“I know,” she said. “I’ve been there. Fearful and just a wreck. Not able to enjoy the life I had, the love that I had because I was living scared. But I wasn’t too afraid to love you. I was brave. I took a chance. And you... You devastated me.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. And it’s a piss-poor excuse, Rose, I know it is, but I have to tell you... The feeling that I had when I came out of my room and saw you standing there in the kitchen, wearing my T-shirt, baking the cookies... It reminded me of when I saved up enough money to send my mom on that trip. The look on her face when I gave her that cash. I was so proud. And I was so...happy. With where I was in life. And it was so soon after that that it was all taken away from me. That feeling, that hope, that happiness, it goes with that kind of devastation for me. It’s a whole process of unlearning it. Of being brave enough to trust that moment. I’m sorry I wasn’t before. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
Her heart crumpled. And she felt her face crumple, too. She couldn’t stay mad. Not in the face of that. Not in the face of that vulnerability. That honesty. She could imagine him too well. That proud teenage boy who had worked so hard to give his mom that break. And to have that moment destroyed the way that it had been... She hurt for him. And she couldn’t hold herself back. Not anymore. She closed the space between them and pulled him into her arms. “I forgive you,” she said. “We’ve already lived with enough hurt. We can just... We can just love each other now.”
“I’d like that,” he said, his throat tight, his words coming out hoarse. “I really would.”
“Are we going to get married and stuff?”
“I expect we should,” he said.
“I’d really like that. I never wanted to be a wife, Logan. But I’d really like to be yours.”
“Well, that suits me,” he said. “Because I never particularly wanted to be a husband. But I would like to be your husband, Rose Daniels. Because you’re my other half. You’re right. We’re soul mates. And I found out the hard way that I don’t function very well without half my soul.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
“I’ve always thought life was pretty mean. But it brought me you. It brought us together. I prayed for this. For us. Here we are. Might change the whole way I think about things.”
“Logan.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed his mouth. She kissed him with everything she was. Everything she had been. Everything she would be.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Rose Daniels was happy with her life. And she hadn’t realized quite how full it was, until the man who worked by her side had become the man who held her in his arms.
This man who was, and always had been her horizon line, guiding her. Loving her. It was miraculous. And after everything they’d been through, she was happy to accept a miracle.
LOGAN WAS SURPRISED how well the family took it. But then, it was pretty obvious that they’d all figured it out at that point. So when he and Rose showed up later that evening at the main house, hand in hand, no one seemed particularly shocked, though Ryder took him to task and asked his intentions. Logan asked for Ryder’s permission to marry her, then said he intended to do it with or without his permission.
“It’s not his permission you need,” Rose said. “It’s mine. And I already gave it.”
Ryder gave it to them anyway. Logan was half convinced he’d done it just to make Rose angry, because Ryder found Rose’s anger amusing.
The only person who seemed somewhat muted was Iris. Though she pulled her sister in for a hug, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
They had missed Christmas together, and it was nice to be sitting around the Christmas tree now, even though they’d missed the day. It felt right. It felt like home.
But better.
So much better.
“You know,” Rose said later, when they were lying in bed back in his cabin, “it occurs to me that I’m actually a really great matchmaker.”
“What makes you say that? You’re actually the worst matchmaker in the entire world.”
“No. I might have been wrong about Elliott. But it was Elliott who ultimately brought us together. And I’m going to go ahead and take credit for that.”
“If you’re going to think of it that way, then it was Elliott, blacksmithing and Barbara Niedermayer.”
“All right, all right,” Rose said, snuggling against him. “Maybe it was everything.”
Warmth spread through his chest, love so bright and heavy it was painful. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it might’ve been everything.”
Everything. All the pain, all the uncertainty, the doubt, the fear, had brought them here to this moment.
And he knew that whatever happened from this point on, they would be together.
And that was the happiest thing that he could possibly imagine.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS LOGAN’S first Christmas as a husband. And more notably, the first Christmas he had truly celebrated since he was sixteen years old.
He bought presents for everybody. Maybe too many. Especially when it came to Rose, who he had been lavishing for the last eleven days. She had called him unbearably cheesy. But she had also accepted her presents cheerfully.
Tomorrow morning, they would all open presents together around the tree. And it would be the first time for him since he let it all become grief and misery. And somehow it felt like magic. That here he was, on Christmas Eve, beneath swirling snow falling from the sky, holding on to his wife’s hand.
His mom would be really proud of this life. This one that he found himself living now. Full of laughter and healing.
And family.
“Are you ready?”
