Before I could figure out how to respond to that surprisingly wise piece of brotherly advice, Declan appeared through the snow, looking concerned and slightly out of breath.
“Holly,” he said, approaching our bench with obvious worry, “Bernie said you looked upset. Is everything okay?”
I looked up at him and realized that Matt was right. I was tired of letting fear make my decisions.
“Actually,” I said, standing up and brushing cookie crumbs off my coat, “I need to tell you something. But maybe after the festival is over? When we can talk privately?”
Declan’s expression shifted to something that might have been relief mixed with anxiety, like he’d been waiting for this conversation but wasn’t sure he was ready for it.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “Should I be worried?”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But hopefully not for the reasons you think.”
“That’s either very reassuring or completely terrifying,” Declan said with a smile that suggested he was choosing to find humor in the ambiguity.
“Definitely terrifying,” Matt added helpfully. “But in a good way. Probably.”
As the three of us stood there in the snow, surrounded by the magical chaos of a small-town Christmas festival, I realized that tomorrow wasn’t just about a job interview I was planning to cancel. Tomorrow was about being brave enough to choose the life I actually wanted instead of the life I thought I was supposed to want.
And if I was very lucky, that life might include a man who sang Christmas duets with me and made me believe in happy endings.
Even if those happy endings required more courage than I’d thought I possessed.
But as Matt had pointed out, I was tired of letting fear make my decisions. It was time to start making choices based on what would make me happy instead of what would make me safe.
Even if happy was significantly more terrifying than safe, and even if it meant having the most important conversation of my life with someone whose answer could change everything.
Some truths were worth the risk, especially when they came with the possibility of Christmas miracles and small-town love stories that might just last longer than the holidays.
Thirty-One
DECLAN
Career Crossroads
Festival Day2 was officially over, and I was standing in the guest bedroom of my parents’ house, staring at my phone and trying to work up the courage to make the call that would either destroy my legal career or set me free from a life I was no longer sure I wanted.
Richard’s final ultimatum had been clear: decide by five PM or lose my position permanently. It was now eight-thirty PM, which meant I’d officially missed his deadline by three and a half hours. In corporate law terms, this was roughly equivalent to showing up to court in pajamas or forgetting to file important documents—the kind of professional disaster that people talked about in hushed tones for years afterward.
Strangely, the thought of disappointing Richard felt less terrifying than it should have. What felt terrifying was the possibility that I was about to make the biggest decision of my life without knowing if Holly felt the same way about me that I felt about her.
I was reaching for my phone to call Richard and officially end my New York career when I heard voices from downstairs—familiar voices that shouldn’t have been possible, since my parents were supposed to be in Florida until after New Year’s.
“Declan!” came my mother’s voice from the kitchen, bright with obvious excitement. “Come down here, sweetheart! We have a surprise!”
A surprise. In my current emotional state, surprises felt about as welcome as a root canal, but ignoring my mother wasn’t really an option, especially if she and Dad had cut their vacation short for some reason.
I made my way downstairs to find the kitchen looking like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. My parents were standing by the counter, still wearing Florida tans and matching Christmas sweaters that suggested they’d done some serious holiday shopping in Key West. Mom was unpacking what appeared to be enough citrus fruit to stock a grocery store, while Dad was examining our ancient coffee maker with the kind of focused attention that suggested he was planning mechanical improvements.
“Mom? Dad?” I said, trying to process their unexpected presence. “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming back until January.”
“Plans changed,” Mom said cheerfully, pulling me into the kind of enthusiastic hug. “We decided we wanted to be home for Christmas with our family.”
I raised a suspicious eyebrow.
Looked like someone who lived next door had been chatting to their old friends about their kids.
“Mom,” I said carefully, “what exactly is this?”
