Cole lay there, the snowflakes alighting on him like the gentlest kisses and then melting, and he soaked it in. The peace. The calm. The knowledge that he could stop hating himself for that one ugly argument. For everything in his past. Because it had nothing to do with today or tomorrow, unless he let it.

When he eventually sat up, still warm inside from the memory of his dad’s love, the ground around him was covered with a dusting of white, and the park had a magical feel to it. Pulling his legs into his chest, resting his arms on his knees, he breathed in the cold freshness of the air and felt invigorated by it. As if it infused him with the power to move forward, to let go of the bad stuff from his past.

He let out a low laugh at himself, realizing he’d always had that power but just hadn’t wanted to move on. Hadn’t wanted to let things go. He hadn’t had a big enough reason, a strong enough motivator.

He wanted a future with Sierra, wanted to be the man she wanted, needed, deserved. Up until now, he’d been fighting with that, telling himself that wasn’t him, but…it could be. He had some work to do, some truths to wrangle with, some actions to take. But he had two things now that he hadn’t had before—clarity and determination.

Now he just needed a plan.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The only thing black about the Friday after Thanksgiving for Sierra was her mood, and really, gray or blue was probably a better description of it.

No, she thought, there was still some black, some anger as well as melancholy and loneliness, because, when you got down to it, Cole was an idiot. He was stubborn and blind and too hard on himself and…

Dammit, she loved that idiot.

And thinking about him was doing her no good whatsoever.

She’d pushed her crew hard earlier in the week in order to enable them to take today off, but now that she’d had a full day looming over her with no family obligations, no work obligations, and nothing to do, she regretted it, for her sake. Her guys definitely deserved the extra time off, but it left her with too much time to think.

That’s why, at five forty-five p.m. on a day that half the known universe took as a holiday, she was still tucked in her office at the Dunn & Lowell headquarters, her laptop on the table in front of her and the space heater purring a few feet away. Because, as Kennedy had pointed out, Sierra did love her job, and pathetically, that was all she had to focus on right now. She thought she deserved credit for making it until mid-afternoon before she’d hit the office. Now she was deep into get-stuff-done mode.