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He laughed tiredly.

I smiled and went to wash off my makeup. When I was done, we switched and he went to brush his teeth. I kicked out of my pants and got under the covers before he came back out. A minute later he joined me. I rolled over and faced the wall while he took off his jeans. I felt the dip in the bed and he turned off his light.

Then we lay there in silence in the dark.

“You realize that you’re actually a legitimate criminal now, right?” I said.

He scoffed from next to me.

“There’s going to be a picture of you at the museum with a big X through it.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

“Could you be disbarred for something like this?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Actually, I could.”

“I would lie for you in court, you know.”

“Even if it means you have to drive downtown?”

I laughed wearily.

“We’re sharing a bed,” I said distantly. “And I don’t even know what your apartment looks like.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

I rolled over to face him. “I’ve never been pantless in bed with a guy whose house I’ve never seen.”

He leaned over and flicked on the light. “You should come down and see it.” He propped himself on his elbow to look at me.

I propped myself up on mine. “Show me pictures.”

“You want to see pictures of my apartment?” he said, looking amused.

“Yeah. What if you have shirts for curtains or something. I’m not driving all the way to Chicago to see that.”

“I do not have shirtans,” he said, reaching for his phone. “I think I just have pictures of Daisy, not really the apartment. You can probably see some of it in the background, though.” He opened his gallery and started swiping while I watched his screen.

The photos went back in time starting with the sleigh in the ditch. Pictures of the rehearsal dinner. There was the selfie he took earlier with the mustache drawn on it—then a picture of us. He paused there for a second and I blinked at the phone. “Where’d you get that?”

We weren’t posing for it. We were on the dance floor at the engagement party. He was turning me and I was laughing. It was a picture of us, but more obviously it was a picture of me.

My heart melted. He wanted to look at me.

“It was on the Little Christmas town community page,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I saved it.”

My chest felt tight.

He must have seen the look on my face. “I can delete it if you want…”

“No.” I shook my head. “Send it to me. And we should get a picture together tomorrow. So we have one.”

He looked at me like he knew what I was saying. That a picture might be all we’d have to show for any of this when it was all over. It was true. Because I’d decided something in the past few hours. I was moving to Little Christmas. I was taking the hot chocolate shop.

It was too good of an offer. And really, I couldn’t leave Noel. I just loved her too much.

It made me wonder how William did it, living so far away from the people he loved. That’s all that really matters when it comes down to it. Adjacency to people you care about.