Page 104 of Holiday Friend Zones
She nods against my collarbone.“More than okay.”
I laugh under my breath and kiss her hair.“Me too.”
We drift for a while, not quite asleep.The clock ticks in the hall.Snow dresses the world outside in quiet.I keep waiting for the panic I used to carry like it paid rent in my ribs.It doesn’t come.
She shifts closer, one leg thrown over mine, fingers brushing the center of my chest like she’s anchoring me there.
“This is the best Christmas,” she whispers.“Not just the day.All of it.You.This.”
My throat tightens.I wrap my arms around her, holding her closer than ever.
“Yeah,” I murmur.“Best one I’ve ever had.”
And for once, I believe it.
Epilogue
ROMAN
Morning leaks through the curtains in a pale wash, and the house holds its breath like it knows what day it is.We’re tangled under the duvet, skin to skin, the air cool where it meets our shoulders.Willow’s hair is in my mouth in a way that should be annoying, and somehow isn’t.
“Roman?”Her voice is small yet sure at once, the way it sounds when she chooses honesty.
“Yeah.”
“I tried to make a plan to ...get you to notice me.”She lets out a quiet huff.“I’m fully aware that’s ridiculous.”
I smile into her hair.“So that’s what the state secrets were.”
She pokes my side.“I panicked.”
“I saw,” I say—and this is the new part where I don’t hide—“and I noticed before you started planning any cute nonsense.”
Silence stretches, warm as the bed.She tips her face up.I lean down.We meet in the middle for a kiss that tastes like yes.Her breath brushes my mouth when we part, and I want the next fifty years.
“Come with me,” I murmur, pushing up on an elbow.“Before you fall back asleep.”
She steals one of my sweatshirts while I pull on sweats, sleeves past her hands, legs bare, toes cold.We pad down the hall, past the framed photos and the spot where the trim still needs a second coat because I was too focused on perfecting the shelf heights.I stop in front of the glass doors and push them open.
The library glows—lamps soft, shelves lined with titles we stacked for both of us.Dune, beside the romance I swore I wouldn’t like, and then dog-eared to hell.The thriller she made me read last spring.On the mantel, the photo of her mom: Willow at eight, gap-toothed, me beside her, hair too long, both of us grinning like we had no idea what life was planning.
In the corner, a slender tree waits, adorned with warm lights and a handful of ornaments I hung yesterday because I was done pretending I could wait.
Her breath catches.“Roman.”
“I didn’t know how to ask you to stay,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck.“So I let the room say it for me.”
She steps in like she’s crossing into a place she’s been imagining for years.Fingers drift over spines, then the armchair she pretends isn’t her favorite, then the blanket her mom knitted on a winter she once called “good for staying in.”When she turns back to me, her eyes shine.
“You made me a tree.”
“Us a tree,” I answer.“You told me this season only worked when it felt like home.I want this room to feel like that.All year.”
She comes closer with a question sitting right there between us.I answer by lifting the small box from the shelf by the door.I meant to wait—Christmas Eve, cocoa, whatever we pretend is tradition—but waiting built too much distance.I’m done with that.
She opens it.Inside: a key on a red ribbon, and beneath it, a recipe card in her mother’s handwriting—the cinnamon rolls she thought were gone.I found it jammed behind a drawer and tucked it away, as if it could break.
Her eyes blur.“You kept this.”
