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He went still.

"Say it again."

I kissed him. His mouth was warm under the water and his hands tightened on my waist.

"I love you."

He pulled me into him and kissed me until the water ran cold and neither of us cared. When he finally pulled back, his forehead stayed against mine.

"I love you too." His voice was quiet. "So much."

We stayed in the shower for another half hour.

CHAPTER 18

The Christmas Market

ALEX

Janine told me she loved me on a Saturday night in a shower that had gone cold, and I hadn't stopped hearing it since.

We'd been living together for weeks. We'd been sharing a bed, raising a child together, working calls through a radio. We'd said the words. What we hadn't done was go on a single date.

"Can you take Hazel this Saturday?"

"Why?" The delight in Erin's voice was already unbearable.

"I plan to take Janine out to dinner."

"Dear God, finally."

"What?"

"I've been waiting for this call for months! Of course I can take her."

"Thanks, Erin."

"So where are you taking her? Have you made a reservation? What are you going to wear?"

"Goodbye, Erin."

Boston at Christmas looks like something out of a storybook. The city is old enough to pull it off. Candles in the brownstone windows. Lights strung across the narrow streets in the North End. The Common lit up, the Frog Pond glowing, wreaths on every door from Southie to Back Bay.

I'd seen all of it from the officer's seat of the engine at two in the morning, watching this city look its best through a windshield. This year I was walking through it with someone.

"Table for two? Right this way. We've got a corner spot by the window."

The restaurant had been open for three weeks. I found it one night scrolling through my phone while Janine put Hazel to bed.

It was a small European bistro on a side street in the South End with warm lighting, mismatched chairs, and a handwritten menu that read like someone's travel journal.

"I don't even know where to start."

Janine sat across from me in a black turtleneck and a leather skirt, her hair down, her boots still wet from the walk. She looked like herself, except the turtleneck fit in a way that made it difficult to look at the menu.

"Get anything you want."

"Everything on this menu reminds me of somewhere." She was reading it like a letter from an old friend, pointing at dishes and naming the cities they came from. We ordered too much and talked our way through all of it. She told me about Lisbon and a hostel where she stayed three weeks instead of one. I told her about Hadrian's Wall in the rain. She told me about a train in Germany where she missed her stop. I told her about Prague and the coffee cup I carried through three countries.