Page 34

He grins. “But it’s a good kind of roasted, right?”

I act as though I’m dying, but the truth is I like this and the simplicity of it, the way everything is stripped down to the essential. No distractions. Just heat, skin, relaxation, and the man across from me, looking way too smug for someone who’s about to ask me to do something insane.

“We’re going to roll in the snow next,” he says.

“No, we’re not.”

He nods. “We are.”

“Alex. No. People die of hypothermia.”

He leans forward, eyes bright. “It shocks the body. Makes you feel alive. And it’s Swedish tradition.”

“I am very alive, thank you, and I’d like to stay that way.”

He stands, grabs my hand, and grins. “Come on, favorite. Trust me. You’ll love it.”

Outside, the cold is immediate and brutal, and the wind slices across my skin. My bare feet hit the snow and every nerve in my body screams. I shriek—a high-pitched, guttural sound I can’t even pretend is attractive—and lurch backward.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Alex is already laughing, his breath fogging the air, body bare except for the towel slung low around his hips.

“Magnolia, you’ve got to commit,” he says.

“I am not a snow person.”

“You’re about to be.”

And before I can stop him, he scoops me into his arms—just lifts me right off the snowy porch and walks straight into the drift beside it. The snow hits my legs, my back, my shoulders. I scream. Loud. Obnoxious. Possibly traumatic.

Definitely dramatic.

He sets me down and wraps his body around mine.

“See? You’re surviving.”

“Barely,” I say, clinging to him like he’s a human furnace. “And this isn’t fair. You do hot-to-cold therapy after rugby. You’re used to this.”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “You’re never going to forgive me, are you?”

“No,” I deadpan. “I am not.”

“Okay, fine.”

He takes me back inside, and warmth returns in slow waves. The fireplace crackles. The wool blanket is thick and scratchy but in the best way. I curl into it, my skin still tingling from the snow, while Alex pours us each a mug of something that smells of cinnamon, cloves, and red wine.

“This is glogg,” he says, handing it to me.

I take a sip. It’s hot, sweet, and spiced. “This tastes like Christmas.”

He nods and settles beside me on the thick rug in front of the fire, legs stretched out, a leather-bound book in hand.

“This is a journal my grandfather kept during the war. He wrote it in Swedish. I’ve never read it out loud before.

” His eyes don’t meet mine when he says it.

Just stares at the paper as if it might burn him.

I touch his arm. “You don’t have to.”

He nods. “It might not be pretty, but I want to. For you.”

He clears his throat and reads. Slowly, of course. His Swedish threads into the cadence of the English, softening it somehow, reminding me of poetry.

“I chose to fight for a land that isn’t my own, but it’s in my blood. My mother’s stories of Karelia and songs sung in a language I never mastered made it seem like home long before I ever stepped across the border into Finland.

We had no promises. No glory. Only fire and cold and a hope we held like a thread between our hands. We lost so much. But when the world gave us no peace, we built it anyway between us. With our hands. With our stubborn hearts.

I returned home today, not to parades or fanfare, but to her. My beloved beauty. She was standing at the edge of the snow-covered lane in the same wool coat she wore the day I left, though it hangs looser now, like time tried to take something from her too.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just opened her arms—and I walked into them like a man starved for light. No one tells you how loud the silence is after war, but she quieted it in a single look.

Love isn’t just who you protect. It’s who waits and remembers your voice when even you have forgotten it. It’s the one you return to when the world has burned, and all you have left is the promise you made to the woman you love.

Tonight, we sleep beneath the same roof again. In the bed we built before the world split open. No medals. No songs. Just her hand on my chest and the rhythm of something sacred—her belief in me, still steady after all this time.”

Alex’s hand tightens around the journal, and I reach for him, threading my fingers through his. “Your grandfather’s words are beautiful. I love hearing you read.”

He huffs a quiet laugh, eyes still on the worn pages. “Magnolia… we both know a six-year-old reads better than I do.”

I hold his chin, forcing him to look at me. “Okay. Maybe a six-year-old could read it faster. But not one would read it the way you just did. You felt it, and so did I.”

He sets the journal aside and pulls me into his lap, arms wrapping around my waist. “I love I can share this side of myself with you without shame. No hiding.”

I press my forehead to his, my hand resting over his heart. “There’s nothing in you that needs to hide, Alex. Especially not from me. I love every part of you.”

Outside, the wind howls through the trees. The fire has burned low again, casting a sleepy orange halo over the cabin walls. The snowfall has slowed to a silent drift. Above us, the glass ceiling reveals a sky full of constellations I don’t know the names of, but I swear they’re watching us.

Alex lies behind me, his chest curved to my spine, one hand splayed warm and steady over my stomach, the other linked with mine just above my head.

We fall asleep that way—anchored in quiet, wrapped in breath and heartbeat, cradled beneath a sky that has seen everything.