18. Derek
DEREK
We made it to the square with maybe ninety seconds to spare, both of us out of breath, Leah's hand still locked in mine like neither of us had gotten around to remembering we were supposed to let go, and I steered us through the crowd toward the stage where Judy stood gripping a microphone with the particular white-knuckled joy of a woman who had been waiting all year for this exact moment.
The whole square had transformed since dawn.
Hay bales strung with lights I'd helped hang myself, a dozen vendor booths glowing warm with steam off cocoa cups and roasted chestnuts, kids in puffer coats chasing each other underfoot.
The big spruce stood dark and waiting at the center of it all.
There were four hundred people out there, easy, their breath fogging thick over the whole crowd.
"There he is." Sarge appeared at my elbow out of nowhere, the way he always did, grinning at our joined hands like he'd just won a bet he'd placed with himself months ago. "Cutting it close, Chief."
"We had a situation."
"I'm sure you did." He looked entirely too pleased with himself, and I let go of Leah's hand only because Judy tapped the microphone twice and the whole square turned toward the stage, the low hum of four hundred conversations dying down into something closer to anticipation.
The microphone shrieked feedback loud enough that half the crowd flinched, a couple of kids near the front covering their ears, and Judy laughed it off with the easy confidence of someone who had genuinely never once been embarrassed in her life.
"Well. Good evening, Pinewood Ridge." She beamed out over the square, string lights catching in her earrings, and I felt my whole chest sink with the specific dread of a man who had read the schedule and knew exactly how long her allotted speaking time was supposed to be.
"Tonight isn't just about a tree. It's about a town.
It's about resilience, and community, and if you'll indulge me, I'd like to talk for a moment about the humble pinecone. "
Beside me, Leah made a small strangled sound that might have been a laugh she was trying very hard to swallow.
"The pinecone," Judy continued, warming to it now, both hands spread wide like she was cradling an invisible one, "protects its seed through winter's harshest months, closed tight against the cold, patient, resilient, waiting for exactly the right conditions to open and release what's inside it.
And isn't that just like all of us, standing here tonight? "
"She's not stopping," I said, low, mostly to Leah.
"She's got at least four more minutes of pinecone in her. I can see it in her eyes."
Judy did not have four more minutes of pinecone in her.
She had, by my count on the watch I kept checking with increasing despair, closer to eleven, working her way from pinecones into acorns, then into the resilience of the town's founding families, then somehow into a tangent about the winter of 1987 that had nothing to do with anything, the whole crowd shifting their weight from foot to foot in the cold with the specific patience small towns reserved for their own beloved, exhausting leadership.
Somewhere near the back a dog howled low and mournful right along with the microphone feedback, which struck me as the single most honest response anyone in that crowd had managed all night, and even Judy paused long enough to laugh at herself before diving straight back into acorns.
"...and just as the humble pinecone protects its seed through winter's harshest," Judy said, for what I was fairly sure was the second time, "so too does this town protect what matters most to it."
"I think she's looping," Leah whispered.
"She's definitely looping."
Sarge, on my other side, had his phone out, timing it with the grim dedication of a man building evidence for future arguments.
The speech finally wound down into applause, relieved and enthusiastic in roughly equal measure, and Judy handed the microphone off to Maddie's neighbor, who ran the elementary school's holiday pageant and had apparently drawn the short straw of introducing this year's ceremonial lighting helpers, six kids in felt elf costumes lined up at the base of the stage looking somewhere between thrilled and mortified by the whole production.
Five of them filed up onto the platform without incident.
The sixth, a small boy who couldn't have been older than six, planted both feet at the bottom of the stairs and refused to move another inch, arms crossed, jaw set with the absolute conviction of a child who had decided this was the hill he intended to die on.
"Come on, sweetheart," the pageant coordinator said, crouching to his level, voice pitched bright and coaxing. "It's just for a minute. You'll get to help count down."
"I'm not doing it."
"You practiced it all week. You were the best one at practice."
"The dog has to come too or I'm not doing it."
I followed his pointing finger to a golden retriever sitting patient as a monument at the edge of the crowd, leash held by a woman I recognized as one of the elementary school aides, tail thumping slow against the frozen grass every time the boy looked at him.
"Buddy can't come on stage, sweetie. He's not part of the show."
"Then I'm not part of the show either."
The standoff held for a long moment, the whole crowd watching with the specific fond amusement small towns reserved for precisely this kind of thing, until somebody finally had the sense to walk the dog up to the base of the stairs instead of arguing the point further, and the boy's whole face transformed the second Buddy's leash came within reach.
He scrambled up the steps with the dog trotting proudly alongside him, like it had been part of the plan from the start.
The crowd cheered like the kid had just won an Olympic medal.
I laughed, low and real, and looked over to find Leah already laughing too, wiping one eye with the back of her glove, and something in my chest did the thing it had been doing more and more lately, loosening in a way I'd stopped trying to talk myself out of.
I spent the next several minutes watching her instead of the stage, which probably said more about where my priorities currently sat than I wanted to examine too closely.
She moved through the crowd in short bursts between the comedy, straightening a toppled hay bale here, redirecting a wandering toddler back toward his parents there, checking in with a vendor whose cocoa stand had run low on cups, every motion easy and unhurried despite how much ground she covered.
String lights she'd argued with me about for six weeks glowed gold above her head, catching in her hair every time she moved.
I realized, finally letting myself admit it, that I had never once in my life watched anyone work a room the way she worked this one.
She caught me looking and didn't look away first.
"Aren't you supposed to be watching the ceremony, Chief?"
"I'm watching something worth watching."
Her cheeks went pink, and not from the cold, and she opened her mouth to say something back and apparently thought better of it, ducking her head instead with the particular smile of a woman who knew perfectly well what I meant and had decided not to make me say it plainer.
I stood there in the cold, watching her laugh at something Maddie said, watching her steady a nervous vendor's hands around a cash box, watching her move through this town she'd built out of stubbornness and good instincts.
I finally admitted it to myself: I was falling for Leah Bennett.
Not might be. Not could be, given time. Already was, had been for weeks, and every argument I'd built against it had quietly stopped holding weight somewhere between a fudge tent fire and a fouled spark plug.
It didn't scare me the way I expected it to. That was the part I hadn't planned for.
Sarge caught me staring at some point during all of this, because Sarge caught everything, and didn't say a single word, just looked at me with an expression so smug I nearly told him to go check the generator again out of pure spite.
The elf coordinator wrangled the six kids into position at the base of the tree, Buddy sitting proudly at the small boy's side like he'd earned equal billing, and Judy reclaimed the microphone one final time, her voice carrying clear and warm over the hushed crowd.
"Let's light this tree, Pinewood Ridge! Everybody, count it down with me. Ten!"
The whole square roared it back at her, four hundred voices tangled into one, and I found Leah in the crowd without meaning to look for her, already turning toward me like she'd been doing the same thing.
"Nine! Eight!"
She crossed the space between us without either of us deciding whose idea it was, the crowd's countdown swallowing everything else, her breath fogging pale against the dark, cheeks bright with cold, eyes bright with something that had nothing to do with the temperature at all.
"Seven! Six! Five!"
I didn't think about the crew watching, or Digby's opinion, or the county, or two years of careful distance I'd built brick by brick around a moment like this one. For the first time in longer than I could accurately measure, I didn't think at all.
"Four! Three! Two!"
I reached for her.
"One!"
The tree exploded into light behind us, gold and white flooding the whole square at once, the crowd erupting into a cheer loud enough to rattle windows on Main, and I kissed her, framed in that light with my breath still short from running, unguarded and unhesitant in a way I hadn't let myself be with anyone in two years, her hands coming up to my jacket like she'd been waiting on this every bit as long as I had.
She tasted like cold air and cocoa, and I felt her smile against my mouth before she pulled back far enough to actually look at me, cheeks flushed, eyes shining, breathless for reasons the run from the coffee shop couldn't fully explain.
"Well, Chief." Her voice came out unsteady and delighted in equal measure. "Merry Christmas to you too."
Somewhere close by, Sarge let out a low whistle that carried a great deal farther than a whistle had any business carrying in a crowd this size, and I made a mental note to deal with him later, once I had feeling back in whatever part of my brain currently handled decisions.
I didn't have a clever answer for that. I didn't want one.
Around us the square kept cheering, certain the noise belonged to the tree, light glinting off two hundred and forty bulbs and dancing in her eyes when I looked at her again.
With the same certainty I brought to every fire I'd ever walked into, I knew I wasn't going to let this moment end on its own.
Somewhere above us actual snow had started falling, fine and lazy, catching the glow of the tree lights on its way down like the whole sky had decided to join in, and Leah tipped her head back for half a second to watch it before she looked at me again, laughing, breathless, unbothered by four hundred witnesses.
So I kissed her again, longer this time, unhurried, like a man finally paying off two years of debt he hadn't let himself acknowledge he owed.
Somewhere behind us the carolers found their way back into a song, off tempo and delighted about it, and the square went on cheering like it had every right to claim some part of this moment for itself.
I didn't mind sharing it. For once I didn't want to be anywhere else, doing anything else, with anyone else standing this close.