Chapter 20
TWENTY
JESS
Laughter, music, the clink of mug flights, and a hundred conversations threaded the early-evening chill, leaving the square humming.
Behind the line of tents, everything was quieter.
Dimmer. More like the breath between heartbeats.
I’d slipped back here under the pretense of checking on the backup sanitizer, but really, I needed thirty seconds where no one asked me where the ornament twine was or whether the cocoa station needed more marshmallows.
Also, I needed thirty seconds where Powell wasn’t looking at me like he sensed something was broken.
Kelsey had Pour Decisions under control—she’d stepped into the marshmallow-meltdown with cheerful competence and declared herself “temporary cocoa czar”—so I didn’t even have an excuse to hide behind work anymore.
The canvas walls of the booths billowed gently with each breeze, lantern light bleeding through in warm, uneven patches.
From here, the Twelve Stops looked magical: the glow of the garlands, the soft gold halo of the gazebo, the long strings of lights twinkling overhead like an improvised Milky Way.
Somewhere nearby, Esmerelda brayed, probably demanding snacks from some unsuspecting child.
People loved her. It made sense. She had an oversized head and no sense of boundaries; toddlers respected that.
I leaned a shoulder against the back corner of Mrs. Tyrell’s ornament tent, closed my eyes for a moment, and tried to breathe past the ache lodged beneath my ribs.
You’re being ridiculous, I told myself—not for the first time today. They didn’t mean anything by it.
But the old women’s voices had latched onto some deep, raw part of me: Powell would help anybody. He always does. That’s who he is.
I’d spent so long believing he didn’t care about me at all; now I was terrified to think he cared in a way that was different. Specific. About me and who I was to him. Or who he wanted me to be. And perhaps who I wanted to be for him.
The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of pine and powdered sugar. A faint scuff of boots preceded a familiar voice, low and warm and impossible to ignore. “Jess.”
I opened my eyes. Powell stood a few feet away, hands braced on his hips, chest rising like he’d jogged to get here. The festival lights framed him from behind, a soft glow catching on the edges of his hair. He looked worried in a way that shot straight to the tenderest part of me.
“You keep disappearing,” he said. “And every time I go to check on you, someone pulls me away. I finally told Moose to handle the elf-hat volunteers so I could come find you.”
I tried to muster something light, something that would put a little distance between us. “Sounds like a dereliction of duty.”
“Jess.” His voice softened. “Talk to me.”
I dropped my gaze to the pavement. “I’m fine.”
“Try again.”
I hated that he knew me this well. Three weeks of working side by side and somehow he could hear every lie in my voice like it was broadcast over loudspeaker.
He took a step closer—not cornering, simply closing the space enough to make it harder to run. “You’ve been off since yesterday. And yeah, you said you were tired and that you needed some space to get everything set up at the truck without us getting… distracted.”
A fresh mental video of that kiss on my counter began to play in my head, and heat climbed into my cheeks. “That wasn’t a lie.”
He exhaled. “Maybe not. But I notice things. Especially when it’s you.”
That did it. My throat tightened.
Of course he noticed. He always noticed.
I swallowed hard. “I’m not mad. I don’t want you thinking this is… some fight.”
“I didn’t think that,” he said gently. “I just think something’s hurting you. Tell me what it is.”
For a long moment, I stared at the lantern light flickering against the canvas, trying to gather the courage to say it out loud. Because the truth was embarrassing in a way that made my skin crawl. It was vulnerable. And vulnerability had never been my strong suit.
“It’s stupid,” I finally said.
“I doubt that.”
“It is,” I insisted. “It’s small and insecure, and I should be above it.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t push. Only waited, patience radiating from him in warm, steady waves.
I let out a shaky breath. “When I went to Pie Hard yesterday—Lola and the others—they were talking about you. About everything you’ve done around town.
Helping Mrs. Atkins with her roof, pulling people out of ditches, crawling under houses, fixing a hundred little disasters.
All the ways you show up.” My voice thinned.
“And they said it like… you’d have done all of it for anybody. ”
He blinked, startled. “Okay, but—”
“I know what they meant,” I rushed on, because if I stopped now, I’d lose my nerve. “They meant you’re a good man. A helper. Someone who doesn’t think twice.” My hands curled against my thighs. “But all I heard was that I wasn’t special after all.”
He took another step toward me, confusion and something like hurt crossing his face. “Jess—”
“And I know it’s not fair,” I said quickly. “You’ve shown me—God, you’ve shown me so much these last few weeks. And I shouldn’t need constant reassurance. I shouldn’t fold because someone said something offhand.”
“You’re allowed to fold,” he said, voice low. “You’re human.”
I shook my head. “I just… I panicked. That’s all. Because I know how much you’ve done for me. The hours. The work. The rides and the late nights and the talking me down when I spiraled. And I started thinking—maybe this is just what you do. That I built it up to mean more than it did.”
He opened his mouth, ready to argue, but he didn’t get the chance.
A booming voice cut in from behind him. “There he is! The man of the hour!”
We both jumped. Mr. Caldwell approached from the festival side of the booths, cheeks red from the cold and enthusiasm as he clapped Powell so hard on the back I winced for him.
“Don’t let him sell you short, Jess,” he said, oblivious to the emotional minefield he’d wandered into.
“This one’s the reason everything came together.
” He pointed at Powell. “This man organized the whole GoFundMe. Got half the county donating lumber and equipment. Called in every favor known to man. And don’t tell me you didn’t—you think I don’t know whose truck delivered the espresso machine? ”
My stomach dropped. “You… what?”
Caldwell chuckled, winking at Powell like they were sharing some grand secret. “You got a good one helping you out. Hell of a project manager. Anyway—” He slapped Powell’s shoulder again. “We appreciate you, son.” And with that, he wandered back toward the music tent, humming.
The silence he left behind was thick and electric.
Slowly, I turned back to Powell. “You… did all that?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah. It wasn’t—it wasn’t a big thing.”
“A GoFundMe? A community rebuild effort? Donations? Calling people for equipment?” My voice trembled. “Powell, that is not ‘not a big thing.’ Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged helplessly. “You didn’t need another thing on your plate. And I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me. That’s not why I did it. I just… wanted to help. And maybe try to make up for whatever hurt I caused before.”
My chest tightened. The two versions of him—the one from the bakery gossip and the one standing in front of me—collided with confusing force.
The words scraped out of my throat. “They said that’s just who you are. That you’d have done all of that—for anybody.”
He stilled before stepping close enough that I saw every emotion in his eyes. “Jess. I help people, sure. I’m not going to ignore someone in trouble.”
His voice dropped, rough and quiet. “But I don’t spend my every spare hour fixing just anybody’s damn life.”
My breath caught. He reached up and cautiously brushed his fingers along my cheek, tracing the line with an almost reverent touch.
“You are different.” He said it without theatrics or pretty phrasing, merely a simple statement of fact delivered in that steady way of his, and somehow that made the truth land harder than any flowery declaration.
“You always have been. They don’t know the difference between how I treat folks and how I feel about you.
They weren’t there for the other part—the part where I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about you, or the part where I’d find excuses to drive past your truck just to see if you were okay. They don’t get to define what this is.”
The words punched me in the sternum, stealing what little breath I had left. I swallowed hard against the tightness in my throat. “Maybe I just... wanted to believe I mattered to you. Really mattered. Not as another person to help, but as... me.”
He let out a breath like the words physically hit him, his eyes closing briefly before finding mine again. “Jess.” My name on his lips sounded like a prayer. “I don’t want anybody. I want you.”
Something inside me cracked wide open—all the walls I’d built, all the careful distance I’d maintained, crumbling like sugar in rain.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words tumbling out in a rush. “For assuming the worst. For running before I gave you a chance to explain. For not trusting you with what scared me. For being so damn stubborn about accepting help that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”
“I’m sorry too.” His thumb traced gentle circles on my cheek. “For not telling you about the fundraising from the start. I should’ve been upfront, should’ve trusted you to handle it. I was trying to do it right, but I ended up making it weird instead.”
“You did do it right. If I’d known, we both know I’d have been stupid about it.
” My voice trembled with the weight of everything I’d been too scared to acknowledge.
“You’re doing everything right. You’ve been doing everything right this whole time.
I’m just… I’m catching up to what my heart already knew. ”
His hand slid to the back of my neck, fingers tangling gently in my hair while his thumb brushed the sensitive skin beneath my ear. The touch sent shivers down my spine, grounding me in this moment, in him. “You okay?”
“I will be.” I meant it for the first time in weeks. “As long as you don’t give up on me figuring this out. On figuring out how to be someone who can accept good things when they happen.”
A small, crooked smile touched his mouth—that boyish grin that had been undoing me since day one. “Never.”
I let out a shaky laugh that was equal parts relief and disbelief. “I’m a little bit of an idiot.”
He framed my face with both hands now, warm palms holding me like I was something precious. “Maybe about this one tiny thing. But a very adorable, hardworking, stubborn-as-hell, wonderful idiot who makes the best coffee in three counties and has never once backed down from a challenge.”
My breath caught on a laugh that was half relief, half amazement that this man could see all my flaws and still look at me like I hung the moon. “I’ll work on it. The idiot part, I mean. The rest I’m keeping.”
“Good.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’m pretty fond of the whole package.”
Then he kissed me.
Not like the frantic, desperate kisses in the barn when we were both running on adrenaline and want.
Not like the tentative, questioning one in his kitchen when neither of us knew where we stood.
This one was slow and sure and savoring—like he was kissing me with the knowledge that I wasn’t running this time, that I was here and choosing this and him.
His lips moved against mine with a tenderness that made my knees weak, and I melted into him like I’d been waiting my whole life for this exact moment.
The lights of the Twelve Stops Christmas market glowed behind us, casting everything in soft winter magic, and somewhere in the distance, Esmerelda brayed approvingly like the world’s most chaotic fairy goddonkey who’d been orchestrating this whole thing from the beginning.
When we finally drew apart, foreheads touching and breathing ragged, the whole evening seemed to settle around us in a warm, shimmering hush. The kind of quiet that felt full instead of empty, pregnant with possibility instead of doubt.
He squeezed my waist gently, his hands warm through my jacket. “We okay now?”
I nodded, breath warm against his mouth, close enough to count his eyelashes in the twinkling light. “Yeah,” I whispered. “We’re okay.”
Better than okay. We were choosing this—together, with eyes wide open and hearts finally honest.
And for the first time in a long time, that felt like something I could trust.