Epilogue
ROMAN
Morning leaks through the curtains in a pale wash, and the house holds its breath like it knows what day it is. We’re tangled under the duvet, skin to skin, the air cool where it meets our shoulders. Willow’s hair is in my mouth in a way that should be annoying, and somehow isn’t.
“Roman?” Her voice is small yet sure at once, the way it sounds when she chooses honesty.
“Yeah.”
“I tried to make a plan to . . . get you to notice me.” She lets out a quiet huff. “I’m fully aware that’s ridiculous.”
I smile into her hair. “So that’s what the state secrets were.”
She pokes my side. “I panicked.”
“I saw,” I say—and this is the new part where I don’t hide—“and I noticed before you started planning any cute nonsense.”
Silence stretches, warm as the bed. She tips her face up. I lean down. We meet in the middle for a kiss that tastes like yes. Her breath brushes my mouth when we part, and I want the next fifty years.
“Come with me,” I murmur, pushing up on an elbow. “Before you fall back asleep.”
She steals one of my sweatshirts while I pull on sweats, sleeves past her hands, legs bare, toes cold.
We pad down the hall, past the framed photos and the spot where the trim still needs a second coat because I was too focused on perfecting the shelf heights.
I stop in front of the glass doors and push them open.
The library glows—lamps soft, shelves lined with titles we stacked for both of us.
Dune, beside the romance I swore I wouldn’t like, and then dog-eared to hell.
The thriller she made me read last spring.
On the mantel, the photo of her mom: Willow at eight, gap-toothed, me beside her, hair too long, both of us grinning like we had no idea what life was planning.
In the corner, a slender tree waits, adorned with warm lights and a handful of ornaments I hung yesterday because I was done pretending I could wait.
Her breath catches. “Roman.”
“I didn’t know how to ask you to stay,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “So I let the room say it for me.”
She steps in like she’s crossing into a place she’s been imagining for years. Fingers drift over spines, then the armchair she pretends isn’t her favorite, then the blanket her mom knitted on a winter she once called “good for staying in.” When she turns back to me, her eyes shine.
“You made me a tree.”
“Us a tree,” I answer. “You told me this season only worked when it felt like home. I want this room to feel like that. All year.”
She comes closer with a question sitting right there between us. I answer by lifting the small box from the shelf by the door. I meant to wait—Christmas Eve, cocoa, whatever we pretend is tradition—but waiting built too much distance. I’m done with that.
She opens it. Inside: a key on a red ribbon, and beneath it, a recipe card in her mother’s handwriting—the cinnamon rolls she thought were gone. I found it jammed behind a drawer and tucked it away, as if it could break.
Her eyes blur. “You kept this.”
“I was waiting for the right day.”
“It’s today,” she says, voice low.
“Yeah,” I manage. “It is.”
She slips the ribbon over her head. Then she’s in my arms, kissing me like we’re sealing a blueprint we drew long ago and finally get to build.
Later, we end up on the couch in the library with a blanket thrown over our legs, the small tree casting warm light across her cheek. The recipe card waits on the table; we’ll make them next year, as dough rises while we read. For now, I want this—her tucked into me, my hand wrapped around hers.
“I’m going to be an idiot sometimes,” I tell her. “I’ll stay too late at job sites and forget to eat and say the wrong thing. I’ll mess up. But I’m not going to disappear. Not from you.”
She tips her head back to look at me. “I don’t need perfect. I need you.”
“You’ve got me,” I say. “For dinner. For leaky pipes. For mornings that go sideways. For the days when you hate this season and the ones where you don’t. I’m in.”
Her smile is small and true. “Good.” A beat. “And I’m done with tips.”
I nudge her nose with mine. “What’s the new plan?”
“This.” She squeezes my hand. “Saying what I want. With you.”
“Best plan you’ve ever had,” I murmur, kissing her temple.
I imagine future mornings in this kitchen, with cinnamon in the air and her feet cold on mine. I think about next year’s ornaments and a list I’m finally brave enough to start: traditions we’ll create from scratch.
I press a kiss to her hair. “Merry Christmas, Wills.”
“Merry Christmas, Roman,” she whispers—and the word feels like a home we get to live in.