Greg dissolved mid-wave, his leisure suit shimmering into nothing. The teenager vanished, powder-blue polo the last thing to go. The Rubik's cube guy disappeared with what might have been a faint pop. One by one, every romantic possibility she'd ever entertained winked out of existence.
The sidewalk was empty. Her phone was silent. It was just us.
Just her and me and the terrifying possibility of something real.
She was standing there, waiting for my answer, looking at me like I held something precious in my hands.
I reached out and took hers.
"I'm not easy," I warned her. "I'm grumpy. I'm set in my ways."
"I'm terrified. I'll probably panic at least once a week."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It absolutely will be."
I pulled her closer. Looked at this ridiculous, chaotic, brave woman who had somehow crashed through every wall I'd built.
"I can work with exhausting," I said. "As long as you keep choosing."
"Every day," she promised. "As many times as it takes."
And then I kissed her.
From inside the shop, the radio crackled to life. Not Barry Manilow this time—something soft, something hopeful. Jazz, but the romantic kind. The kind that saidfinally, you idiot.
She's chaos incarnate. She talks constantly. She has seven shampoos. She wears orange like it's a personal challenge.
And she chose ME. Out of everyone. Out of every option the universe threw at her. She chose to stay.
I'm never letting her go.
13
EPILOGUE
NEXT WITCH UP
An epilogue. A beginning. A glowing bottle that's about to ruin someone's carefully controlled life.
Valentina Torres had not slept wellin twenty-three years.
This was not a complaint. This was simply a fact, like the weather or the harvest schedule or the absolute necessity of color-coded spreadsheets. Sleep was for people who didn't have a vineyard to run, twin sons to raise, and a reputation as the most terrifyingly competent woman in Northern Virginia wine country to maintain.
She was fifty-two years old. She'd been widowed at twenty-nine, pregnant with twins, with nothing but a small vineyard her husband's family had dismissed as "that hobby property" and a stubbornness that bordered on pathological. Twenty-three years later, Torres Vineyard was one of the most respected small wineries in the region, her sons were grown and moderately functional adults, and Valentina had exactly zero patience for anything that deviated from her carefully constructed plans.
Which was why the man currently standing in her tasting room—three days early, without notice, holding a thermos of what appeared to be his own wine—was testing every limit of her self-control.
"Your contract states arrival on the fifteenth," she said, clipboard in hand because she always had a clipboard in hand. "Today is the twelfth."
The man smiled. It was an infuriating smile—the kind that suggested he found her irritation charming rather than warranted.
"Does it?" He had an Irish accent. Of course he had an Irish accent. "Time is a fluid concept, Ms. Torres."
"Time is not fluid. Time is organized into hours, days, and contractual obligations." She consulted her clipboard, though she'd already memorized every detail. "Ronan Burke. Vintner consultant. Recommended by three colleagues whose judgment I'm now seriously questioning."
"Ah, you've done your research."
