oxygen.” He reaches for my wrist and brushes my pulse with his thumb.
“Even though it started as optics, that ended for me a while ago.”
The air leaves my lungs in a quiet rush. My brain tries to compose sarcasm and fails. My mouth lands on truth instead. “Same,” I say. “I am tired of pretending I don’t wish you would kiss me without an audience.”
He swallows, gaze locked on mine. “Say that again.”
“I wish you would kiss me,” I repeat, softer. “No cameras. No cover. No strategy.”
He steps closer. The crowd swims in gentle loops around us, oblivious.
The lantern light trims his jaw in gold.
I smell cedar and laundry detergent and a little smoke from somewhere down the block.
He presses a hand to the side of my neck, not an act, not optics, simply him choosing me in public as if it costs him nothing and everything. My pulse stutters under his thumb.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
I don’t.
He kisses me, slow, patient, so carefully it breaks me.
He tastes like cinnamon and something I don’t have a word for.
My fingers curl in his shirt. The noise in my head goes soft, then quiet, then gone.
A cheer goes up by the pie table because someone won a cakewalk, and we laugh against each other’s mouths.
The world doesn’t stop, but it moves differently.
When he lifts his head, I blink, drunk on oxygen and Dex.
“Real enough,” he says.
“On the record,” I murmur, and he smiles like he hears the gavel drop. “Cruel man,” I say, breathless. “You will never hear the end of this from Mrs. Henderson.”
“She can add it to her notebook,” he says, but his voice is rough in a way that has nothing to do with paper.
We eventually peel ourselves off the rail because the bluegrass band needs the stage.
We check the trash corrals, the power strips, the first aid kit.
We do the things people do when they are in charge and would rather make out in the fiction aisle of the local bookstore.
Every time we pass a window, our reflection looks like a couple who decided on purpose to be together. My stomach flips and then settles.
I grab the mic at the gazebo to thank sponsors and volunteers.
My voice doesn’t shake. I talk about the annex roof and new heaters, about small towns that out-stubborn the snow, about keeping the block weird and warm.
I see the council members listening. I see Mrs. Henderson crying into Dolly’s shoulder like a faucet.
I see Cole filming while Dex stands at the foot of the steps with his arms crossed and that look he gets when he sees a problem he can solve.
Applause spills across the square. Someone whistles. The band strikes up. I step off the stage on wobbly legs and into Dex’s shoulder like a ship docking at a favored port. He steadies me with that calm he wears like a jacket.
“You killed it,” he says.
“I didn’t trip,” I say. “That felt like a win.”
He strokes his knuckles down my arm, not casual, not quite gentlemanly, something hungrier that he is trying to keep tidy. It doesn’t stay tidy. I lean in. His mouth finds my temple. The world blurs again.
We drift toward the fiction booth to relieve Beatrice.
She relinquishes the cash box with a sigh and a whisper about running out of zip ties, then vanishes with a suspicious glint.
I ring up a stack of horror novels for a teenager who announces that poetry cured his fear of the dark.
Dex restocks the bookmarks, and we pretend not to see the flash of Mrs. Henderson’s phone.
“Do we think the council noticed the jars?” I ask as I bag a memoir.
“They noticed,” he says. “Todd tried to lift one and lost a bicep.”
“Good,” I say. “He can use the other one to vote correctly.”
The night tips toward late. The bluegrass band wraps.
The light-show guy, who is a cousin of a cousin, rolls his rig toward the square.
Families settle on quilts spread over the grass.
The air cools. Mr. Darcy returns to the booth from wherever he has been reigning and hops onto the counter, placing one paw on the card reader like a tiny tax collector.
He head butts my wrist. He sniffs Dex’s knuckles, but he doesn’t slap him. Progress.
“Your Grace,” Dex says politely.
Mr. Darcy blinks, and I consider it a benediction.
“Ready,” the light show guy calls. He gives the mayor a thumbs-up. The mayor gavels because he cannot resist drama, then nods grandly at the sky.
The first firework blooms, white and slow, a chrysanthemum that hangs then falls. The second cracks red. The third spits gold and green that spin like coins. People ooh and ahh in honest chorus. The sound tugs at the softest part of me.
Dex stands behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, hands flat over my ribs like a shield.
His chin rests on my head. I fit here. I didn’t know I had a place like this.
He breathes me in. I lean back into him until all the separate pieces of me stop clattering and settle into one shape. The sky keeps blooming.
“Harper,” he says, low.
“Hmm,” I say, useless.
“Look at what you built,” he says. “Listen.”
I do. I hear laughter, coins, the low thrum of the generator that feeds the lights, the squeal of a stroller wheel that needs oil, the soft purr of one very pleased tuxedo tyrant. I hear my own heart slow down.
Vernon stands across the square, smaller under the fireworks than he looks in sunlight. He watches the crowd, and he checks his watch. He doesn’t smile.
I feel a clean, fierce thing rise in me. It tastes like success.
I turn my face toward Dex without breaking the hold of his arms. He meets me halfway.
The kiss is unhurried and certain, a seal of something we both already decided.
There are gasps. There is probably a camera or two, but I don’t care.
He keeps me close through the final volley while gold rains down and smoke rubs the air with its soft hand, and I say the quiet part out loud in my head, clear as a bell.
I am in love with this man.
There it is. No spreadsheets. No optics. No excuses. Love, simple as a breath and bright as a match.
The last firework hangs like a coin tossed in a fountain, then falls. The crowd claps, then cheers, then moves in warm, happy floods on their way home or wherever they came from. Dex presses his mouth to my hair and laughs softly for no reason I can name except he feels the same.
Tomorrow we will count money, haul trash, chase permits, and argue with the world’s most persistent developer.
Tonight, I stand in the town square of my hometown I adore with a man who feels like home, and for the first time since the email with the subject line Time Sensitive Offer, I believe in a future that belongs to us.