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Emily was quiet for a moment. She picked up the cloth again, then set it down, like she needed something to do with her hands. The fairy lights caught the side of her face as she turned toward him.

“But first I need to say something I should have said a long time ago.” She took a breath. “Not just the apology on Oak Way. That was—I meant every word of it, but it wasn’t the whole thing.”

Cole leaned against the counter across from her and crossed his arms, waiting patiently in that way of his.

“When we were kids,” Emily said, “you tried to tell me your grandfather didn’t steal those cookies. And I didn’t listen. I didn’t even consider it. I just—decided you were wrong, and when you pushed back, I punched you.” She looked down at her hands. “You were defending your family, and I hit you for it. And then I never spoke to you again. It wasn’t right, but it was easier than admitting I might not be.”

She met his eyes.

“You were my best friend, Cole. And I threw that away.” Her voice was steady but thin. “I am so sorry. For that day. For every day after it when I could have reached out and didn’t.”

Cole was quiet for a long moment. The kitchen hummed around them—the low buzz of the refrigerators, the tick of the stove cooling, snow falling past the windows in the dark.

“I owe you one too,” he said.

Emily blinked. “For what?”

“I called your grandmother a liar.” He said it plainly. “And I knew how much she meant to you, and I said it anyway because I was angry.” He paused. “I was right that my grandfather didn’t steal those cookies. But I was wrong to accuse your nana. She was a good woman, and I shouldn’t have stooped so low.”

Emily stared at him.

“I’ve thought about that more than you’d probably guess,” he said quietly.

“Cole—”

“So if we’re clearing the books,” he said, “that’s mine.”

Emily pressed her lips together. Her eyes were bright. She nodded once, and emotions that had been knotted between them for seventeen years loosened.

“I’ve been watching you,” she said. “Since you came back. Since before the blizzard, if I’m being truthful. I watched you show up for this town—and I kept telling myself it was just your job. Or that you were proving a point. That you’d leave the moment something better came along.” She paused. “But that’s not what I was actually thinking.”

“What were you actually thinking?” he asked.

“That you’re a good man.” She said it plainly. “That you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known. And that I’ve wasted a lot of time being angry at you when I could have been—” She stopped. Her jaw worked. “I care about you, Cole. Not because of today, not because of this past week. I think I have for a while. I just wasn’t ready to say it.”

He reached up and cupped her face in both hands, the way he’d been thinking about doing since she’d looked at him across the bakery with her certificate in her hands and something new and unguarded in her eyes. He kissed her slowly, with none of the fury of the pantry floor and none of the careful restraint of the dark bakery after midnight. Just this—Emily, finally—both of them meaning it.

She made a sound against his mouth that he felt in his chest, and her hands slid under his shirt, warm against his skin, and the combination of that and the quiet kitchen and the Christmas lights through the window and everything this day that was almost too much to hold in one place.

He pulled back enough to look at her.

“No more pretending,” she said, before he could say anything. Her hands were still at his waist, her eyes on his. “I want this. I want us. Whatever that looks like.”

“It looks like this,” he said. “Starting now.”

He kissed her again, and this time neither of them was in any hurry.

She led him to the back of the kitchen, away from the windows, the Christmas lights still casting their soft color through the glass. The air was warm from all the baking, the smell of the cinnamon spice cookies still hanging in the air, the cooling racks still holding the winning batch. Emily’s grandmother’s recipe card was on the counter between the mixing bowls.

Cole glanced at it as they passed.

Emily saw him look.

“She always liked you,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”

“Is that so.”

“She liked people who showed they cared.” Emily turned to face him, her back against the prep table, looking up at him in the low light. “You care, Cole.”