Page 80 of The Last Promise You Made

We all stood back and admired the sad little snowman. He was hardly the perfect shape, and the snow had been too thin for him to be pristine, but it was a snowman. Addy laid a mittened palm on it with a reverence that made my heart skip several beats.

“He’s missing something,” Ryder said, one eye closed, assessing the crooked mass.

“Hat,” Addy said.

He chuckled. “Yep.” He pulled his cowboy hat off and placed it on the snowman’s head.

Addy laughed, and the sound traveled through the cold air like fairy wings. Soft and light and bringing joy.

“We have to name him if we want him to come alive,” Ryder said, voice lowered as if he was telling her a secret. “Only snowmen with names can visit your dreams and grant wishes.”

I held back a snort because Addy was eating up his words like they were pure sugar.

“What should we call him?” she asked. Her fully formed sentences kept catching me off guard when they happened, tugging at all those emotions floating around inside me.

“He’s your first snowman, so you get to name him.”

“Why does it have to be a guy?” I asked. “Couldn’t it be a girl?”

Ryder looked up at me, and his smile was as wide as his daughter’s. They both were beautiful. Stunning in a way that made them glow as if the sun had come out even though it was still tucked behind dark clouds and shimmering snowflakes.

“It can be whatever gender you want it to be,” he said, winking at Addy.

After a moment of deep thought, she whispered, “Rosalinda.”

My eyes caught Ryder’s. That was such a unique and specific name that it had to mean something.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“My abuela was Rosalinda.”

The name tickled at the back of my brain. Something from one of my files. Something about the Lovatos. Damn. I hated not being able to pull it to the surface. I’d go back through them tonight and see what I could find.

“Did you meet your abuela?” I asked.

She shook her head. “She went to heaven when Mama was little like me.”

“Rosalinda it is,” Ryder said, handing Addy a stick. “Can you write her name? Here at the base of the snowwoman?”

Addy took the stick and started to carve the name in the growing layer of snow. She seemed to be thinking about the sounds as she did it, taking her time, and ended up using a U for the As. But at least she could write and spell. She’d had some kind of schooling.

Ryder handed me his phone. “Can you take a picture?”

My throat clogged, thinking about all the pictures he’d missed with his daughter. Thinking of the photo albums at my house filled with pictures of me and my family. Thinking about the ones Eva had shown Addy and me of his childhood. He didn’t have those with Addy. He’d had so much stolen from him that he’d never get back. And if those thoughts carved sharply through me, I couldn’t even imagine what they did to him.

These two humans belonged together with their matching smiles and love drifting around them. My heart and body ached once more for that “something” I’d never wanted. A man. A little girl. Ties that would tether me to this place instead of letting me float freely around the globe. It was absolutely contrary to everything I’d ever seen for myself. Even growing up, I’d recognized that all the spy heroes I idolized had only received pain from relationships because the life they led wasn’t fit for them. Instead, it got people killed. The hero’s love interest rarely made it through unscathed or even alive.

Ryder kneeled on the ground, bringing his height in line with our snowman, and tucked Addy up in front of him. They both sent those wide smiles in my direction, and I clicked several shots. I handed him his phone back, and then, without really thinking about it, I dropped down on my knees with them, leaned in, and took a selfie with all of us. It was crooked and blurred with snow, but it had four faces in it, one made of ice and fruit, but they were all smiling.

That moment seemed full of the magic Ryder had accused Mila of having. It made me want to believe in the wishes granted by snowmen. It made me wish for something I knew wasn’t mine to have.

I longed to belong to them.

For them to belong to me.

And I really didn’t know what to make of it—what to make of this Gia yearning for an unexpected family.

“Come on. Hot chocolate is a must now,” Ryder said, standing up and taking Addy’s wet-mittened hand in his.

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