A Year Later Christmas Day
SASHA
For the first six months, we live in two worlds.
I drive up the mountain every Friday after closing the bakery, stay through Sunday, then drive back down with flour still under my fingernails and Red's scent still on my skin. He comes to town once a month, too uncomfortable in crowds but trying—for me, always for me.
We learn about each other slowly. How he likes his coffee. How I need morning conversation before silence. The way his nightmares come in cycles, and how my presence helps. The way my doubts creep in late at night, and how his certainty grounds me.
By month seven, I've moved half my closet to the cabin.
By month nine, Beth's running the bakery more than I am.
By month eleven, Red asks if I want to move in properly. Not as a grand gesture, but as a quiet question over morning coffee: "Will you move in already?”
So, I do.
Now it's been a year since that first Christmas. A year since I knocked on his door in a too-short Santa dress and accidentally fell in love with a grumpy mountain man who didn't want to be saved but let me love him anyway.
Snow falls thick again this Christmas, as soft as powdered sugar over the pine trees outside the cabin window. I watch it from the kitchen, my fingers sticky with icing, flour on my sleeve, and the oven humming behind me.
Red sits at the table, his sleeves rolled up, focused on the sugar cookie in front of him like it’s a mission.
He decorates a snowman with the kind of concentration most men reserve for battle, entirely too much red gel bleeding across the white surface.
Bear lies flat on his side by the fire, snoring like he’s been on guard duty all week.
“Is that supposed to be Santa?” I ask.
Red grunts. “Obviously. Can’t you tell?”
I squint at the cookie massacre. “It looks more like a drunk elf that lost a bar fight.”
He lifts an eyebrow, then reaches across the table and swipes a streak of icing across the back of my hand. “Careful, or I’ll start decorating you next.”
I lick the icing without breaking eye contact. “Promises, promises.”
He leans back in his chair, watching me with that look he gets sometimes—like he still can’t believe I’m here.
Of course, I am.
Now I’m in his kitchen, barefoot in flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt that used to be his, running my own bakery out of town and learning how to build a life that’s mine, and his, and ours. And Bear’s, of course.
Beth still calls me Cookie, even though the bakery has that name now.
Cookie’s.
People come in from all over for our peppermint fudge bars and cranberry pistachio knots. She says I should franchise. I say she’s drunk on nutmeg.
Red built me a worktable out of reclaimed barn wood for my birthday. It lives in the bakery kitchen now, worn and solid and right—just like him. He still disappears into his tiny workshop sometimes, but he can’t stay away for long.
“You’re staring again,” I murmur, crossing to the table and setting the next tray of cookies down between us. “Are you thinking about that Santa revenge plan?”
He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me into his lap. “I’m thinking about how good you look with flour on your face.”
I grin. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”
“It is.” His lips brush my temple. “Everything about you’s a compliment.”
I bury my face in his shirt, inhaling that mix of pine and coffee and him. It still undoes me a year later.
“Do you want to open your gift now?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a beat. “You being here’s enough.”
I lift my head. “Okay, that’s adorable but also suspicious. Are you saying you didn’t get me anything?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Uh-huh.”
He nudges me off his lap and stands, going to the little shelf beside the wood stove where we keep the fire starters and spare matches. He reaches behind a tin and pulls out a small box wrapped in brown paper and tied with red twine.
He hands it over without a word, and my heart flies into my mouth.
What is this?!
I sit back down at the table, my fingers shaking, and untie the bow.
Inside is a delicate silver bracelet—it’s simple, elegant—with a tiny cookie charm dangling from the center.
“Oh, Red…”
“It’s dumb,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just thought… I don’t know. It suits you.”
I stand, walk over, and throw my arms around his neck, hugging him tight.
“It’s perfect,” I whisper.
His arms close around me, steady and warm. “You’re perfect.”
“Lies,” I murmur into his shirt. “But thank you.”
Bear groans from the fire, shifting just enough to flop onto his back in full ‘I’m ignoring you’ mode.
“I think we’re boring him,” I say.
“Good,” Red mutters. “He’s a menace.”
I laugh. “He’s too lazy to be a menace.”
“He’s the reason you came back,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at me. “But I like to think I gave you a reason to stay.”
“Oh, you did,” I reply with a wink.
His thumb brushes my cheekbone. “So, what now, Sasha?”
“Now,” I say, rising on my toes to kiss him slowly and just a little sugary, “we make hot cocoa, watch terrible movies, and maybe later… we test your cookie-decorating skills. With real stakes this time.”
He smirks. “Are you offering to be the canvas?”
“Only if you promise to take your time.”
His gaze darkens, and it’s slow, lazy, and full of intent. “I always do.”
Outside, the snow keeps falling. Inside, the fire crackles, Bear snores, and Red kisses me like he plans to do it forever.
And for the first time in my life, forever doesn’t sound scary.
It sounds like home.
Thank you so much for reading A Curvy Christmas for the Mountain Man.