Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
WILLOW
After Tip Ten, I don’t sleep.
I lie on the couch in the back office with the shop’s old wool blanket thrown over me, watching the ceiling fan tick-tick-tick like it’s counting down to the part where I finally give up.
Outside, Main Street blinks through the front windows—gold, red, a handful of blue bulbs someone insisted would “add dimension.” It should feel like magic. It feels like pretending.
By dawn, the heat sputters. I tug on boots and shuffle out front, breath fogging as I flip the lights and start the opening routine. That’s when I hear it: a faint hiss from the stacks, followed by the soft patter of something I really, really don’t want to identify.
Water.
I round the corner and stare. A hairline split in the copper line above the Classics section is spraying like a possessed sprinkler, misting Little Women and turning A Christmas Carol into pulp fiction.
The rug is soaked. The garland droops. I’m two seconds from throwing something and three seconds from screaming.
“Not today,” I tell the ceiling, like the building is a person who can bargain. “Please. Not today.”
I haul the ladder, climb two rungs, and reach up with a dish towel.
It does absolutely nothing. The towel darkens.
The leak laughs at me. I scramble down and grab the shutoff hidden behind the register.
It jams. My hands are numb and slick, and my brain decides now is the perfect time to replay every humiliating moment of the last week.
The tips. The failed compliments. The way Roman looked at me last night when I told him to stop rewriting my mother’s love like it was optional.
“C’mon,” I beg the valve. “Please.”
The bell over the door jingles.
“Wills?”
He fills the doorway with cold air and morning light, a thermos in one hand, tool bag in the other. His hair is tousled, like he ran a hand through it a dozen times and gave up trying to tame it. He takes in the scene in a breath—the ladder, the drip, the drowned Victorians.
“Where’s the shutoff?”
“Stuck,” I croak, stepping aside. I hate that my eyes sting. I hate that it’s him who sees it.
He doesn’t say I told you so. He doesn’t smirk. He sets the thermos on the counter, drops his bag, and drops to his knees behind the register. “Give me the wrench.”
I hand it over. He braces, jaw tight, and cranks. The valve screams and then finally turns. The hiss dies. The patter fades to a mournful tap. The silence afterward rings.
Roman exhales. “Okay.” He stands and scans the floor. “We need towels. Buckets. Fans. I’ll call Spencer and Mario—they’re two streets over. We can pull this up and save most of it.”
“You have a crew here?” My voice wobbles around the edges. “Why?”
“Because the forecast said twenty degrees and a north wind, and this pipe’s been cranky since October.” He pulls his phone out. “I was coming either way.”
Something twists in my chest. It hurts in a way I don’t have words for.
He makes two calls. By the time he hangs up, a white van is already turning onto Main.
Spencer and Mario barrel in with a stack of shop towels, two box fans, and a Shop-Vac like they’ve been waiting in the alley for the soundtrack cue.
Roman starts giving quiet orders that somehow don’t sound like orders.
Spencer rolls up the soaked rug; Mario corrals the ruined books into a crate labeled Freeze-dry—Emergency in black marker.
Roman wraps a temporary clamp, checks it twice, then checks the thermostat.
I stand in the middle of it all and want to cry. Because he’s here. Because he's always here. Because I tried to turn falling in love into a science experiment when the real answer was walking through my door at seven in the morning with a thermos and a plan.
“Roman.” My voice is too soft. He doesn’t hear me. “Roman.”
He glances up. His eyes land on my face and soften. “Hey.” He wipes his hands on a towel. “It’s okay. We’ll save it.”
“You have a bid this morning.” I don’t know why that’s what comes out. I just know he told me last week—hospital addition, big numbers, a chance to grow faster than he’s ready. “You said nine.”
He hesitates. “I called them on the way. Told them I couldn’t make it.”
“Why would you do that?”
He considers me, something complicated passing over his features. “Because I wanted to spend the day with you and tried to be proactive about the leak . . . but I guess it won.”
The words hit everywhere at once. I grip the counter like it might keep me upright. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“What? Showing up?”
“Sacrificing.” The word scorches. “Turning your life into triage because I can’t keep a damn building from falling apart.”
His mouth tilts, not a smile. “Newsflash, Wills. Buildings fall apart. That’s why I have a job.”
“That meeting—”
“They’ll reschedule.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then they don’t.”
I hate the way my voice shakes. “You can’t keep choosing me over your company like I’m—”
“Like you’re what?” He steps closer, the world narrowing to him, his breath, and the damp fabric of his flannel. “A line item I can cut?”
“Like I’m the reason you never get out from under all this.” I swallow, a rush of heat stinging behind my eyes. “Like you’re stuck because I keep needing you.”
For a second, he just looks at me. I know that look. It’s the one right before he laughs something off or throws out a joke to make the discomfort vanish. He doesn’t do either.
“I’m not stuck.” His voice is low. “I choose this.”
“Why?”
He huffs out a breath. Runs a hand through his hair. He looks everywhere but at me—the pipe, the fans, the window with the fog blooming along its edges. “Because I don’t know how to not.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got that won’t blow up your life.” His jaw works. “Or mine.”
Spencer whistles from the doorway as if he just remembered he forgot to be subtle. “We’re, uh . . . gonna grab the dehumidifier from the van.”
They vanish. The shop quiets. Bing Crosby hums from the speakers, soft enough to feel like a memory.
I should let it drop. I should thank him, make coffee, and pretend this morning was just another crisis we survived together.
But something inside me is done pretending.
All the stupid tips, all the things I tried—they’re paper boats in a storm.
He’s been building rafts for me for years, and I’m out here with a stapler and a list.
“This—” I gesture at the towels, the crates, the clamp that’s holding my ceiling together. “This is what you do. You fix things. You fix me.”
“You’re not broken.” His gaze snaps back to mine, fierce.
“Then why does it feel like you spend your life catching me before I hit the floor?”
“Because I love you.” He exhales, the words landing roughly.
“Not the movie version. It’s thermos at dawn.
It’s fixing your wiring before I shower.
It’s reading Austen because you said I’d like the banter.
It’s every road—no matter how far I drive—turning me back to this shop, to you.
I keep choosing you. I don’t know how to stop. ”
My breath stumbles. The room tilts.
He scrubs a hand over his mouth, eyes wide with surprise at himself. “Forget it.”
“No.” My pulse hammers in my ears. “Say it again.”
He shakes his head once, as if he can undo it. “You’re upset. I’m tired. There’s a leak. I shouldn’t have—”
“Roman.” I step forward. My palms are damp; my voice is not. “Please, say it again.”
He looks at me for a long, endless second.
Then, quiet, like he’s handing me something fragile: “I love you.” His throat works.
“I love you when you roll your eyes at me. When you overorder Austen. When you say you’re fine and still open early.
I love you in the small, stupid ways and in the big, terrifying way where I can’t picture a life that doesn’t have you.
If you tell me to back off, I will. It won’t change the truth.
The world goes very, very still. Outside, snow begins to sift down in a fine curtain. Inside, the tree by the window hums with light. My eyes sting, and my mouth can’t decide if it wants to smile or sob.
“I tried everything,” I whisper. “Lists. Tips. Stupid articles. Like I could trick myself into doing this without using the word.”
He swallows. “And?”
“And none of it mattered.” A laugh bubbles out of me, watery and ridiculous.
“You’ve been telling me you love me for years without saying it.
You bring me thermoses, tools, and crews at dawn.
You read the books I push on you. You built me a room in your house and called it extra space.
” My throat tightens. “And I kept waiting for proof with fireworks, as if the quiet things weren’t real. ”
He steps closer, close enough that I can see the faint nick by his jaw from a rushed shave. “They’re real.”
“And you still think you’re a lost cause.”
He looks away, then back. “Some days.”
I shake my head, tears slipping free. “You’re not. You never were.”
He reaches like he’s going to touch my cheek, then stops, hand hovering a breath from my face. “If I kiss you right now,” he says, words rough, “I don’t come back from it.”
“I don’t want you to.”
Something in him loosens. He leans in—slow, careful—as if he’s learning me by inches.
His mouth brushes mine once, a whisper of contact that steals the air from my lungs.
He pauses there, breathing me in, letting me meet him.
When I do, he returns, a little more sure, lips warm and patient, tasting faintly of cinnamon and coffee.
His palm cups my jaw, thumb tracing a quiet path near my ear. I slide my fingers into the open collar of his flannel and feel the heat of him, the hum beneath it that says finally. The shop seems to soften around us—while everything inside me pulls toward him with a peace I haven’t felt in years.
He kisses me like a promise, unhurried, letting me answer, letting me take my time. When he breaks away, it’s only by a breath. Our noses brush. His forehead tips to mine. I can taste winter on his exhale and my name when he whispers it.
“Again,” I breathe.
He smiles against my mouth and gives it to me—another kiss, deeper but still gentle, a yes that settles through me like warmth after a long cold. When we part, my hands are fisted in his shirt, and his thumb is still circling that small spot near my ear like he can’t bear to stop.
“I love you,” I say—quiet, certain. “Not because you fix everything. Because you show up. Because you choose me. Because every road you take still turns back here.”
His eyes shine, relief and something bright breaking through. He lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh and a prayer. “Say it again.”
“I love you.” A little stronger. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”
A soft, startled sound escapes him. He catches my hand and presses it to his chest—fast, uneven.
“It’s you. It’s always been you.” He kisses my knuckles, then the corner of my mouth, like he’s memorizing proof.
“Tell me again tomorrow. And the day after. Every Christmas, if you’ll let me.
I’ll spend all of it proving I know what I have. ”
“I’ll hold you to that,” I whisper, dizzy and rooted.
“Please do.”