“I’m sorry too.” His thumb traced gentle circles on my cheek. “For not telling you about the fundraising from the start. I should’ve been upfront, should’ve trusted you to handle it. I was trying to do it right, but I ended up making it weird instead.”
“You did do it right. If I’d known, we both know I’d have been stupid about it.” My voice trembled with the weight of everything I’d been too scared to acknowledge. “You’re doing everything right. You’ve been doing everything right this whole time. I’m just… I’m catching up to what my heart already knew.”
His hand slid to the back of my neck, fingers tangling gently in my hair while his thumb brushed the sensitive skin beneath my ear. The touch sent shivers down my spine, grounding me in this moment, in him. “You okay?”
“I will be.” I meant it for the first time in weeks. “As long as you don’t give up on me figuring this out. On figuring out how to be someone who can accept good things when they happen.”
A small, crooked smile touched his mouth—that boyish grin that had been undoing me since day one. “Never.”
I let out a shaky laugh that was equal parts relief and disbelief. “I’m a little bit of an idiot.”
He framed my face with both hands now, warm palms holding me like I was something precious. “Maybe about this one tiny thing. But a very adorable, hardworking, stubborn-as-hell, wonderful idiot who makes the best coffee in three counties and has never once backed down from a challenge.”
My breath caught on a laugh that was half relief, half amazement that this man could see all my flaws and still look at me like I hung the moon. “I’ll work on it. The idiot part, I mean. The rest I’m keeping.”
“Good.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’m pretty fond of the whole package.”
Then he kissed me.
Not like the frantic, desperate kisses in the barn when we were both running on adrenaline and want. Not like the tentative, questioning one in his kitchen when neither of us knew where we stood. This one was slow and sure and savoring—like he was kissing me with the knowledge that I wasn’t running this time, that I was here and choosing this and him. His lips moved against mine with a tenderness that made my knees weak, and I melted into him like I’d been waiting my whole life for this exact moment.
The lights of the Twelve Stops Christmas market glowed behind us, casting everything in soft winter magic, and somewhere in the distance, Esmerelda brayed approvingly like the world’s most chaotic fairy goddonkey who’d been orchestrating this whole thing from the beginning.
When we finally drew apart, foreheads touching and breathing ragged, the whole evening seemed to settle around us in a warm, shimmering hush. The kind of quiet that felt full instead of empty, pregnant with possibility instead of doubt.
He squeezed my waist gently, his hands warm through my jacket. “We okay now?”
I nodded, breath warm against his mouth, close enough to count his eyelashes in the twinkling light. “Yeah,” I whispered. “We’re okay.”
Better than okay. We were choosing this—together, with eyes wide open and hearts finally honest.
And for the first time in a long time, that felt like something I could trust.
EPILOGUE
POWELL
New Year’s Eve in Huckleberry Creek had its own kind of magic—quieter and less chaotic than the Twelve Stops. It was more like the aftermath of a good storm when the air is scrubbed clean and everything seemed possible again. Lights still criss-crossed the square, all warm gold. The gazebo had been transformed into a little winter stage where half the town had taken turns performing. Kids ran around with glow sticks. Somebody’s dog wore a sequined bow tie. Typical.
What wasn’t typical was standing in the middle of it with Jess’s hand in mine.
Not because she was trying to warm it or because she needed an escort or because we happened to be walking in the same direction. No. Her fingers were tangled with mine simply because she liked it. Because she wanted to. Because she’d pulled my hand to hers the moment she stepped out of my truck earlier that evening like it was the most natural thing in the world.
That small, quiet certainty—she wants to—hit harder than anything else had in the last two weeks.
She’d done the Twelve Stops debrief meeting yesterday, leaning against the counter in my kitchen with her hair in amessy knot and her glasses sliding down her nose while she talked through what went well and what she wanted to improve next year. We’d eaten leftover Christmas cookies for lunch and kissed next to the sink like teenagers until we’d ended up being very,verylate to grocery shopping. She’d teased me about my spice alphabetization; I’d teased her about her color-coded refrigerator sticky notes. Ordinary things. Mundane things. Beautiful things.
Tonight was more of the same. Not fireworks or declarations or sweeping romantic gestures, just this steady, warm presence beside me in a way that made my chest seem too full sometimes.
Her cheeks and nose were bright from the cold. Every few minutes she lifted our joined hands to tuck them into one pocket of her coat like she was hoarding warmth. My warmth. I didn’t mind. I would’ve given her my entire coat if she’d asked, but she’d rolled her eyes and kissed my cheek when I tried.
She glanced up at me as we navigated around a group of teenagers trying to master some TikTok dance move in front of the gazebo. “Are you cold?”
“Not even a little.” It was almost true. The night had the sharp, bright kind of cold that woke you up instead of numbing you, but the heat of her leaning into my side was more than enough to counter it.
She studied me for a second, her brow crinkling with that little line she got when she wasn’t sure she believed me. “You could lie. I wouldn’t know.”
I nudged her lightly with my shoulder. “You’d absolutely know.”
