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That landed.

Cole was quiet for a long time.

“I’m not telling you what to do. You know that. I just think you should make sure you’re leaving because you want to go, not because it’s easier than staying.”

Captain looked between them. His tail moved once.

Jackson picked up his coffee. “I’ll be at the bay in you need me.”

He left.

Cole stood in his kitchen and looked at the coffee and the window and the town and thought about Jackson saying make sure you’re leaving because you want to go.

He thought about Engine 54. About Rivera’s texts and his captain’s held spot and the city that made sense.

He thought about the town. How they’d rallied together to help one another. Coordinated deliveries. Made sure everyone was warm and safe. He thought about that snowball fight. The trophy that was on his back porch, staying cold. And about a girl he’d loved before he’d understood what the word meant.

He picked up his phone.

THIRTY-NINE

EMILY

Wednesday, December 23rd

Emily was back to baking nonstop. She told herself that it had to be this way. Christmas was two days away, and the holiday orders kept coming in.

She’d frosted dozens of sugar cookies—oversized mittens, snowflakes, and Christmas trees. Made mini chocolate yule logs swirled with whipped cream, peppermint bark brownies, and raspberry jam thumbprint cookies, not to mention the massive order of dinner rolls for the inn’s Christmas dinner, plus her annual cookie boxes that people bought as gifts. Emily had a whole station going with ribboned boxes and tissue paper.

If her mom hadn’t dropped her off a club sandwich from her café, she wouldn’t have even known it was dinner.

But she also couldn’t lie to herself. She knew she needed to talk to Cole. But that had been easier said than done. He hadn’t yet returned a single one of her calls or texts. He needed space. She’d gotten that message loud and clear.

Still, she hated that he was avoiding her.

The scene from the Kettle replayed endlessly in her head, like a bad dream she couldn’t wake from.

The table. Cole’s face. The careful, controlled way he’d stood up and said the true thing—I was falling in love with you—and the way she’d sat there in the wreckage of it and said nothing. Absolutely nothing.

She punched the dough.

Cassidy had been right. About the pattern, the Gingerbread Jerk, the way Emily reached for the nearest weapon the moment she was scared. She’d heard all of it, and she knew it was true, and she still hadn’t had the chance to apologize.

If he didn’t call her back today, she was going to walk down to the fire station and hope he’d let her through the door.

Her phone buzzed.

Madison: Call me when you can. It’s not urgent but it’s important.

Emily called.

Madison picked up on the second ring. “So Jackson came by the inn this morning to return something and Zach was there, and Jackson mentioned—” She paused, in the way Madison paused when she was choosing how to deliver something. “He said Cole talked about going back to New York.”

Emily’s hands stopped in the dough.

“What?”

“He said Cole might call his old captain. Take his spot back at the station in the city.”