But what would I say?Hey, I haven’t told you this, but I had an interview with the university I always wanted, and I’m chasing a life that doesn’t include you, doesn’t include Wishing Tree, but could you please listen to my angsting anyway?
No. I couldn’t do that to him. Not when I’d seenthe way his face softened every time he looked at his store, at those kids, at the lantern glowing in the center. This town was his anchor. And I was restless and pretending I could stay.
I stopped at the window, staring out at Main Street, muffled in snow. Wes was probably next door, reading some impossible YA fantasy, cocoa in hand, bobble hat discarded on the sofa, waiting to open the store for any tourist trade.
For a moment, the ache in my chest was so sharp I had to grip the sill to steady myself.
LA was everything I’d told myself I wanted. So why did a career closer to Wishing Tree feel like everything I needed?
No.
This wasn’t all about Wishing Tree.
It was Wes.
The day was long, even if it was Sunday and the coffee shop closed at three, I wasn’t working on my own, Jamie was at one end of the counter and I was the other, and we barely spoke to each other with a satisfying and steady stream of tourists, plus the regulars.
When I went up to my apartment, I was tired, and it didn’t help that I couldn’t shake the weight of LA’scall—the dean’s thin smile, the steepled fingers, the talk of“legacy.”I shoved my coat on before I could talk myself out of it and crossed the alley. I had no excuse lined up to see Wes, but I knocked anyway.
He opened the door as if he’d been standing there, all bundled up in a coat—a real one, not a cloak this time— blinked at me, then grinned as if I was exactly the person he’d been expecting.
“Perfect timing. I was about to come and get you to go for a walk.”
I frowned. “In the snow?”
“Especially in the snow. Come on, grump. You need it more than I do.”
We went back to my place, didn’t stop for kissing much to my disappointment, and dressed warmly. I let him tug me into the evening, our boots crunching on the fresh powder, my bad mood trailing behind like a stubborn shadow. We ended up in the center of town, where The Wishing Tree glowed at the heart of the square, ribbons already fluttering in the cold air. Wes pressed a strip of red silk into my glove with a card and a pen.
“Your turn to wish,” he said.
“I don’t?—”
“No arguments. Everyone in Wishing Tree makes at least one.”
I stared at the blank card as though it might biteme. Wes didn’t push, just wrote something and then tied his own with quick fingers. I scribbled something in the dark and knotted it beside his. The street light turned the silk almost golden. I’d wished for a future I wasn’t ready to decide on, but I couldn’t stop myself from making a wish for the man I would be leaving behind.
We ambled past the pond, where fairy lights rimmed the boards and tourists, young and old, shrieked in chaotic joy. A teenager hit the ice hard, scrambled up laughing, his friends wheeling around to haul him back into motion.
“Why does everyone else make skating look easy?” Wes muttered, linking his arm through mine.
I huffed out a laugh. “Maybe if we practiced…”
Wesley fake shuddered. “Not happening.”
Further down, towards the school, a crooked row of snowmen lined the path, each one more absurd than the last—one in sunglasses, one with a carrot nose the size of a shovel handle, one with a scarf wound six times around its lopsided head.
Wes stopped, delighted. “Okay, this is art.”
Before I could argue, he yanked me into place beside him, pulled out his phone, and snapped a picture with the whole ridiculous army behind us. He looked at the screen, grinned, and shoved it into his pocket like a treasure.
I let him.
We ended up outside The Gift Emporium, where Bailey’s decorations filled the window in dazzling detail. According to the information board in the bottom left-hand corner, this year’s theme was Stories in Snow—silhouettes in silver strung through frosted branches and crystal stars. Castles and dragons, all glowing with backlit magic.
Wes pressed close to the glass, his breath fogging a small circle as he leaned in. “God, he outdid himself this year.”
I didn’t look at the window. I looked at Wes—wide-eyed with wonder, reflected light in his gaze, snowflakes caught in his hair. He belonged here, every inch of him.
