Afterward, we lie tangled together in the glow of the firelight spilling through the open door. Our skin is slick with sweat, the covers twisted low around our hips. His breath moves steady beneath me, one arm hooked tight around my waist like he has no intention of letting go.
I press a lazy kiss to his shoulder, tasting salt and skin. The afterglow hums deep through every inch of me. The world beyond these walls is gone. There’s only the way his hand curves possessively along my hip, the way his thumb traces idle circles on my thigh, the soft, sleepy sound he makes when I shift against him. My cheek rests against his chest. His hand strokes the curve of my hip.
I close my eyes, sinking into the warmth of his skin, the heavy press of his arm around me, the slow thrum of his heartbeat beneath my cheek and the knowledge that I’m not leaving.
His voice breaks the silence, quiet and certain. “You didn’t just fit into my life, Claire. You became part of it. You became mine.”
I smile without opening my eyes. “You mean besides knocking over your whole emotional structure like a Christmas snow globe?”
He chuckles low in his throat, and the sound vibrates against my cheek. “Exactly that.”
I shift enough to look at him. His hair is messy, his eyes soft and steady on mine. “You still okay with the mess?”
“I want it,” he says. “Every part of it. Of you. This… us. Here.”
The fire pops, a warm hush under the wind outside. It doesn’t feel lonely anymore. It feels as if it’s holding us close. I stretch my legs under the quilt until my toes brush his. He catches my calf, his fingers grazing my skin before he tucks my foot against his thigh, like he can’t stand even an inch of distance between us.
I breathe in the scent of him. Woodsmoke, pine, something soft that smells like home. I think of everything I left behind. The clicks, the noise, the temporary dopamine hits that burned out fast and left me empty. All of that is gone now, traded for this warm, wild quiet where I don’t have to perform to feel seen.
I kiss the side of his neck and whisper, “Merry Christmas, mountain man.”
His hand finds mine under the covers, our fingers lacing together like a promise that doesn’t need any more words. “Best damn Christmas I’ve ever had.”
And for the first time in years, I believe it. It’s not just believing in him, not just in us, but in the choice I made to stay and trade the noise for this hush. I traded the city for the mountain and the temporary for something real and rough and ours in the wild, beautiful life we’re about to make together.
Chapter eight
Epilogue - Claire - One Year Later
It’s the morning of Christmas Eve. I wake to the scent of cinnamon, and the voice of Bing Crosby.
Jax hums at the stove, shirtless despite the cold, making the same cinnamon oats as last year. The Christmas tree glows with our ornaments, each one a chapter of our story.
"Morning, wife." He doesn't turn, but I hear his smile.
Wife. Three months married. The word still makes me smile.
We’re at the holiday market where the air smells like roasted chestnuts and sugared snow.
Somewhere behind me, a brass quartet plays a warm, unhurried version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The music threads through laughter and sleigh bells. The whole square glows, the sidewalks edged with candlelit lanterns and evergreen garlands dusted with frost. Booths line the edgesof the festival like gingerbread houses, each one draped in twinkling white lights and ribbon. Red and gold bows hang from pine-bough arches, and shopfront windows flicker with candlelight behind painted snowflakes.
I pull my scarf tighter, the wool brushing my cheeks, and slow near a booth where a little girl in a green velvet coat tugs on her mother’s sleeve to point at a hand-painted rocking horse. The vendor hands her a peppermint stick with a wink, and the girl grins like Christmas came early.
It kind of did.
Because this time last year, I was standing right here with my phone in one hand and a heart I wasn’t sure how to put back together in the other. I tried to convince myself I was fine, that this place, this town, this man, weren’t meant for me.
I was wrong.
Jax walks beside me now, his gloved hand brushing mine, the bulk of his coat barely hiding the curve of his arm where it wraps protectively around a cloth tote. Inside is something carved and delicate, but I’m not allowed to see it until morning.
“I can hear you thinking,” he says.
“I’m just remembering,” I say, glancing at him from beneath the edge of my knit hat. “This market. Last year.”
His mouth twitches, the beginnings of a smile he usually saves for when we’re alone.
“That was the worst damn moment of my life.”
