Chapter One
Melanie
If Christmas spirit could kill you, Seattle would be a chalk outline surrounded by tinsel and overpriced gingerbread lattes. I’d been stuck at the same intersection for seven minutes, staring at a blow-up Santa that was deflating faster than my will to live. The poor thing sagged over the roof of a Subaru like a man who’d just given up halfway through a marathon.
“Move, you festive maniacs!” I yelled out my window, because apparently, everyone in the city decided today, December sixth, to come downtown and fight for the last remaining parking spots while waving the one-finger salute at Karma.
A horn blared behind me, long and ruthless.
I inched forward exactly one inch.
“Yeah, Merry freaking Christmas to you, too,” I muttered.
Lydia, beside me, took a slow, serene sip of her peppermint cocoa like a woman who’d transcended mortal suffering.
She lookedobscenelycalm, the picture of small-town peace.
“You know,” she said, swirling her straw with monk-like patience, “we could’ve taken the light rail from your apartment.”
“We could have,” I said, “but if everyone like us did that, then who would be left to experience the beauty that is downtown traffic, Lydia? The honking, the existential dread, the guy dressed like an elf aggressively juggling candy canes? This is the authentic holiday experience that I want to remind you that you’re missing, being tucked away up in Reckless River. My goal is to tempt you and Callum back to civilization.”
“This is definitely doing that.” She laughed softly, and I glared at her profile.
Lydia used to be as high-strung as I was with a color-coded calendar, a constant caffeine drip, two phones, and one meltdown per week. Now she was all glowing skin, cozy sweaters, andgo with the flowenergy.
It was disgusting.
“You’ve changed,” I said, squinting at her. “You’re all... calm now. It’s deeply unsettling.”
“Reckless River runs deep,” she said, smiling in that dreamy way that made me want to throw tinsel at her. “You’ll understand when you visit. Thanksgiving was incredible, and now with the Christmas Bazaar and Festival this weekend and next…well, you’ll see.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Last time I was in your smaller-than-small town, I got trapped behind a tractor for fourteen miles and had to pee in a cornfield.”
“That’s because you refused to use the gas station bathroom.”
“I have standards.”
Her grin only widened, the smug kind that saidCallum has made me into a better person. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Lydia, my big-city partner in crime, had fallen for a tattooed, broody small-town bar owner. And now she was... content.
Like, actually happy.
It was weird.
She was weird.
A man in a Rudolph costume jogged past my car, waving a cardboard sign that readFree Gift Wrapping—Tips Appreciated!But the arrow was pointed at his nether region, and his nose lit up. I watched him wander off.
Maybe Reckless River didn’t seem so bad.
Traffic finally inched forward, and I squeezed into a parking space that was approximately half the width of my car.
Lydia glanced out the window. “You’re going to get a ticket.”
“I prefer to think of it as a donation to the city’s Christmas fund,” I said, turning off the ignition.
Christmas had exploded like a glitter grenade. Every store blared Mariah Carey, every lamppost was wrapped in fake garland, and every third person wore a Santa hat. I tried to stay cheerful, by which I mean I kept my sunglasses on indoors to block the twinkle lights and muttered darkly about capitalism.
