Page 16 of The Pumpkin Pact
“I also appreciate discipline,” I tell the cat. “I'm an Army vet. Can't get much more discipline than that.”
Mr. Darcy blinks in my direction in a manner that can only be described as contempt, with punctuation.
Cole grins over his shoulder. “It’s okay, Rowen. Some of us are cat people. Some of us are… chosen.” He lowers his voice to the cat. “We’ll be gracious in victory.”
I point at the stack of new releases. “Make yourself useful and go shelve something.”
Cole wanders the fiction table, reading spines and making interested noises. Harper slides me a coffee. Our fingers brush, and my heart executes a full gymnastics routine.
She clears her throat. “Your friend is charming.”
“You mean infuriating,” I say.
“Both can be true,” she whispers.
Cole reappears clutching a paperback with a moody lighthouse on it. “I need three of these,” he says. “One for the flight home, one for my sister, and one for my future wife.”
“You have a future wife now?” I ask.
“Manifesting, my friend, manifesting,” he says mildly. “Preferably someone who bakes bread and can assemble IKEA furniture without crying.” He gives Harper a look that’s pure mischief. “Unless your town has rules about locals only.”
Harper smiles with all her teeth. “We’re very welcoming. But if you break someone’s heart, Mrs. Henderson and the rest of the book club will put your face on a dartboard and throw rotten fruit and darts at it. Plus, Mr. Darcy will start treating you like he treats Dex.”
“Understood,” Cole says. “I would never cross the mustache.” He looks at the cat.
I ring him up; he tips like someone who doesn’t understand the Vermont economy and also has guilt from knocking over a general’s coffee once in 2016. Who tips when buying books?
The bell chimes again, and a couple of tourists wander in, lured by the cat, the autumn display, and the low--grade chaos Harper and I seem to trail like weather fronts wherever we go.
Cole tilts his head toward the back stacks. “Show me the haunted ladder.”
“It isn’t haunted,” Harper says. “It’s just... difficult.”
I walk him back anyway, because he won’t let it go. He inspects the ladder like a detective at a crime scene, then pats it. “Be nice to her,” he tells it. “She’s short and fierce, and she will win.”
“Thank you,” Harper says. “Finally, a man with taste.”
Cole angles me a look I recognize from a thousand patrol briefings. 'Say the thing you don’t want to say, man'. I don’t, and he sighs. “Okay. New topic.”
He lingers by the poetry shelf, thumbing a slim volume. “So I heard a rumor,” he says lightly, “About a broken engagement.”
Harper’s eyes flick to me, then away, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to hear this part of the Dex file. I keep my tone calm. “That rumor exists, and it's true.”
“You don’t have to—” she walks away.
“It’s okay,” I say, and it mostly is. “I was going to marry someone who liked the version of me that stayed put. Army was fine as long as it was pictures in frames and stories after dinner. The reality was… less decorative.”
Cole leans his shoulder against the shelf. “She bailed when the headlines got too real.” It’s not a question.
“She wanted me to choose,” I say. “Her or the uniform. Then the knee decided for me.” My mouth tips wry. “I got the ring back and a medical discharge in the same month.”
Harper steps closer like she’s bracing a door against a draft. “I’m sorry,” she says, simply and sincerely. “That’s a lot of endings at once.”
I shrug because if I don’t, I’ll do something unwise like lean into her. “Gave me an excuse to come home. Fix things. Build things. Annoy a cat.”
“Cat says you excel at that,” she murmurs with a smile.
Cole bumps my arm. “For the record, she doesn’t deserve you.”
