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I turned toward him.

“You made me stop long enough to see what I’d been missing. Then everyone else kept showing up.” He glanced through the balcony door, where Frank was arguing with Colette over cider. “Now I understand that staying isn’t signing a lease or finishing a building. It’s coming back tomorrow, even when the meeting runs long and Frank tells me I’m wrong.”

“That sounds less like a word and more like a life.”

“That’s the idea.”

We heard the party through the balcony door—laughter, music, and Colette raising another toast to herself. Inside, everyone waited for midnight. Outside, the year we’d fought through was ending.

“I love you,” Griffin said.

“You’ve said that before.”

“I’m establishing a pattern,” he said, and turned me gently by the shoulders.

“Very romantic.”

“Reliable, though.” He put his forehead against mine and let the noise of the party come up through the floor.

My mouth found his, soft at first and then urgent. His hands framed my face. A car horn celebrated early below us, but neither of us pulled away.

“We should go inside,” I murmured against his mouth.

“We should.”

Neither of us moved.

The music swelled through the door, and Colette announced that midnight was one minute away.

“I want to build the year after the crisis with you,” I said.

“What does that include?”

“The renovation. The shop. All the Tuesdays when nobody needs us to save anything.”

His thumbs moved once over my cheeks. “January starts in one minute.”

“Then you should decide quickly.”

“I’m in.”

I smiled. “Good answer.”

Inside, the room counted down from ten. We turned toward the sound for three, two, one.

Fireworks cracked open somewhere past the water tower. Inside the apartment, the cheer went up, glasses clinked, and noisemakers and Pearl’s whistle sounded. Out on the narrow balcony, Griffin Cole kissed me into the new year with the same certainty he’d brought to signing a lease before he knew how the story ended, and I kissed him back with eight years of interest.

The door burst open. Pearl came out with champagne glasses, followed by Frank with his cider and Ivy with her notebook and Colette with commentary already loaded. “Happy New Year!” Pearl thrust glasses into our hands. “You can’t ring in the year hiding on a balcony. Inside. Both of you. Now.”

We let ourselves be pulled inside, into the crowd of people who had watched us fight and still welcomed us both. Frank raised his basement cider. Owen lifted the advisory committee’s champagne. Rosie, by the window, lifted a tablet, because some things are eternal. “To Holly Creek,” Owen announced. “To the people who stayed when staying was hard.”

“To home,” Frank added.

“To home,” the room said.

I drank with Griffin’s hand at the small of my back, surrounded by faces I knew. Pearl beamed. Ivy wrote the toast down. Colette dabbed her eyes. The apartment had become more than functional, the street below was quiet after its festival, and for once I wasn’t afraid of what came next.

Griffin kissed me again in the middle of the room, and Colette set down her champagne. The oracle was preparing to speak.