Chapter 22
Rudy
For a moment, he didn’t move. His hand stayed braced on the doorframe. His eyes locked on mine, searching, like he was trying to see if I was really here or just something he’d imagined into being.
“Come inside,” he said quietly. “You’re freezing.”
My boots felt glued to the porch. Then my body remembered how to move.
The threshold felt like a line I was crossing on purpose this time, not just because curiosity and loneliness had pulled me in. The moment I stepped over it, warmth sank through my coat, up through my jeans, settling somewhere deep in my chest.
I toed my boots off, clumsy with nerves, and lined them up next to his like I’d done before. My hands shook as I straightened. I tucked them into my sleeves so he wouldn’t see.
He shut the door gently. The quiet click sounded too loud.
We stood there in the small entryway, a few feet of polished floor between us. Light from the front window spilled across his face, catching the faint stubble on his jaw, the tired creases around his eyes.
“Did you—” He stopped, swallowed, started again. “How far did you get?”
I huffed out something like a laugh and a sob. “Not as far as I pretended I could.”
His gaze traced my face slowly—my eyes, my mouth, the red patch on my nose where the cold had bitten too hard. There was no anger there. Just something raw and achingly gentle.
“Rudy,” he said softly, “why did you leave without waking me?”
I looked down at my hands.
“Because I was afraid of what I’d ask for if you opened your eyes,” I whispered. “And more afraid you wouldn’t give me the answer I wanted to hear.”
His breath caught.
I tried to smile. It didn’t work. “I’ve never been good at wanting things.
Growing up, wanting anything just proved how much I didn’t have.
In foster homes, you learn fast that asking is a good way to feel like a burden.
” I swallowed around the lump in my throat.
“With Nate, wanting things just meant I got told which parts of me needed to go.”
He went very still, like every word was landing in him and settling somewhere deep.
“So I’ve spent a lot of years making myself small,” I said.
“Grateful for crumbs. Telling myself nice things are temporary—we enjoy them, we don’t expect them to stay.
These two weeks with you…” I shook my head, blinking away the blur.
“They didn’t feel temporary. And that scared me more than anything. ”
Silence. Warm, heavy, waiting.
“I wrote the note because I wanted you to know this meant something,” I added, quiet now. “That you stayed. If I couldn’t be brave enough to wake you, I could at least be honest on paper.”
His jaw flexed. “I read it,” he said, voice rough.
My vision blurred again.
“I got on the highway,” I said. “But the more miles I put between us, the worse it felt. Like I’d left all the air back here with you.”
I finally looked up.
He wasn’t pretending not to be affected.
His eyes shone. “Come here,” he said quietly.
My legs moved toward him.
His hands settled on my upper arms, warm and steady through the fabric of my sweater. That alone made something in me sag. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been until he gave my muscles permission to unclench.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I’m—” I tried for a joke, found nothing but truth. “Terrified.”
“Me too,” he said.
That surprised me enough that my gaze jerked to his.
He huffed out a breath. “I haven’t felt this much in a long time, Rudy.
Not like this. Not all at once.” His thumb brushed absently along my arm, soothing without him seeming to realize he was doing it.
“When I was younger, I thought I had all the time in the world to figure out who my forever person was. Then my parents died. Then Michael left. I built a life that was… good. Solid. Enough. I told myself I didn’t need more. ”
His eyes held mine, unwavering.
“And then you walked into my shop looking like you were trying not to fall apart over a broken ornament and a too-loud memory,” he said. “And everything I’d packed away in myself woke up.”
My chest clenched so tight it almost hurt.
“I wanted to ask you to stay,” he went on, voice roughening.
“Last night. This morning. Every second these walls felt too quiet.” A humorless smile ghosted across his mouth.
“But I kept thinking about your age, your life in Chicago, your work. I didn’t want to be the selfish older man who asked you to trade everything for a town of four thousand people and a greenhouse full of Christmas. ”
He shook his head once. “So I tried to be noble. Let you go. Tell myself those two weeks were a gift I had no right to ask for more of.”
“And?” I whispered.
“And it felt wrong,” he said simply. “Like I’d been handed the missing piece of something I didn’t know was incomplete and then told to put it back in the box.”
My breath hitched.
His hands slid from my arms to my sides, fingers spreading, anchoring me. “I don’t want a two-week memory, Rudy,” he said quietly. “I want to know what happens if we keep choosing this. Choosing each other. One day at a time. One season at a time. However long we get.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been leaning toward him until the moment my cheek hit the worn wool of his sweater.
My body just… gave. My hands fisted in the fabric.
His scent filled my nose—soap and something warm and unmistakably him—and all the panic that had been pounding through me since dawn drained out in a moment that left me a little lightheaded.
Graeme’s arms came around me without hurry, solid and sure. He lowered his mouth to my hair, not kissing, just there.
“Hey,” he murmured. “Talk to me. How are you doing right now?”
The question threaded through me gently, anchoring instead of interrupting.
“I’m okay,” I said after a beat. “Just… a lot. Big feelings.”
“Good boy for telling me,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
The praise slid under my skin, settling me like a blanket. I exhaled, long and shaky, the sound muffled against his chest, and let myself stay right there while my breathing evened out.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.
His hand splayed between my shoulder blades, warm and sure. “You don’t have to know how,” he said. “You just have to do the next right thing. And then the next one.”
“And what does that look like?” I asked, voice small.
He pressed his cheek to the top of my head. “Right now? It looks like not getting back in your car.”
A wet laugh broke out of me.
“And after that?” I asked.
“After that,” he said, “we talk. We figure out what you need to wrap up in Chicago. We figure out what it looks like for you to be here longer. We don’t have to plan every detail today. We just have to agree on one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That this,” he said, squeezing me gently, “isn’t over.”
The words slid into a place in me I hadn’t realized had been waiting, empty, for years.
I tipped my head back to look at him.
His face was open. Vulnerable. No walls. No careful politician’s smile. Just Graeme. The man who’d built a life around Christmas and community and still made room for a scared, soft-hearted stranger with too many jagged edges.
“What do you want?” he asked again, quietly. “Not what you think you’re allowed to want. Not what hurts least. Truly. Right now.”
The truth rose up, hot and terrifying and solid.
“I want to stay,” I said. My voice cracked, but I didn’t look away. “Not forever in this exact second, not signing my whole life away today. But… I want to stay long enough to see what it feels like when this isn’t just a holiday bubble. I want to wake up and know I’m not on borrowed time.”
Something in his eyes went bright and fierce.