Page 16 of Burning Hearts
Wyatt:Battery-operated enthusiasm only.
Cade:Copy.
I stared at the word longer than I should have then slid it away. Across the Commons, Cade adjusted a table, checked his cones, and glanced up.
One clean look that landed like a hand to the sternum.
Sun on his jaw, tie behaving. His sleeves threatening not to.
My phone dinged again—Beau, all glitter and deadlines.
Beau:Hot Seat at :40 – Cade & Ellis – neighbors edition. Two minutes. Keep it cute.
I looked back at Cade. He didn’t wave, and I didn’t either. The distance between us felt like miles.
My eyes darted around as I surveyed the block. People with opposition shirts on, lapels reading #TeamBrew or #TeamSignal. I realized that the town—and social media, for that matter—wanted a proper rivalry.
My producer brain told me: prep beats, keep optics clean.
Every other part of me said: remember how to breathe when a gorgeous firefighter stands too close to your mic.
The fountain threw light across the Commons. At twenty till, he’d be three feet away.
I started counting cones, breaths, reasons—knowing I’d run out of one of them first.
CHAPTER FOUR
CADE
Beau was halfwaythrough a sidewalk hit outside Riverfield Coffee— “live in three… two…”—when the wind that lives between buildings decided to show off.
Signal House’s pop-up caught it like a sail. One back leg skated, the fabric bellied, and an extension cord they’d daisy-chained across the brick went taut, then lazy, snaking into the pedestrian lane.
I moved before my brain wrote a memo to the rest of my body.
Two sandbags—hips, not back. One on the wild leg, one on its partner. I dropped a shoulder under the crossbar, pressed the frame down, and pointed without looking.
“Walk that cord to the wall,” I said to a volunteer, “and tape every three feet.”
“Copy,” the volunteer said, already moving.
Another gust tried to move the canopy. I cinched a tie-down until it complied, hooked a second on the opposite corner, and felt the whole thing remember what gravity was. The folding table had drifted into the curb cut—the exact amount that turns a stroller into a problem.
I nudged it back with my knee and set a sandbag on the base.
“Signal, on me,” a calm voice said.
Ellis.
“Hands on frame,” he added, “three, two, and one. Pull to center. Don’t fight the strap, let it guide.”
Just a few inches to safety, as if it had been rehearsed.
Out of the corner of my eye, Beau’s cameraman wavered between Beau and the wind. Beau didn’t miss a beat.
“Here we observe Riverfield’s famed battery-operated romance in the wild,” he told the mic. “Sandbag first, narrate later.”
The crowd chuckled and exhaled.
