“I already have.” I took a breath. “I’ve spent my whole life chasing the next launch, the next promotion, the next reason to feel worthy. And I’m done. I want this. You. This town. This life. I’ll figure out the rest.”
He stared for a heartbeat. Then he kissed me—deep, sure, and right in the middle of the festival, snow swirling around us.
When he pulled back, he was smiling for real. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
Snowflakes caught in his hair as the world sparkled around us—music, laughter, cinnamon-sugar air.
I came to Wildwood Valley to sell cinnamon rolls. I was staying for a future.
EPILOGUE
DEMI
This was my favorite part of Christmas Day.
The chaos was over—the wrapping paper carnage, the sugar highs, the nonstop chatter from our twins—and now it was just me and Torch. Our yearly tradition. Every Christmas night, we snuck away from the cabin, leaving the grandparents to wrangle the kids for a few blissful hours of peace and quiet.
Only this year, peace and quiet came with horsepower.
Torch’s Christmas gift to me sat purring beneath my hands—a fully restored ’65 Corvette convertible, red as Santa’s suit and twice as naughty. The man had outdone himself. Again.
“We could blast the heat and put the top down,” Torch said, fiddling with buttons like a kid unwrapping his own toy.
“Too cold for that,” I said, easing into a curve as the headlights sliced through the dark pines. “Besides, we need the shelter.”
He shot me a look that said he knew exactly what kind of shelter I meant. We were heading for our spot—the third one, technically. The first two had gotten too popular once the town’spopulation doubled, so we’d found a new hideaway. More trees. More privacy. More room to misbehave.
“You think the kids will be okay?” Torch asked as I turned onto the gravel road leading to the overlook.
I smiled. Typical Torch—he missed them already.
“If anything, we should be worried our parents will survive,” I said.
He laughed, the sound low and warm, and my heart did that familiar flip. Hunter and Easton might be six-year-old whirlwinds, but three-year-old Oaklynn could hold her own. One day those boys would guard their little sister like she was royalty, and that thought gave me peace.
I parked beneath a cluster of trees, cutting the engine. The night was still, the kind of cold that made the stars look sharp enough to touch. “Last Christmas” crooned softly from the radio, wrapping us in a cozy kind of nostalgia.
Torch’s hand slid over my thigh. “Want to get in the back seat?”
A slow smile spread across my face. Oh, I’d missed this—the thrill of sneaking away, the giddy rush of feeling like we were still dating instead of nine years deep into marriage. I never got to do the backseat thing in high school, but Torch had been more than happy to make up for lost time.
These days, I had everything I’d ever wanted. A husband who still looked at me like I hung the moon, the spacious cabin that had become home for both of us, and a remote UX design job that let me enjoy mountain life without giving up a career. Torch had his shop, restoring classic cars and flipping them for fun and profit.
And tonight? He had me.
I shook my head, a slow, deliberate smile spreading across my lips. “No. Not the back seat.” I found the lever and slid myseat back as far as the space would allow. “I want to do the front seat this time.”
His eyes—warm whiskey with a hint of mischief—darkened in that way that always made my pulse race. He didn’t need to ask what I wanted. He just reached for the lever and slid his seat back, the soft click of the track somehow louder than the car’s humming engine. The moonlight poured through the windshield, turning the air hazy.
I didn’t break eye contact as I reached over, my fingers finding the cold metal of his zipper. The rasp of it lowering was obscenely loud in the quiet car. As I slipped my hand inside the open fly of his jeans, past the soft cotton of his boxers to find him already hard and eager, he let out a sharp, guttural profanity that was more prayer than curse.
Leaning forward, I took him deep into my mouth. The taste of him, familiar and uniquely Torch, was a heady drug. His hands fisted in my hair, not guiding, just holding on as a low groan rumbled in his chest.
I loved this power, the ability to reduce this strong, steady man to a trembling mess with just my lips and tongue. I loved the sounds he made, the way his hips twitched, the whispered, “God, Demi,” that was barely more than a breath.
He let me love him like that for a few perfect minutes before his hands gentled in my hair, tugging me back. “Wait, baby, wait,” he breathed, his voice ragged. He glanced around, a quick, instinctive check of our secluded sanctuary. “I have to be inside you. Now.”
