EPILOGUE
By December, the snow had found us. It dusted everything from the top of Main Street all the way to the beach, transforming Bluebell Cove into a live snow globe.
Georgie’s house smelled like gingerbread from the candle she’d been burning since Thanksgiving.
I’d claimed the armchair in the living room as my unofficial office—a laptop on my knees, manuscript pages scattered like confetti across the coffee table.
My editor wanted one more round of developmental edits before the new year, and for once, the thought didn’t make me panic.
Priscilla loved the changes I made to the storyline. Less tragedy, and more of that wistful romanticism that had steadily seeped into my pores like the plague.
“Chapter Thirty-One still makes me cry,” Georgie said, walking by with a mug of hot chocolate. She leaned over my shoulder, pretending to read, but mostly to make sure I wasn’t sneaking in last-minute panic rewrites.
“That’s because you’re sentimental,” I said. “And you like happy endings.”
“I like good endings,” she corrected, smiling before disappearing toward the kitchen.
Rhett was out somewhere running errands, which we all knew meant buying a ring.
By “we all”, I meant me and Teddy. Georgie didn’t have a clue.
Every time he looked at her lately, it seemed like he was holding his breath, barely able to keep the question inside.
If anyone deserved her, it was my fellow comrade-in-cynicism.
Reformed cynics, thanks to our comrades-in-sunshine.
The clock on the wall chimed. Down the street, Christmas lights flickered to life, strung across professional displays on Bluebell Lane and zigzagged from shop to shop down Main Street. The whole town had never looked more beautiful to me.
Call it the disgusting amount of optimism my boyfriend had infected me with, but everyone else appeared to agree—if Fallfest was huge, then the Christmas festival was slated to be massive.
Not only had we attracted even more attention in the last couple months, but we were planning a week-long, fifty-year-anniversary Holly Jolly Jubilee.
Bluebell Cove would set its place on the map in stone.
Teddy’s Jeep rumbled up the street a few minutes later. He’d been working with the Chamber of Commerce, a huge reason why the Cove was increasingly relevant with each passing week. He still wore that decades-old denim jacket, and had a knack for tracking snow into the foyer, but I didn’t mind.
“Productive day?” he asked, setting a paper bag on the coffee table.
“If you count deleting entire paragraphs as progress,” I muttered.
He laughed. Maybe one day my heart would get used to the sound and stop racing every time I heard it. “Progress is progress,” he said.
Inside the bag were two pastries from the coffee shop—Rachel’s place, though not officially hers. Not yet. The “For Sale” sign was still in the window, and I’d overheard her on the phone that morning, whispering urgently about appraisals and developers and something called a bridge loan.
“She’ll figure it out,” Teddy said when I told him. “Didn’t you say she always does?”
I wanted to believe that. Bluebell Cove had a way of taking care of its own, even if it took a few heartbreaks and several bumps in the road to get there.
Later that night, when the edits were finally done and every noise outside was dampened by a layer of snow, I closed my laptop and watched the white flakes drift down in slow, lazy spirals.
Teddy came up behind me, pressing a kiss to my temple. “You’re thinking too loud again.”
“Just wondering how we ended up here,” I said.
“Bad decisions. Great timing.”
“And a couple rain storms,” I added.
Teddy pulled me up from the chair and into his arms. “See, I know we’ve had our fair share of kisses in the rain,” he murmured, thumb brushing the inside of my wrist in languid circles. “But I don’t think we’ve kissed in the snow yet.”
I barely had time to register his words or the wicked grin on his face before he scooped me into his arms. He ran through the living room, shoved my too-small slippers on his feet in the foyer and past my suede trench coat—still hanging in the garment bag from the dry cleaners—and flew out the door.
I threw my head back with a shriek of laughter when he nearly slipped on the porch steps and sent us tumbling to the frozen ground.
Teddy carried me all the way to the middle of Maple Street. I admired the Christmas lights glowing warm against the icy flurries, breath catching in my throat when our eyes met. Snowflakes dusted his scruff and hung to his lashes. The entire town hushed around us, as if holding its breath.
He smiled, goofy and electric, right before I pulled him by the collar of that ridiculous denim jacket and kissed him.
I didn’t know what came next, not for me, not for any of us—but for the first time, that felt like the point. Some stories weren’t meant to end. They just settled in for winter and waited for the next chapter.