“Let me help,” I say, even though I’m already moving toward the worktable. “Next year. And the next. And in the in-between, too.”
His breath leaves him, soft and almost a laugh. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I pick up a roll of brown kraft paper and the good scissors—the heavy ones that cut clean. “What’s left?”
He joins me at the table, shoulder brushing mine. “One more box,” he says, nodding at a small stack of storybooks and a knitted hat the exact blue of a winter sky. “Something to start the new year with. A tradition of our own.”
We work in peaceful silence. He measures the paper perfectly without a ruler. I crease each fold with the side of my finger theway he does, and he grins like I’ve passed a test I didn’t know I was taking. When the last corner tucks in neat and square, he holds out the twine.
I loop it once, twice, tie a bow, and fuss with the tails. He slides a blank tag toward me, passing me a marker.
“Who's it for?” I ask.
His shoulder nudges mine. “Write, ‘For Next Year.’ We’ll fill in the name when we find it.”
My throat does that tight thing again. I print the words slowly, carefully, like if I do it right, the future will read them exactly the way we mean them. For Next Year.
He watches my hand. Or maybe he’s watching the way it doesn’t shake.
When I set the marker down, his palm covers my wrist, turning it so the green bow faces up, satin catching the lights. He leans in and presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse jumps.
“Blue.”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for opening the door.”
“I just pushed it,” I say, which is true and not at all the point.
He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, then the corner of my mouth, then my mouth, slow and certain, like he has all the time in the world to make this a habit. Twinkle lights glow against the windowpane, and the tape gun gleams, and the wrapped gift sits between us with its tidy bow and promise.
When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine. His breath smells like peppermint and coffee and something steadying I can’t name.
“Official workshop crew?” he murmurs.
I slide the tag’s string over my finger and hold it up between us like proof. “I want in. Year-round, if that’s an option.”
“It’s forever,” he says, so quietly I feel it more than hear it, and just like that, the room’s warmth finds my bones.
We set the box on the highest shelf together. He reaches up without effort, but he still lets my hand stay on the bottom like I’m lifting, too. When it’s secure, he doesn’t move away. He just looks at me, then past me at the corkboard, at the note on the receipt.
No one deserves to spend the holidays alone.
I lace our fingers. “I’m glad you chased me.”
His answering smile is slow and devastating, all green eyes and home. “I only wish I’d started running sooner,” he says, tugging me under the strand of fairy lights that drapes the doorway.
I tip my chin toward the arch of the hall, where the tiniest sprig of mistletoe tied with a red ribbon waits like a secret between the seasons.
“Leave it,” I say.
“Wouldn’t dream of touching it,” he says again, and when he kisses me this time—soft and sure and just a little minty—the world goes quiet, the good kind, the kind that hums with all the ways we’ll keep choosing this. And when we switch off the lights, the glow lingers anyway, warm as the promise we wrote on a tag together and tucked on a shelf:
For Next Year.
Chapter 11
McKenna
