“I’m talking to puppies,” I muttered. “This is what my life has become.”
The windshield wipers were losing their battle against the snow. I'd turned the heat up as high as it would go, but the temperature outside was dropping fast, and the wind kept finding ways through the seams of the truck. The mama dog shivered despite my jacket.
Hard to believe that thirty minutes ago, I'd been in a room full of people, warm food, easy laughter. The kind of scene that looked like a Christmas card come to life.
The kind of scene where everyone had someone.
Beckett and Audra, still in that newly engaged glow that made everyone around them feel like they were intruding on something private. Lachlan and Piper, juggling twins and stolen glances. Then some of the old school Resting Warrior Ranch couples: Lucas and Evelyn; Liam and sweet, quiet Mara; Jude and Lena—if he didn’t divorce her after that story she told.
I was happy for them. Genuinely. Every single one of those guys had earned their happiness the hard way, and their women were the kind of people who made you believe in things like fate and second chances.
But it was hard not to notice I was the odd man out. The bachelor uncle at the family reunion, smiling at everyone else’s kids and going home to a refrigerator full of takeout containers.
The thought of her surfaced before I could stop it.
Mia.
The only person who’d ever made the holidays feel like something worth celebrating instead of just another day to get through.
But I’d destroyed that. Six years ago, I’d walked away. For her sake. Because it had been the only way to keep her safe.
The snow swirled against the windshield, and suddenly I wasn't seeing the road anymore. I was seeing string lights. A tiny apartment. Flour in Mia’s hair.
Our second Christmas together. Third year of dating. Her apartment had been the size of a shoebox—a studio in a building that had “character,” which was realtor-speak for “the heating is unreliable and the neighbors are loud.” But she’d made it magic.
String lights everywhere. Wrapped around the window frames, draped across the ceiling, outside on the fire escape that had probably taken more lives than it had saved, tangled in the tiny tree we’d picked out together from a lot that was more mud than pine needles. The whole place glowed like something out of a movie, warm and soft and impossibly perfect.
She’d tried to make cookies.Triedbeing the operative word.
“They’re not burned,” she’d insisted, waving smoke away from the oven while the fire alarm screamed. “They’re... caramelized.”
“Caramelized implies sugar. These are carbon.”
“Watch it, buddy. You’re not allowed to critique my baking when you once microwaved a fork.”
“That was one time. And I was seven.”
“You were twenty-three.”
She’d had flour in her hair. A smudge of dough on her cheek. She was laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the counter, and I’d stood there watching her, thinking I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.
We’d exchanged gifts after the cookie disaster. I’d given her a camera strap she’d been eyeing for months—nice leather, adjustable, the kind of thing she’d never buy for herself because she always put her equipment budget toward lenses and bodies instead of accessories. When she’d opened it, she’d cried. Actually cried.
“You remembered,” she’d whispered.
“Of course I remembered. You mentioned it in August.”
“That was four months ago.”
“And?”
She’d kissed me then, tasting like the wine we’d been drinking and the burned cookies she’d insisted on trying anyway. Then she’d handed me a small wrapped package, watching my face as I opened it.
A leather journal. Simple, well-made, the kind of thing that would age well. Inside the front cover, she’d written:For all the things you can’t say out loud yet. I’ll be here when you’re ready. —M
She’d known. Even then, she’d known I was carrying things I couldn’t put into words. And instead of pushing, instead of demanding I open up before I was ready, she’d just... made space. Given me a place to put it all until I figured out how to share it with her.
I’d never written in that journal. It was still in a box somewhere in my apartment, buried under years of accumulated guilt.
