Seated Beside You

“You’re staring at the evidence,” he said.

“I’m studying the crime scene.”

“As a police officer?”

“As a citizen who has been repeatedly victimized by municipal seating.”

His mouth curved. “Should I call a lawyer?”

“You are a lawyer.”

“Then you’re in luck.”

Ember slid into her chair. “I’m never in luck when you’re involved.”

Damian sat beside her, close enough that his knee brushed hers beneath the table. The contact lasted only a second. It still sent a small, unwelcome spark up her leg.

He leaned toward his cup. “You brought me punch.”

“I brought myself punch. Your cup happened to be in the way.”

“Of course.”

Across the room, someone laughed too loudly. Plates clattered. The smell of barbecue sauce, baked rolls, and cinnamon cake mingled beneath the warmer scent of crowded bodies and old polished wood. Ember tucked a strand of ash-blonde hair behind her ear and scanned the room, searching for an empty chair, a familiar face, any excuse to relocate.

Every seat was taken.

At the head table, the mayor lifted her glass and gave Ember a smile that was far too knowing.

Ember narrowed her eyes.

Damian noticed. “You’ve spotted the mastermind.”

“I’ve spotted several suspects.”

“Any descriptions?”

“Middle-aged. Cheerful. Dangerous around stationery.”

His laugh came easily, low enough that she felt it more than heard it. Damian never seemed to work for charm. It simply arrived with him, along with the expensive watch, the clean scent of cedar, and the confidence of a man who had never been asked to apologize for taking up space.

Ember had spent most of her life learning how to take up less.

At twenty, she was already accustomed to being underestimated. People saw her ash-blonde hair and blue eyes before they saw the badge, the training, or the steady hand that had talked a frightened teenager down from a grocery-store roof last summer. Her body drew attention too, especially in uniform, though she had learned to ignore where people looked.

Damian looked at her face.

That was worse.

“So,” he said, lifting his cup, “how long before you arrest someone?”

“Depends. Are you confessing?”

“To what?”

“Conspiracy.”

He took a sip, his gaze never leaving hers. “I plead the Fifth.”

“You can’t plead the Fifth in a seating dispute.”

“I can if the seating dispute becomes criminal.”

“Convenient.”

“I’m a lawyer. Convenience is one of our lesser virtues.”

“You have lesser virtues?”

“Several. I’m keeping them private until I know whether you’re going to use them against me.”

The exchange should have irritated her. Instead, she caught herself smiling into her cup.

That was dangerous too.

A volunteer approached with a basket of numbered tickets. “Ember, Damian, don’t forget the raffle. You two are sharing a strip.”

“We are not,” Ember said.

The volunteer had already moved on.

Damian plucked the strip from the basket and held it between them. “Apparently we are.”

“I’m buying my own.”

“You can buy another strip.”

“Why would I give money to a system that keeps putting you beside me?”

“Because the system is raising money for the ambulance fund.”

She looked at him.

He shrugged. “I’m persuasive when I’m right.”

“You’re insufferable when you’re right.”

“Then you’ll have to hope I’m wrong.”

The mayor tapped a spoon against her glass. Conversations softened around the room, though the children near the dessert table continued arguing over a cupcake with blue icing. Ember sat straighter as the fundraiser coordinator stepped onto the small platform.

“Before we begin the auction,” the coordinator called, “we want to thank the volunteers who made tonight possible. Especially those who arranged our tables.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room.

Ember felt the first warning prickle at the back of her neck.

The coordinator looked directly at her and Damian. “We thought it was important to seat people where they’d be comfortable.”

The room erupted.

Someone whistled. Someone else called, “About time!”

Heat climbed Ember’s throat. She turned toward Damian, expecting embarrassment, annoyance, anything that might let her decide how to feel.

He looked amused.

Not surprised.

“You knew,” she said.

His brows lifted. “I suspected.”

“You suspected?”

“After the pancake breakfast, I began to wonder.”

“You let them do this?”

“Would you prefer I start a public argument with the town’s most determined grandmothers?”

“Yes.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

She pushed back her chair. “I’m moving.”

The chair caught on the floor, its legs scraping loudly. A few heads turned. Before she could step away, Damian reached out - not grabbing her, only placing his hand on the back of the chair.

“Ember.”

The way he said her name stopped her more effectively than his hand could have.

“What?”

His expression had changed. The easy amusement remained, but something steadier sat underneath it. “If you want to leave the table, I won’t stop you.”

“Then move your hand.”

He did.

“But don’t leave because they’re laughing,” he added. “Leave because you want to.”

The distinction landed harder than it should have.

Ember looked at the crowded hall, at the smiling faces and raised eyebrows, at the people who had apparently decided her future could be arranged with folded place cards. She hated that they had made her feel watched. She hated even more that Damian’s voice had made her feel seen.

“I’m staying,” she said.

“Because you want to?”

“Because the food is paid for.”

His smile returned, smaller this time. “A principled position.”

She sat. He did too, but he kept a careful inch between their chairs.

The auction began with a weekend at a lakeside cabin. Ember listened while Damian leaned over to whisper commentary about the bidding war between two rival business owners. He knew which one had recently lost a zoning dispute and which one had a weakness for expensive coffee. His observations were sharp without being cruel, and when Ember laughed, he glanced at her as if storing the sound somewhere.

After the cabin came a basket of homemade preserves. Then a signed football. Then a private cooking lesson.

Damian won the preserves.

“You don’t even eat jam,” Ember said.

“I do when it’s socially strategic.”

“Who are you trying to impress?”

He turned the basket toward her. “You.”

The word was simple. His tone made it less so.

Ember’s fingers tightened around her raffle ticket. “That’s a terrible strategy.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like being impressed.”

“Everyone likes being impressed.”

“Not by people who are trying.”

His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes. “What if I’m not trying?”

For one suspended moment, the noise of the hall seemed to recede. She noticed the faint shadow along his jaw, the warmth of his arm near hers, the clean cedar scent that had followed him all evening. Her pulse stumbled - not wildly, not dramatically, but enough for her to resent it.

Then the coordinator announced the next auction item, and the moment broke.

Ember reached for her water. “You’re flirting.”

“I’m talking.”

“You talk like that to everyone?”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly to dismiss.

She set the glass down. “Why me?”

Damian’s expression lost its teasing edge. “Because you don’t make it easy.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the honest one.”

She looked away. Outside, rain ticked against the tall windows, turning the town’s streetlamps into blurred gold. Ember had spent months assuming Damian enjoyed the joke because it cost him nothing. He could sit beside her, make her laugh, then return to his office and his orderly life.

She had no idea what his life looked like beyond these rooms.

The thought arrived quietly: she wanted to know.

Not because the town wanted her to. Not because the mayor kept smiling. Because Damian had just won a basket of jam to impress her and seemed genuinely uncertain whether it had worked.

“What do you do when you’re not being arranged beside me?” she asked.

He leaned back. “Work. Read. Pretend I’m going to start running again.”

“You look like you run.”

“I look like I lift things and regret them.”

She laughed, and his eyes warmed.

“What about you?” he asked. “What do you do when you’re not rescuing citizens from bad decisions?”

“Work. Sleep when I can. Avoid town fundraisers.”

“You’re failing at the last one.”

“I’m aware.”

“Do you like being a police officer?”

The question was gentler than she expected. Most people asked about the job because they wanted a story. Damian asked as if he wanted the truth.

Ember traced the edge of her paper cup. “I like helping. I don’t like what people think that means.”

“What do they think it means?”

“That I’m fearless.”

He waited.

She swallowed. “I’m not.”

The admission seemed to change the air between them. Damian didn’t rush to fill it with reassurance. He didn’t tell her she was brave, or strong, or anything else that would turn fear into a compliment and make it easier to ignore.

Instead, he said, “Neither am I.”

She looked at him.

His thumb rubbed once over the edge of the raffle strip. “People assume lawyers aren’t afraid because we stand up in rooms and argue. Mostly, we’re afraid of being wrong in public.”

“That sounds less dangerous.”

“It is. Still unpleasant.”

A smile tugged at her mouth, but it faded when she saw the sincerity in his face.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked.

Damian glanced toward the platform, where the coordinator was thanking donors. “Getting something important wrong and not being able to repair it.”

The answer settled between them.

Ember had expected confidence from him, not confession. She had expected the town’s matchmaking to feel silly and invasive. Instead, she was sitting beside a man who had just admitted that control could fail him.

She wanted to ask what he had gotten wrong.

She wanted to ask whether he was talking about her.

Before she could, the mayor appeared at their table with two fresh drinks and a satisfied smile.

“See?” she said. “You two make a lovely pair.”

Ember’s guard snapped back into place.

“Don’t,” she said.

The mayor’s smile faltered. “I only meant - ”

“I know what you meant. You’ve all meant it for months.” Ember stood, her chair knocking against Damian’s. “We’re not a community project.”

Silence spread outward from the table.

Damian rose too, but he didn’t touch her. “Ember.”

She looked at him, breathing hard.

He could have laughed it off. He could have told her not to make a scene. Instead, he faced the mayor.

“She’s right,” he said. “You should have asked.”

The mayor’s cheeks colored. “We thought you two might - ”

“That doesn’t make it yours to arrange,” Ember said.

The mayor lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

The apology was real enough to take some of the heat from Ember’s anger, but not all of it. She sat again because leaving would make the room watch her escape. Damian followed, his shoulder almost touching hers.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Then he slid the basket of preserves toward her.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Sharing the spoils.”

Despite herself, she looked at him.

His voice dropped. “For the record, I didn’t ask them to seat me beside you.”

“I know.”

“I also didn’t object.”

Her breath caught.

“Why not?” she asked.

Damian held her gaze. “Because I like talking to you.”

The hall remained bright and noisy around them, but Ember felt suddenly separate from it, as if the two of them had stepped behind a curtain no one else could see.

She wanted to believe him.

That was the trouble.

“Maybe I like talking to you too,” she said.

His eyes moved over her face, careful and intent. “Maybe?”

“Don’t get greedy.”

“I’m a lawyer. Greedy is implied.”

She smiled, but uncertainty stayed beneath it. The town had pushed them together so insistently that she no longer knew which feelings belonged to her and which had been planted by other people’s expectations.

Damian seemed to understand. He didn’t reach for her. He simply sat beside her, close enough to choose and far enough to let her choose too.

When the fundraiser ended, he walked her toward the doors through a crush of coats and umbrellas. At the entrance, rain whispered over the pavement, cool air slipping beneath the hall’s warm fragrance.

“I can drive you home,” he said.

“I’m parked across the street.”

“So am I.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.”

She looked at him beneath the yellow porch light. For months, the town had been trying to make a decision for them. Tonight, for the first time, Damian had handed the decision back.

Ember should have said good night.

Instead, she glanced toward the dark street, then back at him.

“Walk with me,” she said.

His smile was quiet, almost careful. “All right.”

They stepped into the rain together, not touching, while behind them the town hall glowed with the warmth of a plan Ember had never agreed to - and a conversation she wasn’t ready to stop wanting.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 11,440 words in the full book.