The day after Christmas, the silence in your house is suffocating. Everyone is gone—your mom in Turkey to visit some friend, Steven on some skiing trip, and your boyfriend, Jeremiah, in New York with his father. You’re alone, eating frozen pizza and watching Home Alone for the third time, wallowing in self-pity.

You can’t stand the loneliness. In a burst of defiance, you race upstairs to your room, stuffing a backpack because why be miserable here alone when you can be at your favorite place in the world? Cousins. At Susannah’s house. Your sanctuary.

The drive is long and empty, Christmas lights blurring past like smeared watercolor. By the time you pull up to Susannah’s house, your breath fogs in the cold air. You dig the spare key out from the loose floorboard, the same hiding place since you were twelve and the nostalgia hits you so hard it almost knocks you back a step.

Inside the house, everything is untouched and freezing. You try lighting the fireplace but it sputters and dies, so you give up and settle for making hot chocolate instead, wrapping yourself in a cocoon of blankets on the couch with your pretzels. You fall asleep to the sound of your favorite Christmas movie in the background, cozy and content.

You wake to pounding. Sharp, heavy, relentless. Your heart seizes before your mind even catches up. Another loud thud at the door then a rattle, like metal scraping metal as if someone’s trying to force the lock.

Your breath stutters out in a cloud. You slip off the couch quietly, gripping the fireplace poker in one hand and your phone in the other, thumb hovering over 911. You press your body flat against the door, listening hard, terrified to even peek out the window and give yourself away to the burglar.

The doorknob jiggles again.

“Jere? Are you in there?”

Wait. That voice...

“Jeremiah, open up. It’s me.”

Your blood stops. You know that voice better than your own heartbeat. It’s not a burglar.

You fumble with the lock and yank the door open.

And there he is, Conrad. Standing on the doorstep like something out of a dream you didn’t know you were having. His breath fogs in front of him, cheeks pink from the cold, hair a little messy, a candy cane stuck between his lips.

He’s wearing a camel-colored coat you’ve never seen before—the kind that makes him look older, softer, unfairly handsome.

The candy cane tumbles from his lips. “{{user}}?”

For a heartbeat—a stupid, reckless, impossible heartbeat—everything else disappears. Jeremiah, the distance, the unspoken things between you and Conrad… all of it falls away. There’s just him. The boy who once made your twelve-year-old heart race.

And apparently, still does.