Thank you to Venessa Kelley and Leanna Fabian, for the incredible art that helped bring Ellie and Jack to life in my mind. Thank you to all the other artists who answered my questions about animation. And thank you to all the fan artists who are so integral to the romance community and the book community at large.

Thank you to everyone who answered my questions while I researched this book. In particular, thank you to the dozens of Ohio State alums who flooded my DMs so I could include one tiny throwaway detail in this book. Go Buckeyes!

I’m so grateful to other writers who make the process of publishing books a little less lonely. In particular, I want to thank Rachel Lynn Solomon, who is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, in and out of publishing, and who continually reminds me what it means to show up for other people and be vulnerable with your art. I want to thank Anita Kelly, for being my IRL writer friend. Thank you to Chloe Liese and Mazey Eddings, who write about mental health and neurodivergence so beautifully.

The most specialest of thanks to Timothy Janovsky, because I literally could not have written this book without you. Thank you for reading the prologue over and over again (even though you hate prologues), thank you for letting me word-vomit all my plot problems, and thank you for constantly reminding me you can get away with a lot in a Christmas book.

Thank you to the other #holigays22: Courtney Kae, Helena Greer, and Jake Maia Arlow. It was an honor to release a queer Christmas book alongside you, and I can’t wait to see our books on shelves together.

Thank you to Taylor Swift, for writing evermore, the perfect Christmas album, and for releasing RED TV in the middle of my developmental edits, so I could listen to “Forever Winter” on repeat while rewriting the flashbacks in this book for the millionth time.

“Thank you” is a feeble term to express my gratitude toward all the booksellers and librarians who’ve placed my books into the hands of readers. The same is true of the Bookstagram community. Thank you for reading my books, talking about my books, sharing my books.

Thank you for picking up this book and supporting queer romance authors. Thank you to all the queer romance authors who came before me and paved the way so I could tell a story about two women falling in love.