Carlisle squeezes my shoulder, one firm press, and melts back into the crowd without another word. The music swells again, May is high-kicking like her life depends on it, and I’m standing there with confetti in my hair and Carlisle’s words sitting in my chest, warm and heavy and true.
That’s when I see her.
Maddie. A few feet away, leaning against the edge of the bar, a drink in one hand and her eyes on me. She’s wearing a floral dress, bright against the club’s low light, and her hair is loose around her shoulders in a way that makes my chest do something I’m quickly getting used to. But it’s her face that stops me cold—steady, warm, watching every micro-reaction cross my face like she’s cataloging them, storing them away.
She did this. Of course she did. This is Maddie Weiz operating at full capacity, and the sight of her standing there, calm amid the chaos she orchestrated, is almost enough to knock me flat.
Our eyes lock across the room. The bass is still pounding, the queens are still dancing, confetti is still drifting from the rafters like slow-motion snow, and Maddie is looking at me like I’m the answer to a question she’s been asking for years. I hold her gaze and let the noise wash over me, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Maddie tips her chin toward the stairs, and I follow without thinking, the way I’ve been following her since the first time she handed me a paintbrush and told me to stop overthinking the trim.
The stairs behind the stage are narrow enough that our shoulders brush as we climb, Christmas lights strung floor to ceiling in dense, careless loops, casting everything in warm gold and red. Above us, the rafters pulse with each bass hit from the main floor, the sound muffled but present, a steady heartbeat through the walls.
The upstairs lounge is quieter and empty except for us, the room dark, a single string of lights over the mirror providing just enough illumination to see by. Maddie leans against the bar, both hands flat on the counter behind her, and faces me directly.
“I’m staying,” she says, no qualifiers, no hedging, no “I think” or “I’ve decided” or any of the scaffolding she usually builds around her big declarations. Just: I’m staying. “Not because you convinced me. Not because of Drew, or the store, or Melvin’s bracket system.” A hint of a smile there, quick and genuine. “Because Sleighbell Springs is my home too. Has been for a while. I just needed to say it out loud to make it real.”
She lets it sit. The words hang between us, simple and enormous, and my breath goes shallow in a way that has nothing to do with the climb upstairs.
Before I can respond—and let’s be honest, my response capacity is currently operating at roughly the level of a stunned goldfish—Maddie keeps going.
“And I want you with me.” Her voice doesn’t waver. “Officially. No hiding, no half-steps, no ‘we’ll see.’ I want you, Jordan Vale, in my life, in my bed, in my extremely chaotic hardware store, and I am done pretending that’s up for debate.”
The pause that follows is long enough to measure in heartbeats. My brain, which is usually pretty good at producing words on demand, produces exactly nothing. My throat works as I exhale, and the word comes out rougher than I mean it to.
“Yes.”
Maddie’s mouth curves. Not a full smile yet, but the beginning of one, the kind that starts at the corners and works its way inward like sunlight spreading across a floor.
Then she keeps going, because Maddie Weiz, once she’s started, is basically unstoppable.
“One more thing.” She pushes off the bar, takes half a step closer. “I want you at the store. Not as a favor. Not as charity. Because the store needs you, and because I want to build something with your name on it alongside mine. Repair and workshop manager. Community whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it. A partnership. For real.”
The reaction lands in my body before it reaches my face. A stillness, complete and total, like someone hit pause on every muscle at once. My fingers curl once at my sides, nails pressing into my palms. My back finds the wall behind me, pressing against it as if I need its solidity, need something to hold me upright while my insides rearrange themselves.
This is it. This is the thing I’ve wanted and never said, not out loud, not even to myself in the dark at three in the morning when the want was loud enough to keep me awake. A place. A role. Something that belongs to me, with my name on it, built alongside someone who sees me, actually sees me, and wants me there anyway.
Another beat of silence, longer this time. The bass from downstairs thrums through the wall against my shoulder blades, steady as a pulse.
“Yes.”
The word comes out steadier than the first one. Then, quieter, like it costs me something to say it—which it does, it costs everything, every scrap of armor I’ve built over years of keeping my wants small and portable—I add: “I love you.”
Maddie’s composure cracks. Not a little crack, not a hairline fracture, the whole damn thing goes, and what replaces it is a smile so wide, so unguarded, so completely Maddie that it nearly knocks the wind out of me. The kind of smile she doesn’t usually let people see, raw and bright and entirely without her usual careful calibration.
“I love you too,” she says, and there’s no hesitation in it, no pause, just the words out in the open where they belong, warm and certain as her hand finding mine.
I close the distance between us. One hand comes up to cup her jaw, thumb brushing the edge of her cheekbone where a faint smudge of blue paint still lingers from God knows when, and I kiss her.
It’s not gentle, it’s not careful. It’s the kind of kiss that has three years of want behind it, three years of almosts and not-quites, and Maddie meets me with equal force, her hands fisting in the front of my jacket, pulling me closer like she’s afraid I might remember how to breathe and change my mind.
The club roars on the other side of the wall, bass still dropping, crowd still screaming, and it feels like they’re cheering for us, like the whole damn town is downstairs throwing confetti at the exact moment our mouths find each other in a poorly lit lounge above a drag bar, and I cannot think of a single place I would rather be.
I pull back just enough to speak, my forehead resting against hers, our breath mingling in the narrow space between us.
“Take me home,” I say, voice low, rough at the edges.
Maddie’s smile is answer enough.
