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"The farm—"

"No. The farm has a future without me. Somebody proved that this week." I look out the window towards the rink. "I hope you find your locker-room guy. He's just not going to be me."

Callahan exhales down the line. "You know these doors don't open twice. I warned you."

"I know. Merry Christmas, Robert."

I hang up and for a whole ten seconds, nobody moves. Then Stanley slides the finished red-and-green steaming glass in front of me.

"On the house," he says. "It's new. I'm calling it The Tree Farmer's Gamble."

"When did you invent that?"

"Roughly four minutes ago." He tucks the towel over his shoulder and winks while slipping a candy cane between his lips. "Now drink up and get off my stool. You've got a girl to win back."

I pass the cocktail-drink-thing across to Nate, grab the keys to Audrey's car, and drive back up the mountain.

It takes twenty minutes, with the headlights carving through the falling snow on the same road where a beautiful woman in a wedding dress once flashed half of Chilmore and rearranged my entire life.

In the back seat, the dress is still there, tangled and scrunched. But it doesn't look like her abandoned future anymore.

It just looks like proof of what we've become. Together.

When Audrey's life turned out wrong, she had the courage to get back up again and recreate it.

It's time I showed the same courage.

The farm is glowing as it appears in front of me. Two gleaming resort vans line the drive nose to tail as the bonfire roars beneath a sky full of stars.

All around, families stream between the tree rows with lanterns, and across the lot, an actual line of resort guests are carrying tagged Christmas trees like trophies, getting them prepped and ready to be delivered to their homes.

It's chaos. The best possible kind.

Hunter mans the welcome hut with a clipboard, taking reservations for next December. Mom's cider pot is scraped empty and she's promising a family she'll make more if they wait twenty minutes. Dad has cornered a circle of guests near the lanterns.

"—and that woman right there," he's saying, pointing across the yard, "personally saved Christmas for this entire family. Ask anyone."

I follow his finger, and there she is.

Audrey Fields's hair has gone full snow-weather chaos. She looks amazing, flushed with pink cheeks, but still, she holds the tablet in one hand and a candy cane in the other, directing the whole beautiful mess with a smile on her face.

Every instinct screams at me to march over there, fall to my knees and start apologizing.

But this is her moment.

I'm not dragging her out of it to manage my feelings. She's had enough people do that to her for one lifetime.

So I do what Strattons do on this farm.

I get to work.

I haul trees to Will at the delivery station until my shoulders burn. I fix the wagon latch that's been jamming all evening with a screwdriver and some words Mom pretends not to hear. Then I make a phone call, and twenty minutes later, the entire enormous Wildcards roster spills out of yet another Mistletoe Resort van to a chorus of gasps and cheers.

"THE HOCKEY PLAYERS ARE HERE," a kid screams, jumping up and down with a flaming marshmallow. "IT'S THE WILDCARDS!"

Nate signs foreheads. Aidan lifts a chosen tree one-handed for a family photo while their mother nearly faints. Dylan produces his guitar out of thin air and starts a singalong by the bonfire that Dad joins with alarming enthusiasm.

Eventually, as everything starts to calm down, Hunter finds me at the delivery station, breathing hard.