One year later
The lights were on when they turned the corner, as day turned to dusk and Leavenworth’s magical side revealed itself.
London slowed without thinking, the shape of the inn coming into view—eaves traced in warm white.
The porch rail glowed soft against the snow; dormers alternated between red and green.
“Hey,” she said, almost under her breath.
Harper followed her gaze. “Huh. Look at that.”
They stopped a few steps short of the walkway, boots once crunching on snow settling into stillness.
Last year, it surprised her. They’d come back from a coffee break bracing for another long night of decisions and damage control, and then—lights she hadn’t strung.
A job she hadn’t managed. Not a trace of the elf who’d intervened.
The only hint of outside intervention was a left-behind ladder from the bakery.
London hadn’t known what to do with that kind of help back then.
She didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust how easily it softened something she’d been holding tight.
Now, she just looked.
The same slight delay along the top line. One section near the gutter that flickered—it couldn’t quite hold steady. She noticed it immediately.
Not wrong. Just—familiar in a different way.
London’s eyes moved, slower this time. Down the line of the roof. Along the edge of the porch. To the side of the house where the outlet sat tucked just out of sight.
And then she saw it.
The extension cord was wrapped clean and deliberate—looped once around the post to keep it off the ground. Not how her father had done it. Not how Joel did it last year.
“How long did this take you?” London asked.
Harper didn’t answer right away.
London turned.
Harper was still looking at the lights; hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket—still not warm enough—like this was just something to look at. Not something she’d done.
“Not long.”
Harper would deflect. London expected nothing different.
Behind the windows, the inn carried on. A suitcase rolled overhead. Someone laughed, bright and unguarded, followed by the soft click of a door. The smell of cinnamon and cloves escaped when a guest left through the front, warm against the cold air.
London looked back at the lights.
Last year, she hadn’t known what to do with being held like that, when a few small gestures from her community changed everything.
This year, she did.
“They look good,” London said. “Thank you.”
Harper’s hand found the small of her back as they stood, admiring.
The year had flown by. It had also moved in slow motion.
She’d checked things off her list. Not all of them.
Some. Number ten—start living—hadn't looked anything like she'd imagined when she wrote it.
Harper had reopened her furniture studio.
Sebastian was running the inn's day-to-day operations like he'd been waiting for someone to get out of his way. Because he had.
They’d travelled to Europe and confirmed what London had heard—Copenhagen was very gay.
They’d held hands as they walked alongside the Seine in Paris.
They’d navigated the subway system in Budapest with the excitement of children on an adventure hunt.
They’d argued about what constituted overpacking and made up over mimosas in the airport lounge when both their bags were under the weight limit.
On a bluebird day in September, at the top of Mount Blanc, London guided Harper toward the edge of the viewing platform.
Their boots scraped lightly over packed snow.
A tour bus full of people in matching windbreakers milled behind them.
Below, Switzerland and France stretched wide and impossible, valleys cut deep between sharp, jagged peaks that looked close enough to touch and impossibly far at the same time.
The valley below could have been Leavenworth. Except it wasn’t.
Harper stood still, taking it in. She always did that—went quiet in big places, like she was filing something away.
“Darling,” London said from behind, arms slipping around her waist.
“Hm?”
“I love you.”
Harper didn’t turn. “I love you, too.”
“No, that’s not—hold on.” She loosened her grip just enough to nudge Harper’s arm. “Can you look at me for a second?”
Harper turned, slow, her sunglasses catching the light. There was a crease between her brows—half curiosity, half caution. “Okay,” she said. “What’s going on?”
People moved around them. Chatter. The crunch of boots. A guide explaining the ice caves below. The smell of a clove cigarette wafted.
“Let me start over. I love you, and I always have, for as long as I can remember. For as long as I’ve been the ‘me’ that I want to be, the other half of me has been you. And I’ve realized that’s what made being apart for so long so miserable.”
Harper shifted her weight, arms crossing loosely. “Lon—"
“And—we’re not done rebuilding. We will probably never be done. But this—” London gestured between them. “What we’ve been doing. It’s not actually rebuilding.”
She reached out both hands—an invitation Harper accepted.
“It’s choosing,” she said.
The word settled but didn’t need elaboration. They’d been choosing—every day—since their reunion.
“I don’t have a list for this part,” London added through a catch in her throat. “No plan. No ten steps to get it right or fifty things we need to do.”
She stopped. Reset.
“I love you,” she said again, steadier this time. “And I want to keep choosing you. Not because we already did. Not because it’s easy. Just because I—want to. I meant what I said on New Years Eve. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want that to start as soon as possible.”
Harper’s eyes searched her face now, really looking.
“London, you don’t have to—”
“And I don’t know what that looks like in five years or ten years, but I do know—I’m very aware of this—I don’t want a life without you in it.”
The wind and overactive hum of strangers existing nearby filled the silence.
London swallowed. Here it was.
“So—” she exhaled, a little uneven. “What I’m asking is—will you stay married to me?”
Harper didn’t answer right away.
Her eyes stayed on London’s, searching through sunglass lenses—not for the words, but for whatever sat underneath them.
“You’re serious,” she said, not quite a question.
“Deadly.” London felt the warmth burn the back of her ears. It could have been the sun. Probably not.
That almost smile. The one Harper made her work for.
She leaned in, closing the space between them, and her hand found the back of London’s neck. “I don’t want what we had before.”
London nodded, immediate and certain. “Me either.”
“I won’t do that again.”
“You won’t have to.”
Harper held her there another second. Then her grip shifted, not pulling London in, but steadying her there. Equal. Intentional.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” London echoed. After all that, okay?
“Yes,” Harper said. “I want to stay. I choose to stay.”
The first time London proposed, she’d almost fallen off her knee after a long hike to Colchuck Lake. The second time, she’d about flubbed her speech. When she reached into her pocket, her hand trembled. She felt thirty again.
“I really hoped you’d say that.”
She didn’t drop to a knee like the first time. Didn’t make a show of it. Just pulled a small box from her pocket—like she wasn’t entirely sure she’d get this far.
Harper’s brow lifted. “Lon—”
“I know,” London said quickly. “It’s not—this isn’t—a redo.”
She flipped the box open anyway. Inside, a band. Solid. Wide. A diamond set low, worn into the metal.
“I had my mum’s engagement ring reset,” she said. “Two of them. One for me, one for you.”
She glanced up, just for a second, aware that the crowd of tourists was watching now.
“I didn’t want something new,” she added. “I wanted something that already meant something. Just—different this time.”
The tour guide called for his group to move back to the bus, and a flurry of activity zoomed around them. Neither noticed.
“She knew?”
“Yeah. I asked her for it. She wanted this, too. Said I’d better stop being an idiot and fix this.”
London had learned a lot from her mom when she was cognitive, and perhaps even more when she hadn’t been.
Harper took the ring from the box, turning it once between her fingers before sliding it on.
No hesitation.
No ceremony.
Just—choice. And strangers. And Switzerland.
Then she reached for London’s hand.
“You didn’t need to do this. I had already decided months ago.”
When they kissed, there was a whoop in the background. Then clapping. Someone yelled something in French she didn’t catch.
London smiled against Harper’s mouth. “Sorry about the audience.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Harper said. “Wouldn’t be us without one.”
The memory settled as quickly as it had come, and London turned the band on her left hand with her thumb. Still there. In a blink, the cold air of Leavenworth replaced that sunny day in the Alps. The lights still flickered—the top left corner, a half second off.
Harper’s hand was steady on her back. Real. Solid. Here.
“The timing on those lights is off,” London said.
“Want me to fix them?” Harper had that tone in her voice that said she’d be on a ladder in a second.
London shook her head.
“Nah. Leave them. It works.”