I needed help. I needed someone who knew me, who’d seen me at my worst, who could tell me if I was being rational or if I was sabotaging something good because I was too scared to trust again.
My thumb hovered over Mom’s name, my emotions conflicted.
She had left me here in Mistletoe Bay, alone. Had broken her promise to stay. But she’d never lied to me about why. In fact, she'd been heartbreakingly honest in telling me that my dad’s health was the only thing that mattered to her. My mom understood love and commitment. She understood hard decisions and sacrifice.
If anyone could help me untangle this mess, it was her.
I hitcallbefore I could talk myself out of it.
She answered on the second ring. “Sweetheart! How are you? We heard all about the ice storm. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Well, physically fine. The house is freezing because the power’s out, but I’ve got blankets.” I paused, chewing on my lip for a moment, weighing how best to bring this up. “Is now a good time, because I really need to talk to you about something important?”
Her tone shifted immediately from cheerful to concerned. “Of course it is. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly. It’s just …” I pulled a deep breath into my lungs. “I actually met someone.”
“That’s wonderful!” I could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke. “Tell me all about him.”
“His name is Luke. He’s the one I was paired with for the Candlelight Walk. He bought that big Federal on Elm Street—the one that was falling apart?”
“The Crossmore House? I remember reading about the sale. Some tech billionaire, right?”
“That’s him.” I stood and started pacing, a quilt trailing behind me like a cape. “And he’s … Mom, he’s wonderful. He’s brilliant and awkward and he drove through the storm yesterday because he was worried about me. And last night we …” I trailed off, feeling my face heat even though she couldn’t see me.
“Oh, honey, you slept with him,” she said, her voice taking on that particular tone that often scandalized my grandmother, her mother-in-law.
My mom had always been unapologetically sex-positive, a second-wave feminist who’d spent my teenage years ranting about how the patriarchy used shame and purity culture to keep women down.
“Yeah.” I stopped pacing and closed my eyes, bringing up images of my night with Luke in my mind. “And it wasincredible. Like, embarrassingly good. And afterward, he told me he loved me.”
“That’s … that’s fast.”
My mom, bless her heart, had zero issues with a one-night stand. But love? That was more complicated.
I opened my eyes and moved to the window, staring out at the frozen neighborhood. “I know it might seem that way. We’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks. But Mom, it doesn’tfeelfast. It feels like …” I struggled to find the words to match my feelings, settling simply on: “It feels right. Or it did, until this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
So I told her—about how we met, how we’d grown close, about the dinner at Rosa’s, kissing him on my front porch, about the dating app Luke had built, about the algorithm’s startling accuracy, about how he’d run our profiles and discovered we were a 98.7 percent match—so high it’d made him look for a glitch in his code. And then, when there wasn’t one, how he’d kept that information from me for days.
When I finished, there was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Mom?”
“I’m here. I’m just processing.” I heard the scrape of a stool leg against tile, followed by the distant bark of their dog. “Hush, Biscuit,” Mom said, her voice muffled like she’d covered the phone. Then, clearer: “So let me see if I understand correctly. This man, this Luke, told you he loves you, and you’re what—sitting there in your freezing house trying to talk yourself out of believing him?”
I blinked at her bluntness. “It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it? Holly, what did you tell me about Eric?”
I thought back to the many days I’d stayed holed up in my parents’ house—in my childhood bed—crying and raving abouthow I’d given that man my youth and all I got in return was a shitty t-shirt that read “bride” in pink rhinestones.
“I said a lot of things, Mom.”
“You did, but the one that stuck with me was that you never saw it coming.” You said he’d been lying to you foryears, Holly.Years.”
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. “I know, but?—”
