Chapter 10
McKenna
Two weeks after Christmas, taking down the decorations at Reece's place feels a little like committing a crime.
“Just the garland,” I say, standing on the loveseat to coax a strand off the mantle. “And maybe the extra wreath on the pantry door. Everything else can stay.”
Reece looks up from the storage bin he’s labeling in his tidy block letters. “You told me to be ruthless, Blue.”
“I meant with the half-burnt candles and the tangled light set that tried to electrocute you last week.” I point at the tiny sprig above the hallway. “The mistletoe stays. At least through January.”
His smile is soft enough that it curls my toes in my fuzzy socks. “Wouldn’t dream of touching it.”
Of course he wouldn’t. This is the man who hung mistletoe over his front door, his kitchen arch, and the fan above the couch like a very specific scavenger hunt. Somewhere in town there’s probably a betting pool on how many places he’ll add it next year.
We’ve been in this cozy little loop since Christmas morning—coffee by the fire every morning before the sun comes up, my suitcase still half-unpacked in his bedroom, his flannel shirt “accidentally” ending up around my shoulders when the evening gets chilly.
We haven’t put any labels on us, but sometimes certainty doesn’t need one.
I hop down, stuffing a coil of ribbon into the bin and making a face. “You hoard bows like an eighty-year-old Pinterest grandma, Reece.”
“Watch it,” he says mildly, though his eyes are laughing. “Those bows held this town together.”
“Bold claim coming from the man who has declared grilled cheese its own food group.”
“Christmas is a season. Grilled cheese is a lifestyle.”
He pushes to his feet, tucks a marker behind his ear, and reaches for the tape gun. I glance around for the second roll—the one we were definitely using ten minutes ago—and come up empty.
“Did you move the clear tape?” I ask.
“In the hall cabinet, top drawer. Or the laundry room. Or…” He trails off, squinting toward the short hall. “Might be in the… uh…”
My gaze flicks to the door halfway down the hall. The one that’s always, always locked.
Except now the latch sits loose against the frame, like someone meant to turn it and forgot.
I go still.
“Reece?” My voice comes out quieter than intended.
He follows my line of sight. For a heartbeat, his shoulders tense—almost a flinch, almost a shrug. It isn’t shame or embarrassment. More like the tenderness that comes from realizing you’re about to share a thing you’ve kept safe and small for a long time.
“If you’re looking for tape,” he says, “there’s some in there.”
“In…there,” I repeat intelligently.
He nods once and suddenly becomes very interested in organizing ornament hooks.
I take a step. Then another. My fingers rest on cool brass that has marked years of private use. The door swings inward as I touch it.
Warm light spills over the room.
I don’t breathe for a second.
It looks like a small Christmas wonderland decided to rent a single-bedroom apartment in Havenwood and never move out.
Fairy lights string along the ceiling. A long, reclaimed wood worktable runs beneath the window, edges nicked and paint-smudged, paper cutters lined up along the back.
Pegboard walls hold scissors, tape dispensers, spools of baker’s twine and velvet ribbon, bags of jingle bells, and three very serious-looking hole punches.
On the far wall, a corkboard overflows—a collage of kid-drawn snowmen, Polaroids from the square, printed lists with checkmarks in Reece’s tidy hand.
One note sits crooked in the corner, written on the backside of a feed-store receipt in thick black marker: No one deserves to spend the holidays alone.
My throat tightens.
Shelves ring the room, each with labeled plastic bins: Town Square Families · Preschool Kiddos · Carriage Ride Tips · Repairs.
Two slightly battered bikes lean against the baseboard with shiny new chains and carefully patched seats.
A tin pail holds candy canes. Another jar—a mason glass with a slot cut in the lid—wears a taped-on label: Elf Fund.
And there, tied around the jar like a sash, is my green bow.
My fingers find it without thinking, the satin worn where he must have thumbed it when he couldn’t sleep, or when the house felt too quiet, or when the list felt too long and the night too short.
“What do you think?” Reece asks softly.
I glance back. He fills the doorway—faded Henley, sawdust at the edge of his jeans, the kind of gentle that makes every hard thing in me unclench.
My voice wobbles around a smile. “You’ve been Santa this whole time.”
He huffs out the kind of laugh that tries not to be a confession.
“I just…help where I can.” He rubs the back of his neck, eyes sliding over the room like he’s seeing it the way I am for the first time.
“Started with one toy horse for a friend’s grandson.
Then Jett mentioned someone needed a winter coat.
Then one of your kids wanted puzzles like the big-kid class had. You know how word gets around.”
“Fast,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” His mouth tips, edges soft. “Faster at Christmas.”
I cross over to him, stopping when my toes touch his boots. “There are whole bins for my preschoolers,” I say, because we both know how the year started for me and the way it punched a hole in something I loved.
He shrugs, and it’s not dismissive—it’s steady and sure. “They’re your kids, Blue. Maybe not the same kids you had last year, but you’ll be back to teaching little guys before you know it. Seemed like a good place to start.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t know how.” He looks past me to the corkboard again. “Some things felt…better quiet. Like if I talked about it, I’d jinx it. Besides, it’s hard to maintain my reputation as a tough guy if you find out I color-code ribbon.”
“You used three shades of red,” I say, mock-horrified.
“Functionally necessary.”
“You alphabetized the gift tags,” I say as I thumb through the small container.
“Only by first letter.”
My laugh cracks, and the sound feels like relief. I reach up, sliding my hands over his chest until his heart beats under my palm, solid and mine. “This is the most you thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell him. “You kept giving the town magic and forgot you were making it.”
He looks down at me then, really looks, and any teasing blurs at the edges.
“I love Christmas,” he admits, husky as if it’s weird for him to admit out loud.
“I love the way folks look at each other when they remember they’re not alone.
It doesn’t fix everything, but it’s something.
” His thumb skims the bow at my wrist where I’m still holding it.
“And it gave me something to hold on to while I waited on…other things to make sense.”
“Other things,” I echo, and the way he’s watching me says he means every stolen kiss, every peppermint-laced morning, every time he reached for my hand without asking if he could.
A quiet comfort settles between us.
“Let me help,” I say, even though I’m already moving toward the worktable. “Next year. And the next. And in the in-between, too.”
His breath leaves him, soft and almost a laugh. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I pick up a roll of brown kraft paper and the good scissors—the heavy ones that cut clean. “What’s left?”
He joins me at the table, shoulder brushing mine. “One more box,” he says, nodding at a small stack of storybooks and a knitted hat the exact blue of a winter sky. “Something to start the new year with. A tradition of our own.”
We work in peaceful silence. He measures the paper perfectly without a ruler. I crease each fold with the side of my finger the way he does, and he grins like I’ve passed a test I didn’t know I was taking. When the last corner tucks in neat and square, he holds out the twine.
I loop it once, twice, tie a bow, and fuss with the tails. He slides a blank tag toward me, passing me a marker.
“Who's it for?” I ask.
His shoulder nudges mine. “Write, ‘For Next Year.’ We’ll fill in the name when we find it.”
My throat does that tight thing again. I print the words slowly, carefully, like if I do it right, the future will read them exactly the way we mean them. For Next Year.
He watches my hand. Or maybe he’s watching the way it doesn’t shake.
When I set the marker down, his palm covers my wrist, turning it so the green bow faces up, satin catching the lights. He leans in and presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse jumps.
“Blue.”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for opening the door.”
“I just pushed it,” I say, which is true and not at all the point.
He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, then the corner of my mouth, then my mouth, slow and certain, like he has all the time in the world to make this a habit. Twinkle lights glow against the windowpane, and the tape gun gleams, and the wrapped gift sits between us with its tidy bow and promise.
When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine. His breath smells like peppermint and coffee and something steadying I can’t name.
“Official workshop crew?” he murmurs.
I slide the tag’s string over my finger and hold it up between us like proof. “I want in. Year-round, if that’s an option.”
“It’s forever,” he says, so quietly I feel it more than hear it, and just like that, the room’s warmth finds my bones.
We set the box on the highest shelf together. He reaches up without effort, but he still lets my hand stay on the bottom like I’m lifting, too. When it’s secure, he doesn’t move away. He just looks at me, then past me at the corkboard, at the note on the receipt.
No one deserves to spend the holidays alone.
I lace our fingers. “I’m glad you chased me.”
His answering smile is slow and devastating, all green eyes and home. “I only wish I’d started running sooner,” he says, tugging me under the strand of fairy lights that drapes the doorway.
I tip my chin toward the arch of the hall, where the tiniest sprig of mistletoe tied with a red ribbon waits like a secret between the seasons.
“Leave it,” I say.
“Wouldn’t dream of touching it,” he says again, and when he kisses me this time—soft and sure and just a little minty—the world goes quiet, the good kind, the kind that hums with all the ways we’ll keep choosing this.
And when we switch off the lights, the glow lingers anyway, warm as the promise we wrote on a tag together and tucked on a shelf:
For Next Year.