I stare at her. This woman who showed up in my life like a pink tornado, glitter in her veins, eyes full of fire. I thought she was ridiculous.
Turns out she’s just… holding on. Like me.
I slide my hand across the table and wrap it around hers. Her fingers freeze for a second. Then curl around mine.
“I used to decorate,” I say quietly. “When I was stationed in Afghanistan, one of the guys would string up tinsel and the medics would bake cookies out of whatever MREs we had lying around. It was a mess. But it made the bunk smell like home. Some guys hated it. Said it reminded them of everything they were missing. But not me. I liked the distraction.”
She blinks at me. “You’re… full of surprises.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
I squeeze her hand once before letting go, standing to grab a box of firewood. “Come on. If we’re stuck in this cabin, might as well give you your damn Hallmark moment.”
She blinks. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re doin’ more decorating.”
“You’re serious?”
I kick the door open. “Grab your twinkle lights, tinsel girl. I’m about to string these trees up so good they’ll make Santa blush.”
Her eyes go wide. Then sparkle. She leaps up from the table like a kid on Christmas morning. “You better not back out. I’ve got light-up reindeer. You will regret this.”
“No promises,” I grunt, but I can’t hide the grin tugging at my mouth.
Ten minutes later, we’re outside, the snow knee-deep, and she’s yelling instructions from the porch while I grunt and haul wood and lights and curse under my breath. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But her laugh?
Worth it.
I wrap the lights around the porch railing and climb halfway up the support beam to hang a glowing wreath. She hoots from below. “Okay, lumberjack. Didn’t know you were part mountain goat.”
I look down. “You keep staring at my ass, Hart?”
She winks. “You’re the one in tight jeans.”
I make it back down without falling. Barely. She’s waiting with two mugs of hot cider, cheeks pink from the cold, hair wild, eyes bright. She holds one out.
“To surrendering to the Christmas spirit?”
“To you being a menace,” I say, but I take the mug.
She giggles, and for a moment, I forget that this is all temporary. That she’ll leave. That this is a woman I’ve known less than a week.
Because it feels like I’ve known her for years.
We sit on the steps, sipping cider, her thigh brushing mine. The trees glitter with lights, the snow sparkles like someone dusted it with sugar. And for once, the silence between us doesn’t feel like solitude.
It feels like peace.
Chapter 11
Noel
The real mistletoe hangs crooked above the cabin door like it knows it’s part of some fate-spun conspiracy. I swear I didn’t hang it. At least, not this one. This is Nash’s doing.
The man who told me to take my fairy lights and shove them now struts around his own front porch with a sprig of parasitic greenery tacked up like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I stand there, cocoa in hand, peacoat unbuttoned and snowflakes catching in my lashes, waiting for him to say something. Or move. Or look at me like he did last night—like I was the storm outside and he couldn’t wait to get swept up in me.
