“Thinking about Thanksgiving decorations,” I said, then gave him a bright smile before we headed around to the back entrances to our shops. There was a box hidden on my side of the dumpster, and I picked it up. The logo featured a coffee bean, and the box was heavy. “Think these are yours?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “One day, the delivery drivers will get our doors right,” he said, took them from me, and smiled. “See you in the morning.”
Then he waited for me to go inside. “Night,” I offered, and closed my door, standing with my back to it for a while. Where his back door opened to a kitchen, mine opened to books in piles, and a hotchpotch ofdecorations. Where his was pristine steel surfaces, sinks, and ovens, mine was as messy as my mind on any given day when I dumped things in there.
It comforted me in ways I couldn’t explain to anyone, but I couldn’t focus because all I could think about was that he was leaving.
I didn’t like that one little bit.
The next morning, I still couldn’t shake the hollow feeling in my stomach. Hunter’s news had been tossed out so casually it hadn’t meant anything to him, even though it had carved me open. I woke with the ache still gnawing, carried it with me down into my higgledy-piggledy storeroom, determined to focus on what Icouldcontrol. Starting with digging out the Thanksgiving and fall decorations before I opened at nine.
I’d spent nearly two years bugging Hunter, watching him, wanting him in ways I’d never felt before. I’d never told him—I didn’t know how, and he wasn’t the easiest person to talk to—but I thought I had more time. Now that time felt like it was slipping through my fingers, leaving me raw and restless as I stacked boxes and tried to lose myself in the cluttered storeroom.
It was only when I checked in thefinal box, because I didn’t label anything, that my good intentions not to think about Hunter began to slide.
Hunter was leaving. The thought kept circling in my brain, refusing to let me go. I came up with half a dozen elaborate plans to make him stay—somehow convincing the mayor to offer him free rent or petitioning the whole town to sign a letter begging him not to leave, or maybe tricking him into agreeing to run a joint summer festival with me so he couldn’t escape for another six months. None of it made any sense, and as each idea fizzled out, so did my hope. In the end, I just deflated, left standing in my storeroom, hugging a box of decorations as if it could anchor me against the fear of losing him. Honestly, I could really use a coffee to dull the ache.
Get coffee. See Hunter.
I grabbed the pile of Nordic folklore books I’d been collecting, and with Brooke covering the store for ten minutes, I pushed into The Real McCoy like a man on a mission. Hunter gave me that long-suffering look that meant he was seconds away from slipping out the back.
“Morning! How’s your head?”
He blinked at me, slow and wary, then gave a small nod. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” I stepped closer and lowered my voice, “You look tired.”
“Aftereffects of the headache,” he murmured. I’m okay.”
I leaned in, softer this time. “You’re still here, though, and seeing my favorite sleepy bear makes my morning better.”
“‘Sleepy bear’?”
“Like a bear who hasn’t had his honey yet.”
He huffed a small laugh. “Bears don’t actually eat much honey, you know. It’s mostly bugs and berries. Honey’s more of a cartoon thing.”
I beamed at him. “Fine. Then you’re a sleepy bear who hasn’t woken up with his berries yet.”
That earned me the faintest quirk of his lips, almost a smile, and I grinned at him. “Can I have a coffee before I waste away right here on your floor?”
He rolled his eyes but turned to the counter, the ghost of amusement still tugging at his mouth. “One coffee. Coming up.”
I spread the books I’d brought with me across the nearest table to the counter and flipped one open to a page about yule goats and trolls. He brought over my coffee, and before he could even think of leaving, I tapped the picture. “Trolls.”
“What about them?”
“Very Nordic, and we could make signs that your glögg will be one hundred percent troll-approved.”
He groaned. “I said I’m not doing this with you.”
I lowered my tone. “But it could be your last Christmas.”
He winced and glanced around him, but the parent and baby group was over on the other side of the café, and there was no one else in right now. “Wesley?—”
“See this?” I asked, and nudged an old, battered-looking mug toward him. Handmade with love, it was one of my little brother’s first-ever throws and about the only thing I’d taken from the family home. Kinder memories of better days when I was still in the closet and they still wanted me around. God knows why I took it when I left—hell, I barely had room for my books in my two suitcases, but yep, the misshapen mug came with me. “My youngest brother made this, way back when he was maybe six?”
“Okay?” he asked, waiting for me to expand.
