Chapter 23 #2
"Del." Maya's hands still in my hair, her voice going soft with understanding.
"You've been in love with him since date two.
Hell, probably since you spent three hours memorizing his stats as 'conversation starters' before he came for that book signing.
Actually," she holds up one finger with the precision of someone making a crucial point.
"I'd be willing to bet money it's been since you were fifteen and he spent three summers barely acknowledging your existence while you followed him around like a lovesick puppy. "
"It doesn't matter now," I grumble, my voice barely above a whisper. "This was always temporary. A bet with an expiration date. I just got confused about which one of us was supposed to learn something."
"Was it temporary?" Maya asks, her tone deceptively gentle. "Or did you just convince yourself it was because believing in forever felt too scary?"
When I open my mouth to argue, my phone buzzes against the couch cushion beside me. The screen shows a text from an unknown number, and I frown as I read:
Don't let him leave without a fight. He's been miserable since he got the call, and it's not because he wants to go back. - J
I stare at the message, reading it twice to make sure I'm not hallucinating. "Jake Morrison just texted me."
Maya's perfectly sculpted eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline. "Jake? As in Mac's best friend, Jake?"
"The very same." I hold up the phone so she can read the message herself. "He says I shouldn't let Mac leave without a fight."
Maya studies the text, then looks at me with an expression I recognize from her investigative reporting days—the look she gets when all the pieces of a story suddenly click into place. "Interesting. Very interesting indeed."
Three hours later, Maya has worked her usual magic.
Despite the cast that makes me feel like I'm dragging around a small anchor, I feel beautiful in the emerald green dress she selected—a shade that makes my eyes look luminous and brings out the gold highlights in my hair.
The fabric is soft wool that drapes elegantly even while accommodating the bulky cast, and Maya has styled my hair in soft, romantic waves that frame my face perfectly.
The crutches are decorated with Christmas ribbon in coordinating silver and battery-powered fairy lights because Maya is nothing if not thorough in her attention to detail. "If you're going to hobble," she declared while winding the lights around the metal. "You're going to hobble with style."
The Christmas Eve festival is in full swing when we make our way carefully down the external stairs to Main Street.
The whole town has turned out despite the steadily falling snow, bundled in winter coats and scarves.
Their faces glow with excitement and the warm light of hundreds of twinkling bulbs.
The air smells like cinnamon and hot chocolate, wood smoke and Christmas magic.
There's a hot cocoa stand run by the church auxiliary, a group of carolers moving through the crowd singing "Silver Bells" in perfect harmony, and children building snowmen in the small park beside the community center.
Couples steal kisses under the mistletoe that someone—probably Mrs. Armstrong—has hung from every lamppost with romantic precision.
It's perfect. Magical. Everything I dreamed Millbrook Falls could be again when tourism was strong and people came from all over New England to experience small-town Christmas charm.
And in the center of it all, there's a small wooden stage decorated with evergreen garlands and white lights, where Mayor Patterson will address the crowd and wish everyone happy holidays.
But more importantly, it's where the grand gesture date is supposed to take place.
The culmination of our very public bet, the final proof of whether romance can triumph over cynicism.
"There he is," Maya whispers, her breath creating small clouds in the cold air, and I follow her gaze to see Mac standing near the stage.
He looks devastatingly handsome in his dark wool coat and charcoal scarf, but even from this distance, I can see the tension radiating from him like heat waves. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders rigid with barely contained emotion.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Mayor Patterson's amplified voice booms across the crowd, causing a ripple of excitement to run through the assembled townspeople. "Welcome to our Christmas Eve Festival and the grand finale of our very own romance experiment!"
The crowd erupts in cheers and applause, and I spot familiar faces throughout the audience.
Millie from the grocery store waves enthusiastically, the entire trivia night crew is clustered near the front with homemade signs, and even Brad's mother gives me a supportive thumbs up from beside the hot chocolate stand.
They're all here to witness whether the cynical hockey player who called love "dangerous fantasy" can pull off a romantic gesture worthy of our little town.
I notice several people with expensive cameras positioned at the edges of the crowd—reporters and bloggers who want to witness the conclusion of our story.
But the townspeople have formed a protective barrier around them, keeping them at a respectful distance where they can observe but not intrude.
Mac's privacy is sacred here, and Millbrook Falls protects its own.
"Our very own Mac Sullivan…" Mayor Peterson continues, his voice carrying clearly through the crisp winter air. "Has graciously agreed to challenge whether or not romance is more than just fiction! I think many of us already know the answer."
Mac accepts the wireless microphone with hands that aren't quite steady, and the entire crowd falls silent with anticipation. He looks out over all the expectant faces—people who've welcomed him, fed him, accepted him as one of their own—then his gaze finds mine in the crowd.
For a moment, everything else fades away. The cold, the crowd, the cameras—none of it matters. There's just Mac, looking at me like I'm his North Star, his anchor in a storm he's been fighting alone.
"I'm not good at this," he begins, his voice carrying clearly through the speakers, rough with emotion he's trying to control.
"Public speaking, romantic gestures, believing in happy endings.
Three months ago, I would have told every single one of you that all of this was fake.
Performance art. Something people do because they think they're supposed to, not because it means anything real. "
He steps down from the stage, still clutching the microphone, and starts walking through the crowd with purposeful strides. People part for him easily, but his eyes never leave mine, as if I'm the only person in the world that matters.
"I came to this town to hide," he continues, his voice growing stronger with each word.
"From fans who hated me for costing them a playoff run, from a team I thought I'd let down, from memories that hurt too much to face in the daylight.
I came here to disappear completely, to become invisible until everyone forgot Mac Sullivan ever existed. "
My heart is pounding so hard I'm sure the entire town can hear it echoing off the surrounding buildings.
"Instead, I found someone who refused to let me disappear," Mac says, still moving through the crowd toward me with single-minded determination.
"Someone who looked at my worst moment, when I was broken and bitter and convinced the world was nothing but disappointment, and saw potential for something better.
Someone who challenged everything I thought I knew about love and loss and second chances. "
He's getting closer now, close enough that I can see snowflakes catching in his dark hair. That I can see the vulnerability in his blue eyes that he's finally letting the whole world witness.
"Delaney Rose Caldwell," he says, my name a prayer on his lips as he stops directly in front of me, close enough to touch.
"You made me believe in romance novels. You made me believe in community, in the kind of place where strangers become family just because you need them to be.
You made me believe in Christmas magic and grand gestures and the kind of love that exists in Hallmark movies.
The kind I was absolutely certain was just pretty lies wrapped up in false promises. "
The crowd is completely silent now, holding their collective breath. Even some of the children have stopped playing in the snow to watch this moment unfold.
"But most importantly…" He goes on, his voice dropping to something softer, more intimate, even though the microphone still carries his words to every corner of the square.
"You made me believe in myself again. In the possibility that someone who's broken can be put back together, not into what they were before, but into something better.
That someone who's lost everything can still find something worth staying for, worth fighting for, worth rebuilding their entire life around. "
He hands the microphone to someone in the crowd—Maya, I think, though I can barely see through the tears blurring my vision—and takes both of my hands in his, his skin warm against the December cold.
"I got the call this afternoon," he says, his voice now meant only for me even though I know everyone can hear. "Official offer. My team wants me back, full roster, playoff push. They're practically begging."
My chest tightens with dread, the happiness of moments before curdling into panic. "I know."
"I turned them down."
The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing my breath and making my knees weak with shock. "Mac, you can't. You’ve worked so hard–"
"I told them I'd consider coming back next season," he interrupts gently, his thumbs tracing soothing circles across my knuckles. "When I'm ready. When we're ready. Because I don't want to choose between hockey and you, Delaney. I don't want to choose between my career and my heart."
Tears are streaming down my face now, and I don't care that the whole town is watching, that cameras are recording every moment of this public declaration.
"I want both," Mac continues, his voice steady and sure.
"I want to play hockey in Boston and come home to you every chance I get.
I want to spend summers here helping you with Rosewood Books, learning about romance novels and decorating for small-town festivals.
I want winters watching you cheer for me in the stands, knowing you'll be waiting when I come home.
I want to build something real with you, in this town that gave us both a second chance at happiness. "
"Mac…" My voice breaks on his name.
"I love you," he confesses simply, the three words carrying more weight than any grand gesture ever could.
"Not because of some romance novel fantasy or because you managed to prove that all those damn tropes actually work in real life.
I love you because you're real. Because you fight for what you believe in with everything you have.
Because you saw me at my absolute worst and stayed anyway.
You helped me find my way back to something resembling human.
Because when I'm with you, I remember who I used to be before everything went wrong, and I can imagine who I might become if I'm brave enough to try. "
The crowd around us erupts in cheers and applause, but all I can see is Mac.
Mac, who came here broken and cynical and absolutely convinced that love was just a cruel joke the universe played on people foolish enough to believe in it.
Mac, who learned to hope again because I refused to let him give up on good things.
Mac, who rigged the bet so romance would win, no matter what.
"So what do you say?" He asks, smiling that crooked, devastating smile that made fifteen-year-old me weak in the knees and still has the same effect on twenty-five-year-old me. "Think a romance-reading bookshop owner could fall for a hockey player who finally believes in happy endings?"
I laugh through my tears, balancing carefully on my good leg as I reach up to cup his face with both hands. "I think she already has. I think she fell about three months ago and never quite figured out how to get back up."
When he kisses me, bending down to accommodate my awkward stance, the whole town cheers again, but I barely hear them over the thundering of my own heart.
All I can focus on is Mac—solid and warm and impossibly real in my arms. Mac, who chose love over fear, who chose us over the safe and easy path, who chose to believe in the kind of forever that I've been dreaming about since I was old enough to understand what love meant.
When we finally break apart, both breathing hard, he rests his forehead against mine, his blue eyes bright with unshed tears.
"Merry Christmas, Delaney."
"Merry Christmas, Mac."
And as the snow continues to fall around us, covering Millbrook Falls in a blanket of Christmas magic, I think about how sometimes the very best love stories are the ones that start with a bet and end with a choice—the choice to believe in something bigger than yourself, the choice to stay when leaving would be easier, the choice to love someone so completely that you're willing to rearrange your entire world to make room for them in it.
The choice to write your own happy ending, one day at a time.