“She terrifies me.”
Melanie smiled against me. “That’s how you know she approves.”
The fire shifted, dropping to embers. I reached for the blanket, pulled it around us, and tucked her in closer. She sighed, content.
“I’m serious, though,” she said after a moment. “Next year. You think about what you want?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to fix up that old deck at the bar. Expand the patio for summer. Maybe start doing live music again—local bands, the good kind, the ones who sound a little rough but mean it.”
“I like that,” she said softly. “And I could help decorate. Add plants.”
“Real ones?”
“Real ones,” she said, yawning. “I can keep them alive this time.”
“Sure you can.”
“I can,” she insisted, elbowing me weakly. “And maybe if you play your cards right, I’ll even move to Reckless.”
“What?” My heart skipped a beat.
“It could be the mulled cider.” Her laughter was sleepy now, the sound of someone halfway to dreaming.
The silence that followed was soft and good. The kind of silence that hums with possibility. I could almost see it…next Christmas, maybe this same house, maybe somewhere new. Her mom telling stories, Lydia and Callum new parents…
She looked up at me again, eyes heavy but clear. “Play it for me tomorrow,” she said.
“What?”
“The song. At the Stag. I want to dance to it again.”
I smiled. “It’s stuck in the machine, Mel. It’ll play whether I want it to or not once I take out the Christmas selection.”
“Good,” she said, closing her eyes. “Then we’ll always find it.”
Her breathing slowed. I brushed a strand of hair from her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Merry Christmas, Mel.”
She murmured something I barely caught. “Merry compass, Drew.”
I chuckled softly, but it stuck in my throat, tangled with something tender. She was already asleep, hand curled loosely around my arm where the tattoo glinted faintly in the firelight.
For a long time, I just sat there, listening to the old house breathe and the snow fall. The numbers on my arm caught the light, the ink dark and steady. I remembered the jukebox, the night it broke, the way her laughter filled the empty bar. I hadn’t known then what direction I was facing, only that she was in it.
Now, sitting here with her head on my chest and the fire giving up its last ember, I did. I knew exactly where I was going. It wasn’t some grand, cinematic future. It was just one full of small things that meant something. Coffee and laughter. Music and home. The quiet certainty of knowing who to reach for when the lights went out.
I tightened the blanket around her and leaned my head against the sofa, letting the glow of the tree paint the room in soft, forgiving color.
And I realized this was where my life had led me, and I couldn’t wait to see what was next.
If love’s a compass, mine stopped spinning the night she kissed me in front of a broken jukebox. Everything since had just been finding my way back to her, one song at a time.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Melanie
One Year Later
If you’d told me a year ago I’d be teaching first graders about snowflakes over video chat while a man I loved hummed Christmas music off-key in the kitchen, I would’ve asked what you were drinking and poured myself a glass.
