— J
I add.
Keep going.I’m not running this time.I wouldn’t get very far in my condition.
Another month passes of Humbug earning my trust.The brothers are hanging lights outside the clubhouse, and Humbug is arguing with the ladder like it personally wronged him.
“Hold it steady!”he barks.
“I am,” Frost calls back.
“You ain’t!It shook!”
“It’s windy, dumbass!”
I watch from the porch steps, laughing.
Humbug sees me, breath catching.
“You okay, Peppermint?”
“I’m… happy,” I say honestly.
He climbs down fast, wipes his hands on his jeans, and cups my cheek in one rough palm.
“You keep sayin’ stuff like that,” he murmurs.“And I’m gonna think I did somethin’ right.”
“You did.”
He kisses me, slow, certain, gentle enough that the baby kicks between us as if claiming the moment too.
Snow falls soft as breath across Evervale.
The lights glow warm.
The clubhouse feels like a home I never meant to have but somehow can’t imagine leaving.I sit on the edge of my bed, the journal open in my lap.
My page.
His page.
Healing written in ink.
He walks in, smelling like motor oil, grime under his nails from working all day at his shop.Sitting beside me, big and quiet and warm, he rests his hand over the arc of my stomach.
“You forgive me yet?”he asks.
I smile, soft.“I’m getting there.”
He kisses my temple, whispering against my skin, “I’ll wait.However long it takes.”
Chapter 23
Carol
Evervale wears real Christmas like perfume, strong enough to choke you, sweet enough to make you stay.
The lights string across Main Street like veins.The air smells like pine and sugar cookies.For the first time since everything burned, I don’t flinch when I see smoke curling from chimneys.
