WHEN I WAS trying to imagine how this night would play out, I wasn’t sure how I would feel once I broke things off with Sky. My plan was to talk to him early enough in the evening that I’d have time to shift gears and get excited about owning up to my feelings for Jesse. I assumed it would take at least a couple of hours for me to get to this point—maybe longer. But I think it’s a testament to the immensity of what I feel for Jesse that as soon as my conversation with Sky ends, all I can think about is finding him.
Out of respect for Sky, though, I wait. I watch from a distance as he connects with Andrea. I spy her giving him a hug, then draping her arm around his back and walking with him toward their car. The rest of his family follows shortly after. I say a silent prayer then that Sky finds what he’s looking for—and soon—because he deserves a happily ever after as much as I do. Once their cars pull out of the parking lot, I jolt into action, searching for the man who makes my heart happier than it’s ever been.
My first stop is the hot chocolate booth where I saw Jesse earlier, but he’s no longer there. I scan the other booths, and when I don’t see him at any of those, I walk inside the inn. Everywhere I look, large groups of people are chatting and drinking cocktails. I weave in and out of them, searching their faces but not seeing his. I spy Mark and Beth in a group by the tree in the parlor, but I duck behind the cocktail bar so they don’t see me. I’ll talk to them later. Right now, all I want to do is find Jesse.
I check for him in the kitchen next but don’t see him there either, so I head back outside and over to the line for horse-drawn carriage rides. Will is returning from leading a ride just as I approach. He stops the horses and looks at me.
“Have you seen Jesse?” I ask.
“Not in a while. He came on a ride with me about thirty minutes ago.”
I nod and thank him, heading toward the barn since I haven’t checked there yet. I peek in, but it’s pretty empty—just a couple of kids and their parents standing outside the chicken coop, petting the chickens’ heads.
Where is he?
My heart is thrashing as I exit the barn, frantically looking in every direction. Now that I’m certain of my decision, I want to shout it at the top of my lungs. I want Jesse to know it’s him I choose without a doubt in my mind, without an ounce of confusion. The truth of it beats through me like a drum.
It’s him. It’s him. It’s him.
“Looking for something?”
“Jesse,” I breathe, pivoting toward his voice. He’s walking toward me from the direction of our cottages. I’m so relieved I’m not even sure if I smile. I just know I’m moving, and then I’m meeting him in the middle.
His hair is windblown and he’s wearing my favorite jacket of his: it’s blue-and-green plaid, and because it’s so cozy, some nights he brings it to the fire for me and lets me bundle up in it. I’ve never told him that all those nights he let me borrow it, I mostly loved wearing it because it smells like him.
I can tell him that kind of thing now. Later. After I get what I need to say off of my chest.
Tears are welling in my eyes, and I don’t want Jesse to see me crying and think I’m about to deliver bad news, but I can’t control the few that break free. I open my mouth, to tell him they’re happy tears—that I’m not here to break his heart—but he speaks first.
“This is for you,” he says, handing me a gift I hadn’t even noticed he was holding.
“Jesse—” I start to say, but he stops me, pressing a finger to my lips.
“Just open it first, okay?”
I can’t. I can’t wait a minute longer to tell him how I feel. But that focused look is on Jesse’s face, the one that tells me he really cares that I open it.
“Please?” he says, cementing my impression.
“You didn’t have to get me something,” I say, taking it.
“I told you I would.”
He did tell me he would. When I first got here, he said he’d be sure to get me something good for Christmas. And I got him something special too, but it’s in my cottage.
I remove the ribbon and wrapping paper slowly. Underneath, there’s a green box, and inside the box is an ornament. I pull it out.
Not just any ornament.
A beautiful handmade one.
Santa is hanging from the string and he’s holding a scroll of paper. On top of the scroll, Jesse inscribed Harper’s Vermont Bucket List, and beneath it is a giant check mark along with the word complete.
“I don’t know what choice you’ve made tonight,” he says. There’s a flash of anguish in his eyes, but then it’s gone. “But in case that choice was to leave, I wanted to make sure you left with a reminder of what you came for.”
Selfless Jesse.
My hearts swells against the walls of my chest, and tears are falling down my cheeks in earnest now. Jesse reaches out to wipe them away, his fingers leaving a tingling trail on my skin.
“I love you, Jesse,” I say, unable to contain the words anymore. “I’m so in love with you, I don’t know how I was ever unsure of it.”
I see a smile sweep across Jesse’s face as if I’ve just given him the greatest gift in the world, and my heart expands, thrumming fast behind my rib cage.
“I might have come here for my bucket list, but I found so much more: I found you. I’m so grateful to you for being patient with me as I listened to my heart. I love you, Jesse. I love you so much.”
He pulls me into his chest then, and I feel him exhale what seem like a thousand pent-up breaths all at once, and then a laugh, as if his joy can’t be contained, and my stomach somersaults at the sound.
“I love you too, Harper,” he tells me. He kisses the top of my head and holds me even closer. “More than you can know.”
I already knew I made the right choice. But as soon as these words leave his mouth, I’m convinced of it ten times over.
This is where I belong. This is where I’m meant to be.
Here. Here with Jesse.
When he finally releases me, I gently place my gift down on the snow beside us and reach for his hands. I want to tell him everything. But he lifts a hand to my cheek instead, sliding it along until it cups my jaw, the tips of his fingers anchored in my hair.
“I’ve been waiting so long for this,” he says, his eyes on my lips.
“How long, exactly?” I want to know the precise moment Jesse realized he had feelings for me. I want to hear everything he wasn’t able to tell me while he was waiting for me to come to terms with what I think I’ve known deep down inside me all along.
“That’s a story for another day,” he says.
“Jesse, tell—”
He steps closer, his eyes heating with an intensity I’ve only seen twice before: the night the power went out and the day he almost kissed me in my cabin. And suddenly, I can’t speak. I can barely breathe.
I feel the shift within me, the flash of desire so intense that I lean toward him without thinking. I feel his stubble on my temple, and memories, one on top of the other, flash through me: every near kiss, every denied touch, every too-long look, every single casual brush. All of them leading to this moment.
The world narrows to Jesse and me, to here and now.
As if he can hear my thoughts, he says, “Right now, Harper, I just need you.”
Then his hands are on my hips, my hands are on his chest, his lips find mine, and I’m . . . I’m on fire. Everything within me is ignited. I’m consumed with the power of it, of the want, of the need, of the love, and when Jesse tilts his head and deepens the kiss, I moan, and it vibrates from me through to Jesse, and I feel the answering vibration in his own chest, beneath my hands. A pulse takes flight somewhere within me, a pounding wave of heat spreading across my limbs, demanding more, more of—
This. I never imagined passion like this. I’ve never loved like this.
I don’t know how long the kiss goes on for. We can’t seem to stop, as if we’re trying to make up for weeks and months all at once. But I know that when Jesse finally lifts his head, my chest is heaving and his breath is coming in short bursts, little rapid puffs I can see in the air. I whimper at the sudden loss of heat, missing his lips and tongue and hands, and Jesse slams a quick, hard kiss onto my lips in response to the sound.
“Jesse.” I cut a glance at the cabins behind him, then at his lips, then at the party in full gallop around us.
We look at each other a moment, and then Jesse swoops down to grab my present off the ground and seizes my hand, tugging me toward our cabins, and I’m laughing. He looks back at me as we stumble through his door, and a new smile illuminates his face, one I haven’t seen before but have a feeling I’ll be seeing often now. It sets my stomach fluttering, sends little sparks into my chest.
“Harper,” he says in the quiet of the cabin. “Harper.”
And then my back is against the door and Jesse’s lips are on mine and it’s—
The.
Best.
Christmas.
Ever.