Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
So much talking had happened over the last few days. We’d video chatted with my parents, who were holidaying in London with my dad’s family, and we’d checked in with Braden’s parents and Ginny, watching them open the gifts we’d sent.
Everyone was good. Everyone was okay.
And it felt like permission was granted to both of us to finally lean into what we needed next.
Braden shifted, pulling me fully into his arms now, wrapping me up as the snow continued to fall around us — soft and endless and quiet.
I tucked my face into his chest, breathing him in.
“What?” I asked when I felt him go still above me.
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“Us.” He smiled, kissing my forehead. “Always us.”
“Anything specific, Mr. Vague?”
I leaned back just enough to look up at him, snow catching in my lashes, his gaze already locked on mine.
Braden smiled — slow and certain, like he’d found the answer to whatever question he’d silently asked just by looking down at me.
“So, my family has this saying,” he said, his hands sliding up to frame my face. “Whenever things get crazy, when the pressure hits, when anxiety starts creeping in… We ask each other — what’s the best that could happen?”
Snow drifted between us, catching in his chestnut hair, melting against his skin. His eyes gleamed, brighter than the lights behind him.
“I always wondered what that was. I mused over it, you know? When that question forced me to. I imagined the best that could happen being me making it to the NFL, then paying off my parents’ house, then renewing my contract. So on and so forth.”
He shook his head, hand reaching out to trace my jaw before I leaned into his touch.
“Turns out… it was you.”
I closed my eyes on a smile, my heart skipping in my chest. And when he kissed me, it was the best Christmas gift I’d ever received.
I didn’t even feel the cold anymore.
Not when he kissed me like that.
Not when I knew — without a doubt, without fear, without hesitation —
He was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, too.
* * *