Of course the universe would give them another night like this. She made her way down the porch stairs, and Rebecca lifted a hand in greeting from the far side of the firepit. Four Adirondack chairs surrounded the newly built firepit and only one was left open.

Kincaid hurried over. “Am I late?”

Liv, who was dressed in candy-cane Christmas pajamas, shook her head. “Nah, we’re early. I heard Taryn sneaking down the hall, and we all ended up coming down together.”

“Stealth is not my forte,” Taryn said with a sleepy smile.

Kincaid set down her bags and took her seat. “I brought the supplies.”

Taryn dug inside one of the bags. “Ooh, marshmallows. But more importantly”—she pulled a bottle out of the bag—“Kincaid’s famous homemade spiked eggnog.”

“Score,” Rebecca said, lifting a fist in the air.

Kincaid passed around red Solo cups, and they poured their drinks. The firelight flickered over her friends’ faces, making them look alive and almost magical. “Did everybody bring the most important thing?”

“Yep.” Liv pulled a folded square of paper out of her pocket. Rebecca grabbed one from the inside pocket of her robe. And Taryn had hers tucked under her thigh.

Kincaid pulled her crinkly sheet of paper from her pajama pocket. “All right. I think it’s time.”

She stared down at the letter in her hand. She’d written the words on that page over a decade ago. At the time, she’d put on a brave face. We’re going to take the universe by storm. We’re going to make something of our lives. We’re going to honor those we lost. The time-capsule letters had been her idea. But she’d never felt so lost and alone as when she had written hers. Her boyfriend had been murdered. Her best friend had left her. And her whole world was burning down around her.

But still, impulsive as she was, she’d made promises she didn’t truly believe she could keep. Her letter was filled with declarations of future success and happiness and love. She wasn’t going to let those shooters change her. She wasn’t going to let the fingerprints of tragedy mar her life. She was going to live every day as if it were her last. She was going to win.

She didn’t believe it then.

But sometimes her brash, impulsive self knew what it was doing. She and her friends had put a call out to the universe, and it had answered.

She had a home. She had her friends. And now, she had her soul mate.

Love. It all came back to love.

She looked around at her friends’ faces—Liv, Rebecca, Taryn. “You ready, ladies?”

The three of them smiled victorious smiles.

“Let’s do this,” Liv said.

At the same time, they all leaned forward, holding their brittle loose-leaf pages over the fire, and watched as the flames licked up and caught the paper in its fingers. The edges of the paper blackened, and Kincaid dropped her letter into the fire.