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“You would.” Haider patted me on the cheek. “Now get out of here. Don’t neglect Adam for me.”

I rolled my eyes and then said, “Will you be okay?”

“I have cats and chocolate,” he said. “I’ll be fucking incredible .”

“You always are,” I told him. “But call me, okay, if you need anything?”

Haider nodded and gave me one last quick hug before he drove away.

I walked over to my truck. Adam was leaning against it.

“Cupid for the curls?” he asked me.

It took me a moment to catch up. “Nah. His birthday is Valentine’s Day. When we were kids—” I snorted. “Well, we still use them now, sometimes. Our nicknames. Sam is Joker, because he was born on April Fool’s Day. And Conor is Jedi, because his birthday is May the 4th.”

“And who are you?” Adam asked, eyes bright.

“Paddy,” I said. “March 17. My first day in Caldwell Crossing, on the school bus, they got me to sign Conor’s cast, and then Sam was all, ‘When’s your birthday, Ryan?

When’s your birthday?’ And I told him it was Saint Patrick’s Day, and the three of them just broke out in cheers.

The bus driver had to tell Haider to sit down, he was bouncing so much.

” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I used to wonder if they’d still be friends with me if my birthday had been some other day. ”

“Pretty sure they would have,” Adam said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Probably. Sam used to say it must have been magic. But, then again, he was twelve.”

“I don’t know.” Adam slid his hand into mine. “It seems a little like magic to me. Or fate, maybe.”

“What’s the difference?”

The glow from the nearby streetlight caught on his throat as he tilted his head back to laugh.

“I have no idea. Magic has always seemed like some guy in a pointy hat with a spell, you know? Like a character out of a Saturday morning cartoon. But fate is more…big? Yeah, fate is bigger. Fate is the universe getting things right. Not a spell, exactly, but a pattern.”

I tilted my head back too and looked at the stars for a moment while I mulled over Adam’s words. I liked the idea of there being a pattern, of the universe getting things right. It was easy to believe on a beautiful night like this, with Adam beside me.

“Okay, so maybe fate,” I said, looking at him. “Because I think it got it right by bringing me to Caldwell Crossing.”

“I couldn’t imagine you anywhere else,” he said, his smile fading.

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Everything hung on it. My past, my future, and Adam and I together. Because I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else either, not in a million years.

WE DROVE BACK to the cabin in comfortable silence. It was a bright night: the moon was almost full, and the only clouds were thin and wispy, carried swiftly past the stars by the breeze. As we turned off the road onto the gravel driveway that led to the cabin, I heard a barred owl calling.

Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?

I glanced across at Adam. He was smiling at the sound.

“Who cooks for you all?” he asked.

I slowed for the final bend to the cabin.

“I was twenty-two when my first book was published,” Adam said as we rattled slowly down the driveway.

“I thought I’d made it big. A book tour, signings, TV appearances, literary awards.

All of that. But nobody bought it, and it sank like a stone.

My agent at the time dumped me, and I couldn’t get a new one.

And there wasn’t a publisher out there that wanted to throw good money after bad. ”

I pulled up in front of the cabin and turned the ignition off.

“So I don’t…” His brow furrowed. “I don’t have a lot of trust in things working out, you know? My Harmony Lake books are doing well, but at the back of my mind I’m always expecting it could all go wrong at any second. One bad review goes viral, and I’m convinced it’s the end for me.”

I nodded.

He reached out for my hand and squeezed it. “And right now there’s this crazy voice in the back of my head saying, ‘Move here. Buy a house. It’s not too soon if you’re both feeling it.’ But I can’t bring myself to trust that voice.”

I nodded again, my heart pounding. “I—I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t promise it would work out if you moved here. Nobody can promise that. For the record though, we are both feeling it. If that changes anything.”

“Yeah.” He let out a shaky breath. “God, would I be a terrible person if I said I didn’t know if it does?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know either.”

He squeezed my hand. “This is a terrible conversation to have tonight. We can bookmark it, right? I still have a few weeks here, and it’s not like Ohio is on the other side of the world or anything. We don’t have to decide anything right now.”

I nodded.

“I just wanted to put it out there in the open,” he said. “That making this work long-term is something I’m thinking about.”

“Me too,” I said, my heart thumping wildly. “I like you, Adam. I’m falling for you.”

“Me too,” he echoed softly. “And that’s all we have to be sure for now.” He rubbed his thumb over my knuckle. “You carve those bowls, and then you put them in a box for a year to wait for the wood to be right.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I also like working with wood because it makes more sense than people. I’m terrible with people.”

He laughed softly. “You’re not as terrible as you think.”

I drew a breath. “Okay. I get it, I promise. We both feel it, but we also don’t want to rush. We don’t have to rush, because there’s no deadline on this. Just, this is new to me. I don’t want you to think I’m playing games. I like you a lot, and I want to see where this goes with you, Adam.”

“We’re on the same page,” he said. “And it’s been a while for me, too, since I met someone who mattered. Someone I can see a future with.”

My chest suddenly felt tight, and all I could do was nod.

I’d never expected anyone to land in my life the way Adam had and turn it upside down with his smile and his laughter and his love notes.

I’d been happy, maybe a bit envious of Rebecca and Chris, and then Sam and Ben, but still happy.

But now I couldn’t imagine going back to a life without Adam in it because his presence made the world so much brighter.

And this was no big dramatic story. This was just two guys who met and found they fit together and were falling in love.

It happened all around the world every single day, but it was still the most miraculous thing I’d ever experienced, and there was no such thing as a little miracle.

“Come on,” he said. He leaned in and gave me a quick peck on the lips. It was short and sweet, and hardly a kiss at all. It warmed me from the inside though. “Let’s get inside. The cat must be starving.”

We climbed out of the truck and walked hand in hand to the cabin, where the cat was waiting for us.

Just the little, everyday miracle of falling in love, and I never wanted to let it go.