Chapter Twenty-Five
Jess
When I wake up on Christmas Eve, I’m actually grateful I’ve been scheduled for the early shift. I need a distraction, and nothing is a better distraction than a line full of customers who need a caffeine boost. Morgan, to no one’s surprise, is extremely cool about my missing the past few days of work. She accepts my apology by tossing me an apron and shooing me behind the counter, where I spend the rest of the morning making more peppermint mochas than even I can stomach.
I offer to stay late, cover the afternoon shift as well, but Morgan practically pushes me out the front door with a wish for a merry Christmas.
And with that, I’m left to my own devices for the rest of the holiday. I decide to take my friends’ advice because, honestly, those bitches are usually right. I take a shower and do my hair and put on makeup before dressing in my cutest Christmas sweater. Bundling up in my coat and gloves and scarf and hat, I head out my front door and straight to the closest coffee shop, which is not the one I happen to work at.
It’s cold outside, the kind that sinks into your bones, but it’s dry at least, and I’m warm in my coat, and once I have a large peppermint mocha in my hands (apparently making approximately one thousand of them didn’t fully kill their appeal), the warmth trickles through me from the inside out. I make my way over to the subway station and hop on a train to Manhattan. I love Brooklyn with my whole heart, but there’s nothing quite like Christmas in Manhattan.
I start my holiday tour at the tree in Rockefeller Center. It’s a classic for a reason, and this year’s tree might be the most beautiful yet. I allow myself five whole minutes to think about all the times I came here with Nick, and surprisingly, the memories leave me with the warm and fuzzies instead of the usual cold and stabbies. I contemplate trying to rent some ice skates, but I want to enjoy my day, and that will be much harder with a broken ankle. When I’ve absorbed the full magic of the tree, I walk over to Bryant Park and stroll the winter market, stopping for some hot chocolate that’s so rich it makes my blood sing in my veins. Honestly, the hot chocolate does more for my mental health than any wine and Real Housewives marathon could, and that’s saying something.
After exploring the entirety of the winter market, I walk over to the Drama Book Shop. There’s nothing particularly Christmassy about it, it’s just one of my favorite places to be and that’s what today is all about. I buy a new book and a croissant and sit for a bit before moving on to my next location, the Macy’s on Thirty-Fourth Street. I mean, there’s a whole classic holiday movie about it, so it’s a must.
I don’t actually go into the store because it’s Christmas Eve and I don’t have a death wish, but I do people-watch outside for a bit, loving how the holiday spirit makes even the surliest of New Yorkers smile.
I grab a late lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese at a diner before deciding to pack it in and call it a day. Being out among the holiday joy has definitely helped bolster my spirits, but I know we’re rapidly approaching the point when the afternoon shifts into evening, and the day becomes less about errands and more about spending time with family and friends.
So I head back to the subway and make my way home to my favorite borough. When I trudge up the stairs to my apartment, I’m surprised to find a box sitting on my welcome mat. Normally, packages are left downstairs near the mailboxes, and I don’t think I’m expecting any orders, unless I did some dream shopping last night, which is always a possibility.
But the box doesn’t have a mailing label. Instead it says, in bright-red letters: “To Jess, Love Santa.”
Figuring my parents must have arranged this somehow, I bend over to pick up the box, but the thing is heavy, so I end up just nudging it inside with my foot instead. I bound into my tiny kitchen and grab a pair of scissors, cutting into the box like a kid on Christmas. Which I basically am.
It takes a minute to make sense of what I’m seeing in the box. There are six manuscripts piled inside, the kind publishers send out for early reads. They don’t look like real books because the paper is regular letter size, but they’re professionally bound.
I sit down next to the box, removing the first one and running my fingers over the title. It’s Heartbreak Manor , Nick’s first book. But why would he be sending me a weird version of his book? I already have the published version (in hardcover and paperback, if we’re being honest). And this doesn’t look old, the paper is crisp and fresh and smells like it came right off the printer.
I flip through the pages, wondering what I could even be looking for. The words of this book in particular are so familiar to me, I know them as well as I would my own. I must have read this manuscript a hundred times. I run my fingers over the words, and my chest starts to ache. I can practically hear his voice in my head, narrating to me as he wrote his favorite scene.
I keep flipping through the pages until I get to the end of the book.
My forehead wrinkles because something about the last two chapters feels off. Different. I know I’ve read these words before, but they somehow seem out of place.
My eyes widen as the full picture in front of me crystallizes. This isn’t the end of the book that Nick published. It’s the original ending, with his two characters reconciling their differences and ending up together. It’s a happily ever after, the way a romance is supposed to end.
I set the first manuscript to the side and reach for the second. I read this one for the first time the day it was released, just like everyone else. Still, I’ve read it enough times to be familiar with the story, so I skip to the end. In the original version of this book, the heroine ends up leaving the hero to go marry the man her parents chose for her. It’s absolutely devastating—I threw my book against the wall the first time I read it. But in this new version, she ditches her betrothed and runs away with the hero. They live happily ever after.
The next three books are the same. Nick has rewritten the endings of each of his published books so that the couple ends up together. No one dies, no one leaves, no one ends up alone and heartbroken. He’s given all his characters happily ever afters, for me.
I don’t stop to think about how he managed to do this, I’m too lost in the happiness, the joy that’s emanating from these pages.
When I pull the final manuscript from the box, an excited squeal escapes me.
“ Just One Thing I Need by Jessica Carrington and Nick Matthews” is inked on the cover.
I run my fingers over the title, and our names, relishing the tiny shiver of joy that darts through me to see them written together.
I hoist myself off the ground, take a bathroom break and get myself a snack and a beverage, because I know once I start reading this book—our book—I’m not going to want to stop.
Curling up in my favorite reading chair, the Christmas tree lights twinkling next to me, I cover myself with my softest blanket and open the book to read our story. I promise myself to read not as one of the authors, but as a reader experiencing it for the first time. I’m not going to worry about typos and plot holes, I’m going to focus on the journey of these characters we’ve created.
I spend the next couple of hours with a smile etched on my face. I think I might love this book, not something I can say about every first draft I’ve ever written, but this one, it has the sparkle. The it factor. We were able to find joy in writing it, and that joy is evident on the page.
What’s also evident is the way Nick and I were able to seamlessly merge our voices, the way they complement each other, never competing or speaking over each other. It’s like we were meant to be writing partners from the very beginning.
When I find myself reading a sex scene, one that Nick wrote on his own and that I haven’t read yet, I bolt up straight in my chair. It’s the spiciest thing Nick has written in a long time, and it heats my blood just reading the words on the page. And then my brain can’t help but imagine me and Nick, and I have to take a short break to go pour myself a glass of wine.
The book is full of banter and wit, and yet my heart aches when the characters think they’ve blown their second chance. I know I’m the one who wrote the breakup, but I read it with fresh eyes and see how it’s not really a breakup, more like a little pause. A chance for these characters to take a breath and really commit before they find their way back together.
And they do find their way back to each other because Nick has written the ending. A gorgeous grand gesture and a reconciliation and an epilogue that clearly proves our couple will live happily ever after.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and swig the last of my wine.
It’s almost midnight, and I don’t want to disturb him or wake him, but the need to talk to him outweighs anything else.
I hit his name in my contacts. I don’t know what I’m going to say, mostly I just need to hear his voice.
“Hey, Jess.”
“Hi.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence.
Okay, so we’re not off to a brilliant start, but it’s late.
“I got your package.”
“Yeah?”
It speaks to the weight of the moment that neither of us makes the requisite package joke.
“I love you,” I blurt out, unable to keep the words in any longer. If I’m being totally honest, I’ve been feeling them for longer than I would like to admit. If I’m being totally honest, I never stopped loving him in the first place.
“I love you too, Jess.”
I release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, suddenly with a greater understanding for the characters I’ve been writing for so long. “I miss you, and I wish you were here. I wish we were going to be spending Christmas together.”
“Well, you’re in luck then.”
There’s a knock on my front door and since it’s late and I live alone, my first instinct is to grab the baseball bat I keep in the hall closet.
But then I realize there’s only one person who could be on the other side of that door.
I still check the peephole, just in case.
I open the door with a smile, ending our phone call and tossing my phone who cares where. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
A second later I’m in his arms, my face buried in his neck, his grip on me so tight I almost lose my breath. But I only squeeze him back tighter.
He pushes the door closed behind him and lets me go, putting just enough space between us that he can take my face in his hands. “I’m so sorry, Jess. I was a total idiot, for a lot of things, but mostly for not just talking to you.”
“I really wish you would have, but it happened and it brought us to where we are today. I’d much rather focus on the future.”
“Me too.” Nick leans in and presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “I want to focus on building something new with you, but I’ll always regret the time we lost, that I let stupid career concerns cost me the love of my life.”
“I assume you’re referring to me?” I poke him in the stomach and grin.
“Obviously.” He pulls me in closer. “I know I messed up, and I know a lot has happened in the five years we’ve been apart. But I never stopped loving you, Jess, and I never will. Do you think you can give me another chance?”
I let out a long, dramatic sigh. “That depends.”
His eyes crinkle with worry. “On what?”
“Are you going to keep writing happily ever afters, or am I going to have to read a bunch of books where everyone dies in the end?”
He grins, and it lights up his eyes. “Okay, first of all, I have never written a book where everyone dies at the end. Second of all—”
I cut off his diatribe with a kiss, rising up on my toes to bring us even closer. He threads his hands through my hair and I open to him, fully and completely. Nick Matthews is the love of my life, the man who owns my heart—my fated mate—and I cannot wait to see what the next chapter brings.
We finally part, breathless, as church bells begin to toll across Brooklyn.
I grin. “I think that sound means it’s officially Christmas.”
Nick leans down for another kiss. “Best Christmas ever?”
“Best Christmas ever.”