Chapter 14 Rhett
FOURTEEN
RHETT
The bells blur together after a while.
Ring, jingle, murmur of voices. Thank you, beautiful, magical, like a postcard. Load up, tuck blankets, check straps, watch the horses’ ears, twelve minutes around the loop, back to the square. Repeat.
Sponsors. Donors. Journalists. Influencers, whatever the hell that means.
All of them want The Experience.
Which apparently is me, my horses, and sixty-plus years of tradition packaged into a tidy three-minute video and a tax write-off.
The first sponsor team goes up right after lunch—two city people in shiny boots that have never seen real snow. They ooh and ahh at the tree, the gazebo, the bakery, the choir. They ask me to “jingle the bells a little louder” for their selfie. I do, because the town needs this.
The next group is better. Local business owners who’ve been backing the Jubilee for years. They pat Donner’s neck and tell stories about my granddad. I remember to breathe.
All day, I see Ivy in flashes.
On the stage with Mayor Turner, bright and polished, explaining the campaign.
By the bakery, laughing with Lolly as they hand out cookies branded with the sponsor’s logo.
Near the gazebo, phone in hand, capturing testimonials and reaction clips, that big soft heart of hers turning into numbers and engagement and waitlists for next year.
Every time our eyes meet, something in my chest settles.
Every time I look away, it knots again.
Because around midafternoon, a woman in a sleek black coat and sharp boots steps out of a car with the sponsor’s logo on the side—and Ivy goes very still.
“Margo,” she breathes.
Her boss.
I watch from a distance as they hug, talk fast, walk toward the mayor’s office. I tell myself not to hover. I have a schedule. Horses to water. Another sponsor ride to do.
But between loops, I catch glimpses through the office window. Ivy animated, talking with her hands. Margo nodding, pointing at a tablet, at charts and graphs. She looks proud. It should make me glad.
It does.
And it doesn’t.
An hour later, when I’m back in the square giving a ride to a local family, I see Ivy and Margo reappear on the steps. Ivy’s eyes are shining. Margo throws her hands up in victory. The mayor claps like someone just announced world peace.
Keely darts out of the inn, gets the story in under thirty seconds, and barrels toward the sleigh as soon as I pull up.
“She got it!” Keely bounces on her toes, breath fogging in little bursts. “Ivy got the promotion. Creative Director. Big raise. Bigger campaigns. They want her leading all their holiday accounts next year. Isn’t that amazing?”
I grip the reins.
“Yeah,” I say, because it is.
It is.
It’s everything she’s been working for. Everything she’s talked about in little pieces—late nights at the agency, proving herself, wanting her dad to be proud. This job. This step. It’s hers. She earned it.
The family piles out, thanking me. I nod, help Mrs. Flores down carefully, make sure the kids don’t trip over the runners. Routine. Familiar. Safe.
Inside my chest, something’s slipping out of alignment.
All through the next few hours—more sponsor rides, more photos, the countdown to the tree lighting—I feel it. A quiet, growing dissonance. Like I’m listening to a song that used to make sense and now has a wrong note running through the middle of it.
Ivy catches me near the cocoa stand once.
“I need to talk to you later,” she says, eyes bright, cheeks flushed from the cold and everything else. “After the lighting. After your last ride.”
“Okay,” I say, because what else do you say to someone looking at you like that? “I’ll be at the wagon at eight.”
She hugs her arms around herself and rocks on her toes like she can’t contain the energy. “It’s big news.”
“I heard,” I say.
Her smile falters, just a hair. “From who?”
“Keely,” I say. “Congratulations.”
She searches my face. Whatever she sees there makes her swallow. “We’ll talk later,” she says softly. “Promise.”
Then she’s gone again, pulled into a whirlwind of sponsors and mayoral announcements and a choir that apparently only knows one key.
The tree lighting is beautiful.
Of course it is.
Kids screaming the countdown. The flip of a switch. The huge evergreen exploding into color. People cheering, cameras held high. Bells ringing in the distance—other horses, other rides.
I watch from the edge of the square with Donner and Comet already hitched for the last official run of the night, streetlights fuzzing in the falling snow. It should feel like a victory.
Instead, all I can think is: This isn’t her world forever.
This isn’t mine, either.
She belongs in boardrooms and client meetings and brainstorms that go until midnight. She’s built for big campaigns and bigger cities, for late flights and early calls. This promotion means longer hours. More travel. More demand. Less time for… mountains.
For cabins.
For men who only look good on paper if you count axes and horses and a degree in making winter roads passable.
I could ask her to make it work.
Ask her to try splitting herself between here and there, between a career she’s bled for and a man who barely knows how to say I need you without choking on the words.
But I won’t.
I know what it’s like to lose yourself in something bigger than you. To give all you have and have it still not be enough. I won’t be the one who asks her to start dividing up pieces of herself just so I can feel less alone at the top of a mountain.
The last sponsor ride goes smoothly. Two reps from the city, cheeks red, clutching their branded travel mugs. They love the bells, the view, the “historic authenticity.” They talk about expansion, about packages, about coming back next year and bringing more people.
“That’s up to the mayor,” I say, because decisions that big don’t belong to me.
But the path I’m about to take?
That does.
I check on the horses, and give them an extra handful of treats. My mind is somewhere else. On the loft. On the couch. On Ivy’s head on my chest and her hand over my heart and the words I’ve started to want that feel too big for a man who still wakes up sometimes to sounds that aren’t there.
At eight on the dot, she comes.
She’s in that red coat again, the one that makes her look like she stepped out of every Christmas movie ever made. Hat pulled down over her ears, curls escaping, cheeks flushed. She’s bouncing on her toes a little, like she’s trying to contain a storm.
“Hey,” she says, breathless. “You ready?”
No.
“Yeah,” I say.
I help her into the sleigh. No sponsors this time. No blankets except the old quilt Mrs. Hadley insisted I take “for when you’re not working.” No noise but the faint echo of music from the square.
I climb up, take the reins, and click my tongue softly. Donner and Comet start forward, bells chiming in a slower, gentler rhythm than the one I’ve been running all day.
We don’t go far. Just the birch lane. The lower meadow. Enough distance that the town sounds fade and it’s just snow and breath and the two of us.
She watches me for a while, letting the silence stretch, trusting me to fill it.
That hurts more than anything.
“So.” She tucks her hands into her pockets, then pulls one back out and rests it lightly on my arm. “Big day.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Heard about your promotion.”
Her eyes light up. “Creative Director. I—I still can’t believe it.
It’s everything I wanted. Bigger budget, bigger campaigns, more say in the direction of the department.
I’ll be leading all the holiday accounts next year.
Can you imagine? We could make the Chimney Gorge campaign an annual thing. Follow up. Summer. Fall. Holiday.”
I picture her in some glass building, windows full of city instead of pines, stacked with storyboards and calendars and clients all wanting a piece of her. I picture her phone buzzing nonstop, her laptop always open.
I picture her up in my cabin trying to answer emails on a spotty connection while I check fences and pretend I don’t hear the frustration in her voice when a file won’t send.
“Congratulations,” I say again.
She searches my face. “It’s a lot,” she admits. “Longer hours. More travel. I’ll have to be in the office more days. But—” She breathes out, a little laugh. “I felt like my dad was there today. Cheering me on. I don’t know. It feels right.”
“It is right,” I say.
And that’s the problem.
“You don’t sound happy,” she says quietly.
I keep my eyes on the road. On the way the runners hiss over the snow. On the birches, their white trunks glowing in the moonlight. “I am.”
“You’re lying,” she says.
She’s not wrong.
I pull the horses to a slow stop in the middle of the lane. The world narrows to white and shadow and the soft exhale of two patient animals.
“Ivy,” I say, feeling the words like stones in my mouth. “I need to say something.”
Her hand tightens on my arm. “Okay.”
I let the reins rest, my fingers curling around the worn leather for something to hold onto. My heartbeat is too loud. My chest feels too tight.
It would be so easy to say the opposite of what I’m about to say. To tell her I’ll drive down every weekend. That she can come up whenever her schedule allows. That we’ll figure it out. That love—whatever we’re growing toward—conquers logistics.
But I know better.
“I was…wrong,” I say.
I feel her go still beside me. “About what?”
“About starting something with you,” I say, each word scraping. “About thinking I could make a future work with someone whose life looks like yours.”
Silence.
Cold.
“You mean…because of work?” she asks slowly.
“Because of everything,” I say. “You’re going to be in offices and airports and meetings. You’re going to be running teams and chasing campaigns and living in a world that…doesn’t look anything like this.”
“And you’re going to be up here,” she says, voice tight. “With your horses. With your bells. With your cabin.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And?” she demands.