Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seven-thirty. The sleigh rides were supposed to have started ninety minutes ago.
Jade ladled hot cocoa with mechanical precision, her smile as brittle as winter ice. She’d stopped checking her watch twenty minutes ago, finally accepting what her heart had been trying to deny all evening: Leo wasn’t coming.
The town square buzzed with Christmas energy despite the missing centerpiece of the evening.
Families wandered between vendor booths, children played in the snow beneath the twinkling lights, and the high school choir was working its way through “Silver Bells” with an enthusiasm that bordered on dangerous.
But there was a noticeable gap in the festivities. An empty space where magic was supposed to happen.
“Excuse me,” a middle-aged man approached her booth, his young daughter tugging on his coat sleeve. “Sarah here was wondering about the sleigh rides? She’s been looking forward to them all week.”
Jade’s chest tightened. This was the conversation she’d been dreading, the one she’d been putting off with vague promises of “soon” and “any minute now.” She crouched down to the little girl’s level, forcing warmth into her voice.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but the reindeer can’t make it tonight. One of them hurt her leg and needs to rest.”
The child’s face fell with the particular devastation that only crushed Christmas dreams could bring. Her father patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Maybe next year, honey.”
As they walked away, Jade straightened up and caught sight of her reflection in the dark window of the church across the square. She looked exactly like what she was: a woman who’d been abandoned by someone she’d trusted.
The worst part was the tiny, stubborn ember of concern that still glowed somewhere behind her anger.
Not for the bitter man who’d thrown her desperation back in her face, but for the boy she’d known in high school.
The one who’d helped her build physics projects and brought coffee to teachers having bad days.
The Leo who’d almost asked her to winter formal before losing his nerve.
Where had that person gone? When had he become someone who could walk away from a community counting on him? When had he become someone who could hurt her and then vanish?
“One cocoa, please,” a woman said, her face aglow with holiday spirit. “And a gingerbread man for little Timmy.”
“Of course,” Jade said, her voice a chipper, hollow automaton. She handed over the cup and the cookie, her hand movements practiced and detached. She felt like an animatronic character at a theme park: Sad Baker Lady, Programmed for Holiday Cheer. Push a button, get a smile and a cookie.
Felicity had done her best, God love her.
She’d flitted around the table like a crazed Christmas elf, fluffing the pine boughs and straightening the precariously stacked cookies, all while keeping up a running commentary on various holiday marketing strategies that might still save the evening.
But even Fee’s relentless optimism had begun to flag as the evening wore on.
She was now manning the cash box at the pond station, leaving Jade alone at the gazebo booth with her thoughts and her dwindling hope.
Jade’s eyes, against her better judgment, kept scanning the edges of the crowd.
She was looking for a tall, stubborn, reindeer-herding ghost. Not because she wanted to see him.
No, definitely not. She was just... taking inventory.
Making sure all the town’s key players were in attendance for her grand finale of failure.
He wasn’t there.
Of course he wasn’t. The man who had accused her of looking for an excuse to run wouldn’t show up to watch her go down with the ship. He had said his piece. He had delivered his verdict. He was probably up at his farm, in his quiet, orderly world, feeling smug, miserably correct.
Caring doesn’t pay electrical bills, Jade.
The memory of his words was a fresh punch to the gut.
He’d weaponized her own practicality against her.
He’d taken her most vulnerable confession and twisted it into proof of her inevitable departure.
The hope she’d nurtured—the insane, beautiful, terrifying hope that this time could be different, that he could be different—had been extinguished so thoroughly she could no longer remember what it felt like.
The fruitcake revelation from two days ago felt hollow now, meaningless in the face of her current reality.
Understanding why Cecily hated her family didn’t change the fact that Leo had abandoned her when she needed him most. Didn’t change the fact that her booths were failing because people couldn’t walk the distance between them in the cold.
Didn’t change the fact that Monday’s inspection would probably shut them down for good.
“Just look at her,” a low voice muttered from nearby. Jade recognized Ida’s signature blend of pity and morbid fascination. “Brave little soldier. Serving cookies at her own execution.”
“Ida, hush,” came Ruth’s gentle reprimand. “She’s doing her best.”
“Her best isn’t going to pay those electrical bills,” Ida sniffed. “A shame. I was starting to like her. She’s got her great-grandmother’s spine, just not her luck with men.”
Jade’s smile tightened another notch. She ladled out more cocoa. The liquid was dark and murky. Just like her future.
On the stage, the choir mercifully finished their song, and Mayor Clark Whitcomb took the microphone, his face beaming with forced cheer.
“Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the annual Frost Pine Ridge Tree Lighting ceremony!” A smattering of applause rippled through the crowd. “What a turnout! It just goes to show that the spirit of our town is alive and well!”
He went on, his voice a booming, cheerful drone, listing people to thank and local businesses to praise. Jade tuned him out, focusing on the simple, repetitive task of pouring liquid from a big pot into a small cup.
“...and of course, a huge thank you to Sugar Pine Sweets for providing these delicious holiday treats!” the mayor boomed, gesturing directly at her.
A wave of applause directed at her table made Jade’s stomach clench.
People were smiling at her, raising their cups in a toast. It felt like a sympathy wave.
A pity party. They were applauding her for showing up at her own public failure.
She forced her smile wider, raising a hand in a weak, pathetic wave.
“And after the lighting,” the mayor continued, his eyes scanning the square with growing uncertainty, “we were hoping for sleigh rides provided by Carter Reindeer Farm, but it appears...” He paused, his smile faltering as his gaze swept the conspicuously empty space where Leo should have been.
“Well, these things happen! Animal welfare comes first, naturally!”
A few murmurs of disappointment went through the crowd. Parents bent down to explain to confused children why there wouldn’t be sleigh rides after all.
Jade’s heart, which she thought couldn’t sink any lower, found a new, deeper level of the abyss. He wasn’t just not here for her. He wasn’t here for the town. He was a no-show. The man who was all about duty and tradition had bailed on the community’s biggest event of the year.
The irony was so thick she could have bottled it and sold it as molasses. The man who had called her a runner had just fled the scene.
She felt a hundred pairs of eyes turn from the empty space to her. She could feel their collective thought process: *Well, that’s it, then. The partnership is officially over. The bakery is doomed, and the reindeer man has bolted.*
The humiliation was a physical heat that crawled up her neck. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She wanted to evaporate. Instead, she just stood there, clutching a sticky ladle, the town’s living embodiment of a Christmas disaster.
“Alrighty then!” the mayor said, trying to recover his momentum. “Well, let’s get to the main event! The lighting of the Frost Pine Ridge Christmas tree!”
A cheer went up, but it was weaker this time, tinged with the awkwardness of the moment.
“Let’s have the countdown!” he yelled, trying to manufacture enthusiasm. “Everyone, join in! Starting from ten!”
The crowd joined in, a little raggedly at first.
“Ten!”
Jade’s gaze was fixed on the ground. She just had to get through this. Just a few more minutes.
“Nine!”
Then she could pack up her cookies and her shame and go home.
“Eight!”
She could call Mabel and tell her it was over. All of it.
“Seven!”
She could accept the cold, hard fact that she was alone in this.
“Six!”
She could start packing her bags for good. Because maybe Leo was right. Maybe she was just passing through after all.
“Five!”
Then she heard it.
At first, it was so faint she thought she was imagining it, a phantom sound from a memory of a starlit sleigh ride.
“Four!”
It was a clear, bright ringing. A cascade of metallic notes cutting through the noise of the crowd.
“Three!”
It was getting louder. Closer. The rhythmic, unmistakable sound of sleigh bells.
Jade’s head snapped up.
Heads in the crowd were turning. A murmur rippled through the square, starting at the edges and moving inward. People were stepping aside, their faces shifting from confusion to surprise to outright delight. A path was opening up, a natural aisle forming in the sea of bundled bodies.
And through that aisle, like something out of a Christmas card come to life, came not one sleigh, but two.
“Two!” the mayor shouted, completely oblivious to the drama unfolding behind him.
Leading the procession was Leo’s main sleigh, pulled by Comet and Vixen, their heads held high, their breath pluming in the cold air. They were decked out in their full, magnificent regalia—gleaming leather harnesses and strings of polished brass bells that caught the light like captured stars.