Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
For a fraction of a second, when the door opened and Finn saw the man standing behind Ivy, something in him tightened.
He'd been cheated on before. What teen, filled with hormones, hadn't had the urge to search for greener pastures as everyone in their age group was developing and discovering things about themselves?
But somehow, he knew this wasn't what was happening with Ivy.
The man's jacket. His shoes. The way he stood in her space as if he belonged there, when he clearly did not. He wasn't from here. From her past, then. Finn wanted to be Ivy's future, but he had made the decision to ground himself in her now.
Finn was here now. He belonged in her space, and she belonged in his. That's why he reached out and tucked her into his side. That's why she came, more than willing, and let him stake his claim on her. Ivy looked proud to wave her Finn-flag as she snuggled into his chest.
Yeah, he was all in.
The rest of it—whoever this man was, whatever history he carried—didn’t change that.
Finn had spent the morning in that certainty. The text exchange had resolved something in him he hadn’t expected to settle so quickly. Which was why he moved quickly through his morning chores on the farm and raced over here. He wanted more than the picture of her; he wanted to taste her again.
But there was a man in her kitchen offering her a television show. A future that existed somewhere else.
Finn didn’t interrupt. Didn’t react. He stayed in the now.
Ivy was here now. With him. She had asked the man to leave, and she had left with Finn. She was holding Finn's hand right now. She was walking side by side through town with Finn. But Finn still felt himself giving her space.
His hold on her loosened, just slightly. Not releasing. Not withdrawing. Making space.
Preparing. If she chose it, he would not stand in the way. That was the part of this he could control.
He would not make himself something she had to work around. He would not make this into a choice she resented later. He would let her go if she asked him to.
They walked the long way around the square without discussing it; the afternoon settling into the gold of a Valor Saturday.
The old office supply store on the corner of Main and Second had been empty for two years, the windows papered over, a ghost of the painted logo still visible through the brown paper like something that hadn't quite finished leaving.
Next to it, where the travel agency used to be — the one that had closed the same winter the interstate bypass went in and took the through-traffic with it — a bookstore had moved in sometime in the spring.
Small, warm-lit, the kind of place that had clearly been arranged by someone with opinions about what a bookstore should feel like.
A handwritten sign in the window said We Order Anything and below it, in smaller letters, Yes, Even That.
He'd walked past it a hundred times. It occurred to him now that it had never once looked like it was thinking about leaving.
He saw the owner in the doorway as they passed — a woman he knew slightly, the kind of slightly that came from a small town doing its work — and she was leaning in the frame talking to the man from the coffee cart across the way, who had apparently found a reason to be on this side of the square.
Finn knew the man in passing. He had been at the Purple Heart Ranch.
Freddie was his name. Finn watched the man say something that made the bookshop owner laugh, and then, in the brief geography of a moment they thought no one was watching, lean across the distance between them and kiss her.
Quick. Certain. The kind of kiss that had history behind it and more ahead of it.
The coffee cart man went back to his cart. The bookstore owner went back to her doorway. The square moved around them as if nothing had happened.
Finn looked at the empty office supply store. Looked at the bookstore. Looked at the space where things had left and things had come, and the town had absorbed both without stopping.
Some things left. Some things moved in and hung a sign. He had spent three years cataloguing the first kind and almost missed the second kind entirely.
Preparing. If she chose it, he would not stand in the way. That was the part of this he could control.
He looked at Ivy walking beside him in the afternoon light.
He tightened his hand around hers. Just slightly. The same amount he'd loosened it. An acknowledgment, not a demand.
She squeezed back without looking up, as if she'd felt the question in it and was answering it, and they kept walking.
"Are you thinking about it?" Finn kept his tone even. Not neutral.
Ivy glanced at him, then back ahead. "I’m thinking about how much I don’t like food competitions."
He huffed out a quiet breath, something close to a laugh. "You could’ve fooled me."
She looked up at him then, a quick flash of a grin. "I like competing with you. You make me better."
Finn felt the impulse immediately: the instinct to close the distance, to take that statement and answer it with something physical, something that didn’t require him to stand his ground. He wanted to invade her space and sweep her off her feet.
He didn’t. They were in the middle of the street. Instead, he reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, his fingers brushing her temple.
"Television competition…" she continued, searching for the right words. "It drained me. It didn’t make me happy."
Finn rubbed at her cheek, remembering the sauce he'd swiped away from there to steal his first taste of her.
"This?" She gestured loosely ahead of them, which he took to mean the market, the truck, the past few weeks." This is the happiest I’ve been in a long time. In a cramped food truck, with my phone and a ring light and you."
That did it. There were limits to control. The market entrance was ten feet ahead, the noise of it already building: voices, movement, the beginning of the day.
Finn stepped in. Closed the distance. And kissed her.
It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t restrained. It was certain. He was certain he wanted Ivy to stay rooted in place with him for the rest of his days.
His hand came to her jaw, anchoring her there as his mouth found hers, the memory of the night before collapsing into the present, sharper now, clearer. No question. No hesitation.
She leaned into it immediately. He felt it in the way her body aligned with his, the way her hand came up to his chest, grounding, steadying, like this was exactly where she intended to be. Where she intended to stay.
Neither of them rushed it. Neither of them held back either. They stayed there. Holding onto each other. Tasting each other. Twining around each other as if they were growing from the place they stood while simultaneously putting down roots.
Until the world came back in. Shouts first. Then laughter.
"Well," Mrs. Patel’s voice cut through it all, warm and entirely unsurprised, "I was going to wait until you two made it to your trucks, but this seems like as good a moment as any."
Finn pulled back just enough to look at Ivy. He kept his arms around her, not willing to let her go even a step from him. Her lips were still parted. Her eyes dazed.
He'd done that. He wanted to do it again.
"Congratulations," Mrs. Patel said. "You’ve won the Valor Food Truck Rally."
There was a beat where the words didn’t fully register. Then the crowd noise picked up around them, people turning, clapping, calling out.
Ivy laughed, the sound bright and uncontained.
This was more than a win. This was more than the money he needed to make his restaurant dreams come true. This was a joint venture he had done with the person who elevated his cooking. He wanted to see where else he and Ivy could go if they worked together.
"We—" Ivy broke off, then tried again, her voice rising with it. "We won?"
Finn nodded once. "We won."
The sound that came out of her then wasn’t controlled, wasn’t contained—it was bright and full and entirely unguarded. She laughed, but it wasn’t just laughter. It was disbelief breaking open into something bigger.
"I don’t—" she shook her head, breathless now. "I always—" Another laugh, sharper this time. "I always come in second."
She looked back at him, eyes wide, something almost wonder struck in them now. "We didn’t."
There was a part of him that was a little sad that she couldn't say I won. Finn wanted to give that to her: a solo win. But she didn't seem the least bit put out to share this win with him.
Ivy’s hand tightened in his, her energy still moving, as if she didn’t know where to put it. She turned into him as if he was the place to land.
"We won," she said again, softer now, like she was trying the words on in a different way. Like she was letting herself believe them.
"This is just the start," said Mrs. Patel. "Next stop: the state competition."