Page 31 of The Pumpkin Pact
I feel heat crawling up my neck. For half a second I want to yell, ‘I am not faking this, not the way you think’. Then I cover my face and run. My pulse scrapes.
Dex squeezes my hand. The world steadies by a degree.
“It’s real enough for me,” he says, clear and even, not loud, but the words carry. They land between us like a weight that knocks over all the flimsy parts of me. He turns to me, eyes steady. “It is real enough,” he says again, and that second time is only for me. A promise and a problem.
My chest goes soft in the center. I do not look away.
Vernon’s smile holds. His eyes say, ‘We will see’. He steps back with a two-finger salute that makes me want to set something on fire. He turns toward Todd with the boat and resumes laughter, polished and hollow.
I let my breath out in a shaky reel. “I think I’m going to pass out,” I say.
Dex tips my chin with one knuckle, bringing me back into my body. “No, you’re not,” he says. “You’re going to eat a pretzel.”
“That is a weird medical plan,” I say, but my voice returns to normal. He grins, the tightness easing, and the square slides back into focus. My hands, traitors, want his shirt.
He fetches the pretzel. He tears it down the middle and salts my palm with a piece. We lean against the gazebo rail like a secret club. The band finishes a warmup run and drops into a tune that sounds like a train with good news. People sway. Lanterns breathe.
“I handled that badly,” I say after a bite.
“You handled him,” Dex says. “That is already a miracle.”
“What if he tells the council we’re faking it,” I whisper. “What if he stands up during public comments and reads our love story like a deposition? What if Todd nods along, making it look substantial?”
“Then he does,” Dex says. “And we still win because the town knows what it feels like to stand in a place that matters. That is not fake. He cannot bulldoze that with a speech.” He tilts his head. “As for us, I can handle being called names. I have been called worse.”
I stare at the paper wrapper. “I don’t want it to hurt you.”
His laugh curls low. “Harper, I’m a former soldier who now organizes extension cords for fun. I can handle gossip.”
I smile despite the knot in my chest. “You make it sound less romantic when you say it like that.”
“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 whenthey 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.
