I look at her profile and know there is no going back to the careful way we touched before tonight. The fake routine is over. The act put us in the same scene. The truth keeps us there.
“Stay,” she says, soft but sure.
“I was already planning on it,” I say. “Longer than tonight.”
Her fingers slide into mine again, the simplest of yeses. We turn off the lamp. The town outside keeps its slow heartbeat. We move through her door together like we have been doing it for years, and for the first time in a long time I don't feel like I am bracing for impact. I feel like I am heading home.
Epilogue
Dex
The rain starts like a rumor—three polite drops, then a fine, stubborn mist. We’ve got a ribbon strung across the library annex door, a folding table with paper cups, and a crowd pretending flannel is waterproof.
I’ve already been on the roof twice to check the new seam along the eastern pitch; Gary’s spider box hums under the eaves, feeding the PA like a tame dragon.
Across the street, two guys in union jackets unbolt a Blackstone “FOR LEASE” sign. The last screw squeals. It drops into a gloved palm, the plank comes down, and a cheer ripples through the umbrellas like wind through corn.
“Where’s the plaque?” Harper asks, quietly, with the scissors poised in her hand.
The mayor pats his jacket like he might have stuffed bronze down a pocket and didn’t know it.
Panic skitters. Mrs. Henderson hisses, “Optics!” which somehow rhymes with ‘disaster’ to her.”
“Relax,” Mom says, already fishing in her tote. She produces the plaque wrapped in a tea towel like a newborn. “The adhesive backing went walkabout. Cole! Drill. Now.”
Cole appears with a cordless like we planned for this. Two quick bites of the bit, a turn of the wrist, and the plaque sits true:
HOLLOW CREEK LIBRARY ANNEX — BUILT BY ITS PEOPLE.
The ribbon falls in two neat curls; across the street, the last screw hits a bucket—plink—and Blackstone’s sign rides away in the bed of a pickup. The cheer that follows is not subtle. The crowd exhale-laughs as if we meant to do it that way.
Someone yowls. Mr. Darcy—smuggled here in a canvas tote that saysSUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES—stages his escape, pads through damp grass like a tuxedoed storm, and leaps into my lap the second I sit on the low wall to re-tape a cable. He kneads once, then folds into a purr that vibrates against my thigh.
“Traitor,” Harper whispers. The cat closes his eyes like a judge entering a ruling.
Mom sidles up to Harper and presses a clipboard into her hands. “Last petition page,” she says, the top covered in names crammed to the margins. “A souvenir. Frame it crooked so it looks authentic.” She laughs.
The mayor clears his throat at the mic; the PA pops once, then behaves.
Harper steps to my side, our shoulders touching under a shared umbrella, and the crowd angles their phones without pretending otherwise.
Dolly stage-whispers, “Move three inches closer,” and Beatrice elbows her quiet.
The mist thickens. Kids squeal, council members flinch, and a row of umbrellas tilt like sunflowers. I shrug off my jacket and drape it over Harper’s shoulders; she tugs my collar flat the way she does when she’s concentrating. “Five minutes,” she says. “Speeches, then cookies.”
The mayor thanks the donors; Harper thanks the firefighters and the teenagers who hauled folding chairs like champions. Mom lifts the clipboard and waves the last page of signatures like bunting. A little kid in a dragon hat hands me a damp cookie and calls me “the ladder guy.”
Harper leans into me, warm under my jacket, rain stippling her hair. Mr. Darcy shifts, head-butts my knuckles, and—God help me—stays. Across the street, the empty storefront where renderings once lived shows a paper sign:
COMING SOON: WRITERS & MAKERS SPACE.
“We did it,” she says quietly, like the truth you only say under shared umbrellas.
“You did it,” I say, and the way she looks up at me tells me she heard the ‘we’ anyway.
I press my mouth to her temple—the only part of her not guarded by damp curls—and let the square’s noise fade until there’s just us, the rain, and the smell of new lumber.
“Coming home to you is the best decision I ever made,” I tell her. The words sit where vows live. She squeezes my hand, and the cat purrs like a period.
