Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The kiss exploded through Tessa like fireworks on the Fourth of July, like Christmas morning and birthday wishes and every good thing she ever wanted rolled into one perfect moment.
Cade’s hands cradled her face, rough calluses against her skin, anchoring her to this impossible reality where magic was real and cowboys could travel through time, and the man she sent away had come back to her.
His mouth moved against hers with desperate hunger, as if he was trying to make up for every lost hour, every mile, every century that separated them.
She grabbed his shirt, fisting the fabric and pulling him closer. He tasted like promises and forever, like home in a way that had nothing to do with geography and everything to do with the way her soul recognized his.
“You’re really here.” The words came out wobbly, tears rolling down her face. “You came back.”
“You called me.” He brushed away her tears with his thumbs, though more kept falling. “I was lying in my bedroll, missing you so fiercely I couldn’t breathe, and then I felt this heat in my chest. Next thing I knew, I was here.”
“The card—” She remembered suddenly, frantically patting her pockets. Nothing. Her heart stuttered. “Oh God, where is it? I had it at the bar, showed Eliza and Fiona—”
“You have the card?” Cade’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“I picked it up after you disappeared. It was on the rail where you left it. The painting was already fading.” She spun in a circle, searching the barn floor. “It must have fallen out when I was helping Einstein.”
They both scanned the straw-scattered floor. Dark patches marked where water and medicine had spilled, hoof prints pressed deep in the bedding they dragged into the aisle during their struggle.
“There.” Tessa pointed to a corner near Einstein’s stall, where it pale caught the light.
The Christmas card lay face-down in the straw, half-buried under hay.
She picked it up, turned it over. The painting was almost completely gone now, just ghostly hints of mountains, a shadow that might have been a horse. Cade’s figure had dissolved entirely, leaving only blank paper where he once stood proud.
As they watched, the edges began to curl. Not burning exactly, but dissolving, turning to golden dust that sparkled in the barn lights.
“This is what happened to Wyatt’s card,” Tessa whispered. “When he came back for Eliza.”
The dissolution accelerated, the paper crumbling inward like a time-lapse of decay. Gold sparks drifted upward, swirling in the air between them before winking out. Within seconds, nothing remained but a small pile of shimmering ash on the rail.
A breeze that shouldn’t have existed inside the barn swept through, scattering the ash into nothing.
“It’s done.” Cade shook his head. “I can’t go back now, even if I wanted to.”
“Do you?” Her heart hammered against her ribs. “Want to?”
He turned to her, and his storm-gray eyes weakened her knees. “The only thing I want is standing right in front of me, covered in horse medicine and straw, looking like she wrestled a tornado and lost.”
A laugh bubbled up. “I look terrible.”
“You look like mine.” The possessive rumble in his voice sent heat racing through her. “If you’ll have me. A man out of time with no legal identity, no idea how to work that coffee machine in your kitchen.”
“Yes.” The word burst out before he even finished.
“Yes to all of it. Yes to teaching you about coffee makers and cell phones and online banking. Yes to introducing you to movies and explaining why people stare at tiny screens all day. Yes to morning chores and evening rides and building Rent-a-Reindeer into something real together.”
“Together.” He tested the word like he was tasting something sweet. “I like the sound of that.”
She rose on her tiptoes, wound her arms around his neck.
“I’m terrified, you know. I’ve never stuck with anything longer than a few months.
Never wanted anything enough to fight through the hard parts.
But with you...” She pressed her forehead to his.
“With you, I want to try. I want to be the person you see me as.”
“You already are.” His hands settled on her waist. “You stayed with Einstein when he was sick. You didn’t quit the parade even when the whole town bet against you.
You brought me here with the force of your will.
Tessa Mitchell, you’re the strongest, most stubborn, most magnificent woman I’ve ever known. ”
“You’ve known me five days.”
“Five days, five years, five centuries. Doesn’t matter. I knew the moment I saw you in that ridiculous blinking sweater. My soul looked at yours and said, ‘There she is. The one I’ve been waiting for.’”
Fresh tears spilled over her eyelashes. “That’s either the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, or you hit your head during the time travel.”
“Maybe both.” His grin flashed, quick and devastating. “But I mean it. Every word.”
Einstein stuck his head over the stall door and shoved his nose between them, demanding attention. They broke apart laughing.
“Someone’s feeling better.” Tessa scratched the gelding’s neck, relief flooding through her again. Her little troublemaker would be okay. Cade was here to stay. Her business had bookings. Life was terrifyingly, wonderfully perfect.
“He drank all this water.” Cade moved to refill a bucket.
She watched him work, this man from another century who chose her. The overhead lights caught in his dark hair, highlighted the strong line of his shoulders, the competent grace of his movements. He was real. He was hers.
“What?” He raised his head, caught her staring.
“Just thinking about all the things I need to teach you. Driving. Social media.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Oh, it is. Ridiculously, unnecessarily complicated. But also wonderful. There’s so much to show you, Cade.
Music that’ll make your soul ache. Movies that’ll make you cry.
Food from every corner of the world. And dancing, not the formal kind from your time, but the wild, free kind where you just move however feels good. ”
He set down the water bucket and crossed to her in three strides. “Show me.”
“Now? Here?”
“Why not?” He pulled her against him. “We’ve got a barn, we’ve got each other. Don’t we have everything we need?”
She laughed, the sound bright in the quiet barn. “There’s no music.”
“Don’t need it.” He started swaying, just the smallest movement, but she felt it in her whole body. “In my time, sometimes after a long day, someone would bring out a fiddle. We danced under the stars, nothing fancy, just moving together, grateful to be alive.”
She melted into him, letting him guide her in a slow circle. His hand splayed across her lower back, warm through her shirt. Her cheek found his chest, and she could hear his heartbeat, steady and strong.
“I lied,” she murmured against his shirt.
He tensed. “About what?”
“When I said I didn’t need you. It was the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I need you like I need air. I need your steady presence when my impulses run wild. I need your faith in me when I can’t faith in myself. I need the way you see through my chaos to something worthwhile underneath.”
“Tessa—”
“I’m not finished.” She pulled back to meet his eyes.
“I know it’s only been five days. I know that’s insane by any measure.
But I also know that when you disappeared, it felt like someone carved out half my soul.
And when you reappeared tonight, everything broken inside me mended itself. That has to mean something.”
“It means everything.” His voice dropped. “Means we’re meant to be. Means the universe bent time itself to bring us together. Means I would choose you again in any century, any world, any life.”
“Promise?”
Instead of answering with words, he kissed her again.
This kiss was different from the desperate reunion, different from the tentative mistletoe moment. This was a claiming, a vow, a promise written in the language of lips and tongues and breath.
He kissed her like he had all the time in the world now, like he planned to spend every minute of it learning the shape of her mouth, the sound of her sighs, the way she trembled when he nipped her bottom lip.
She was dizzy when they broke apart, clinging to him for balance.
“We should check on Einstein,” she said, though every cell in her body wanted to keep kissing him until the sun came up.
“Responsible.” He pressed one more kiss to her forehead. “I’m corrupting you already.”
They turned to the stall. Einstein stood steadier now, his eyes brighter. He lipped at the water bucket, taking small sips.
“See?” Cade murmured in her ear. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Standing there in her barn at three in the morning, covered in straw and sweat and tears, holding hands with a cowboy from 1878 while watching a miniature horse recover from colic, Tessa believed him.
They had magic on their side, after all. The kind that could reach across centuries to bring two souls together. The kind that burned up Christmas cards and opened doors between worlds. The kind that turned a commitment-phobic woman and a duty-bound cowboy into something neither could be alone.
Home.
“Cade?”
“Mm?”
“Welcome to 2025. Officially. Permanently.”
His hand squeezed hers. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Einstein nickered his agreement, and somewhere in the rafters, a barn owl hooted.
Tessa Mitchell, chronic quitter, business starter, chaos creator, had found something worth sticking around for. Someone worth fighting for. A love worth believing in.
Outside, snow began to fall, soft and silent, blessing their new beginning with Christmas magic. Inside the barn, wrapped in each other’s arms, they swayed together, no music needed, just the rhythm of two hearts beating across time.
* * *
If you enjoyed Tessa and Cade’s story, don’t miss Fiona and Rhett’s book as he crossed time for her. Grab you copy of Holiday Horseman.