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“I am.”
He pulls me into his lap and kisses me hard enough to make the folder slide onto the floor. His arms close around me while snow moves past the windows and the life I built in Michigan waits around us without feeling threatened by the one we are finally ready to build together.
Epilogue
Ryan
Charm has put a nine-foot Christmas tree inside a loft that barely has room for six.
The top bends beneath the ceiling. Half the branches press against the windows, and the bottom swallows enough floor space that reaching the couch requires navigating around it sideways. Every inch is covered in white lights, silver ribbon, glass fairies, miniature books, and metallic ornaments that throw reflections across the walls whenever the sun rises behind the snow.
It is extravagant, impractical, and beautiful.
It is Charm.
I fucking love it.
She sits across from me on the carpet in red pajamas covered in tiny champagne bottles. Her hair is tangled around her shoulders, the pale blond streaks catching in the lights as she searches beneath the tree for another gift.
“You’re staring at me.”
“You’re blocking the presents.”
“You’re staring at my ass.”
“That too.”
She looks over her shoulder. “It’s Christmas morning.”
“Your ass doesn’t observe federal holidays?”
Charm laughs and crawls deeper beneath the branches. The movement lifts the back of her shirt, exposing a narrow strip of skin above her waistband.
I reach over and drag my fingers across it.
She jerks. “Your hands are cold.”
“Come warm them up.”
“I’m busy.”
“I can see that.”
Most of the presents beneath the tree have been ridiculous. She bought me a first edition I told her was too expensive, a leather notebook with my initials carved into the cover, and enough clothes to make me question whether she hates everything I own. I bought her jewelry, books, lingerie, and a sewing machine she told me in one of her letters that she had stared at it online for three months but with her just starting out she had to live by need not want.
I can give her the wants.
She emerges from beneath the branches with a thin rectangular box, but I catch her wrist before she can settle onto her knees.
“Wait.”
Her eyebrows lift. “For what?”
“I have another one for you.”
“You already gave me lingerie that requires an engineering degree.”
“That gift benefits both of us.”
