Page 42 of The Christmas List

“I’m just… I’m happy, Wyatt. I’m so happy that it feels like my heart might actually burst,” she whispers quietly, so quietly that I can barely hear her over the buzz of the crowd.

“If you’re happy, then I’m happy, Josie girl.”

I watch as the column of her throat moves as she swallows, giving me a sweet smile. “I need to say something, Wyatt.”

“What’s going on?” My brow lifts, a sliver of anxiousness coursing through me.

Fuck, I hope I haven’t pushed her too ha?—

“I love you, Wyatt Owens. I have loved you since I was ten years old. Even when you weren’t here, a part of me loved you.”

Holy shit.

I’m still trying to let her words, the words I’ve been desperate to hear, sink in when she continues, those unshed tears now freely falling and wetting her cheeks. “It just… took a little while for my head to catch up with my heart. My heart seems to have always known that we’d somehow find our way back to each other. Even when I was too afraid to admit it.” She blows out a shaky breath and then sucks in an inhale as if trying to collect herself. “Wyatt, I’ve been living in the hurt of our past, and that’s not fair to either of us.”

“Josie…” I start, but she shakes her head in my hands, and I sweep a fresh tear away.

“Let me finish, please. I can’t wait another moment to tell you this,” she whispers, peering up at me through tear-soaked lashes, continuing when I nod. “I’m scared. Terrified, really. But last night, spending time with you and Lucy at home, doing nothing… I realized how much doing nothing with you means to me. How every moment I spend with both of you, I never stop smiling. My heart never stops squeezing at all of these little moments that, before you, I never considered to be special but that are now so incredibly special to me.” Josie pauses, laughing on a watery sob. “I realized that there’s nowhere else I would rather be than with you.Bothof you. There’s no one else that I could imagine spending my Christmas with. There’s no one else that I would rather do a Christmas competition with and jumpinto freezing water that stole my breath. You steal my breatheverysingle day, Wyatt Owens.”

Her dark eyes hold mine, burning into me, searing their way into my heart in a way that I know will never fade.

I can’t believe she’s saying that she feels the way I do.

Fuck, how often have I wished for this very moment in the last few weeks? Willing her to take my hand and jump with me.

“So what I’m saying is that I love you, I love your daughter, and I don’t need time or to think about that. I want to be with you, and I trust that you’ll protect my hear?—”

I lower my mouth to hers before she can even finish, cutting her off with a kiss that I feel in the depths of my damn soul, and I know that she does, too, by the way her hands fist in the front of my shirt and she sighs against my lips. I can feel it in the way she touches me, the way she kisses me back.

Josie may have been afraid to say it out loud or to even admit to herself what was happening between us, but I knew. From the moment I saw her again, I knew. I just needed to give her a second to get to where I was, and when she finally did?

It would feel just like this.

Like she was made for me, every inch of her, heart and soul.

I pull back and stare down at her, wearing a lovesick smile because I can’t help it, even if I tried.

“Finally, you caught up with me, honey.” I chuckle when her lip tilts. “I was waiting for you. I would’ve waited forever if that’s what it took, Josie. I love you, and I’m not ever going to let another day go by where I don’t show you that.”

Her arms wind around my neck as she lifts on her toes and presses her lips to mine again. Red lipstick be damned, I’m going to kiss Josie Pearce wherever and whenever I want.

“We’ve got a lot of time to make up for, honey.”

“We do. Good thing we make such a good team, then, huh?” she replies.

“Thebestteam. It’s me, you, and Luce forever, Josie. All I need is my girls, and I’ll be the happiest man in the world,” I whisper against her lips, dropping my forehead against hers.

“You’ve got us, Wyatt Owens. Always.”

Standing in the middle of Town Square, my daughter on the stage laughing gleefully as she holds Santa’s hand and the woman of my dreams in my arms, the only thing I can help but think is…

The only Christmas wish I’ve ever made has finally come true.

THE END

epilogue

Josie

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