Archive of Our Own ^beta

Contrary to popular belief, Nina Zenik doesn’t hate Christmas. 

In fact, when she was younger, it was her favorite holiday, but things have changed. She’s changed. She’s no longer a cherub-cheeked eight year old girl holding onto her mother’s hand as they skated their way across a frozen lake or decorating a tree from atop her father’s shoulders. She’s different now—more grown up and has learned to see the world for what it really is. Real life isn’t all chestnuts roasting on an open fire or whatever, especially not when you’re Nina Zenik, business woman extraordinaire. 

Plus, there’s only so many times that a person can say they’ll be “spending Christmas alone with a bottle of wine" before they eventually become branded a Scrooge to everyone who knows them. Nina, unfortunately—depressingly—passed that threshold years ago. Her boss actually mentioned it in her last annual review, listing her “willingness to work during the holiday season” as something that made her such a valuable part of the “Grisha family.” 

That’s how she ended up in Djerholm in the first place. She was sent to secure a deal on December 22 because there was nobody else to do it. 

And, like, she doesn’t really mind working around the holidays—and not just because of the whole no plans thing. She actually likes her job. She thrives in the busy world of marketing. She kind of loves her life in general, actually. She loves being in her twenties in a city like Os Kervo. She likes that she never sees the same person twice, likes that she can reinvent herself every time she steps out the door if she wants to. 

She can be whoever she wants. She can do whatever she wants. She’s bright. She’s talented. She’s successful. 

She’s fucking stranded in Fjerda. 

At least, that’s what the receptionist at the hotel who’s supposed to be checking her into her flight and calling a car for her is making it sound like. 

“I’m fucking stranded in Fjerda?” She asks, because there’s no harm in double checking. 

The receptionist winces in what she’s sure is an over-dramatic reaction to her swearing in a professional setting and she fights the urge to roll her eyes at the prudishness, if only because she doesn’t think it’ll really help her case right now. 

“Yes, miss, your flight has been canceled,” The receptionist repeats with a noticeable tremor in his voice, nervous fingers fidgeting with the end of what can only be described as an incredibly unfortunate handlebar mustache. “On account of the blizzard coming in from the north. No flights coming in or out until it clears up, I’m sorry.” 

“No flights, okay,” Nina repeats to herself more than anything as her brain starts to shuffle through possible solutions, flying a million miles a minute. This is what she’s good at—strategizing, fixing things. “I’ll drive, then. It isn’t that far to Os Alta. You can get me a rental car, can’t you?” 

The receptionist’s face blanches. “Erm.” 

“Before the blizzard starts, if it isn’t too much trouble.” 

The receptionist’s eyes widen and he nods once before scurrying off, presumably to get her a rental car. From over her shoulder, a different voice speaks up. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” 

She spins on her heels, ready to give whoever feels entitled enough to eavesdrop on her conversation and give their unwanted opinion on her life choices a piece of her mind, and winds up face-to-face with a wall of muscle in a flannel button up. 

And, okay, face-to-face was kind of generous. Considering that this person—who she assumes must be some kind of Fjerdan demigod lumberjack sent to Earth to punish her personally—towers over her, it’s more like face-to-ridiculous-ripped-pectoral-muscles. Which isn’t to say that she’s in any way affected by the muscle mass of this stranger, because obviously she isn’t. 

Even so, the words “what did you just say?” are what comes out of her mouth when she finally opens it, despite the fact that she knows exactly what he said. As far as scathing retorts go, it’s not the worst thing that she could have possibly said but it certainly isn’t the best either. 

“I wouldn’t go driving in this weather if I were you,” The lumberjack repeats, tugging a knit hat off the top of his head and revealing a devastatingly glorious mane of golden hair. Disgusting. “Especially if you’re trying to get all the way to Ravka. You won’t make it past the border.” 

She sniffs in disdain and tilts her head up, giving him a steely look. “I think I can handle it.” 

“Have you seen the radar?” The lumberjack asks, and although the actual answer to that question is that no, she hasn’t seen the radar, she doesn’t feel the need to let him in on that little fact, either. “It’s coming quickly.” 

Nina purses her lips. “I’ll drive fast.” 

The lumberjack’s eyes go wide. “That’ll almost certainly make things worse.” 

Nina opens her mouth but the receptionist clears his throat behind her—apparently back from his mission—and she’s forced to turn around before she can fire anything back at him in response.

The receptionist looks uneasy as he opens up his hand and reveals a car key in his palm. “We can’t legally deny you a car but we strongly advise—”

“No advice necessary, thanks,” Nina interrupts, swiping the key out of his hand before he can change his mind. 

“You must have a death wish,” The lumberjack mutters, not quietly enough for Nina to miss it. 

“The opposite, actually,” Nina says, folding her arms over her chest. “That’s why I need to get out of this country as soon as possible.” 

The receptionist clears his throat again, trying to break them apart before an all-out brawl can take place in the hotel lobby. “Next guest?” 

“He’s calling you,” Nina says, wrapping her scarf around her neck and pushing her sunglasses into place as she brushes past him. 

“Djel save you,” The lumberjack says before he relents and makes his way to the desk. “I’m not a guest, I’m here to deliver you a fresh tree for—”

The rest of whatever the lumberjack is saying the receptionist is lost as she exits the hotel lobby through the revolving door, but she’s heard everything she needs to. He would be a fucking Christmas tree farmer. What does a Christmas tree farmer know about her ability to drive in the snow? 

She has this totally, completely under control.

And she does… at first. 

She makes it out of Djerholm without any problem, but then the snow starts. It’s not anything crazy right away, just a light dusting, but before she’s even made it halfway to the Ravkan border, it begins to pick up until she can’t see anything but a cloud of white all around the car. Just as she thinks to herself that she might need to pull off the road and wait out the storm for a little bit, she loses control of the wheel and the car goes spinning out—only a handful of miles away from Ravka, because the universe hates her and wants to see her fail, apparently.

“Oh, fuck,” She mutters as the car comes to a stop. She puts it into reverse and presses her foot down against the gas pedal, and though she can hear the tires spinning around in the snow outside, the car doesn’t budge an inch. “Oh motherfucking shit balls.” 

She’s stuck. She’s driving through the middle of fucking nowhere Fjerda in a rental car during a fucking blizzard and she’s stuck.

‘You won’t make it past the border,’ The voice of the lumberjack from the hotel says in her mind and she groans and drops her head onto the steering wheel unceremoniously, the horn honking when her forehead makes contact with it. 

“Okay. This is fine. We’ll just get the car unstuck,” She finally says to herself after letting the car horn blare for admittedly too long. Hopefully there’s nobody around to hear it—or to see her embarrass herself when she climbs out of the car muttering ‘You can do this, you can do this’ to herself under her breath, for that matter.

“How heavy can a car really be?” She asks as she wobbles precariously on her heeled booties—super cute and perfect for her usually day-to-day life, but deeply impractical for her current efforts—knowing damn well that the answer is heavy as fuck. Still, she doesn’t let that irrefutable truth stop her from putting both of her hands on the back bumper of the rental car and pushing with all her might. 

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work. Like, not even a little bit. She’s out there pushing and pushing for what feels like hours—but is probably more realistically ten minutes—without avail. 

She’s just about to give up for good and lay herself down in the snow to die when a voice calls out from somewhere in the snow storm. “Hey, is everything okay out here? I heard honking.” 

Nina whirls around, attempting to find where the voice is coming from which is easier said than done when she’s in the middle of a blizzard and can’t see more than roughly a foot in front of her. “Define okay.” 

As she’s about to elaborate on her current predicament, the owner of the voice appears in front of her, bundled up so tight that she can barely make out the features of his face. “Did your car get stuck?”

“That obvious?” Nina replies and a laugh sounds from beneath the man’s scarf.

“Why don’t you come inside? We can dig you out once the storm has stopped.” 

Nina squints over his shoulder and, now that she’s looking for it, the outline of a house comes into focus. “You’re not a murderer or anything, are you?” 

The man laughs again. “Not recently.” 

And, like, she’s pretty sure he’s joking but at this point, she’s actually too cold to care about potentially being murdered. She’ll take it over being stranded in a Fjerdan blizzard for even another minute. “Okay, deal.” 

“I’m Wylan, by the way,” The man says, reaching a hand out to her to help her make her way up to the house once she’s retrieved her bag from the rental car and locked it up behind her—not that anyone is going to be taking it in these conditions. 

“Nina,” She says, while being careful to focus most of her energy on not going toppling over into the snow. “Thanks for the rescue mission.” 

“Anytime,” Wylan says, wiggling his face free of his scarf to shoot her a wide smile. “It’s kind of our thing here.”

Before she can ask him to elaborate on that, he pushes the door open and she’s shown exactly what he means, instead. Gathered all around the door is what can only be described as a small mass of people, seemingly waiting for her arrival. 

“Jormanen end denam danne näskelle!” Chimes one of them, a blonde girl that looked considerably younger than the rest. Be welcome and wait out the storm. Nina has heard the Fjerdan greeting for travelers many times—most recently just a couple days ago when she checked into her hotel in Djerholm—but it seems more fitting now than any other time she’s heard it before.

“Grannam end kerjenning grante just onter kelhom.” Nina says in return, slowly looking from the blonde girl to the rest of her companions—a tall Zemeni man with a bright smile, a petite Suli girl with a curtain of long, dark hair, and a pale, scowling man with sharp features. She doesn’t love the way that they were looking at her. She turns back to Wylan. “What’s with the welcoming committee?” 

“Oh, let me introduce you to the gang!” Wylan says brightly as he begins to unwrap himself. “This is my boyfriend Jesper, Jesper’s boyfriend Kaz, Kaz’s girlfriend Inej, and my partner’s sister Madelene.” 

This time, she’s considerably less sure that he’s joking but she’s never been one to judge. “Partner?”

“Business partner,” Wylan clarifies as he shrugs his jacket off.

“Most of the time,” The tall, lanky one—Jesper—tacks on with a wink and a smile. 

“What business?” Nina asks with a delicate raise of her eyebrow, taking a sweeping look around the room like it’ll clue her in on what kind of place she’s just stepped into.

The place… well, it isn’t exactly a log cabin—not unless log cabins have tripled in size in Fjerda in the last few years—but the abundance of wood around her screams Fjerdan. It’s nice and cozy, with flames burning away in the fireplace keeping the space warm and the biggest Christmas tree she’s ever seen—outside of a mall, car dealership, or city plaza—making the whole place smell evergreen. There’s a piano with sheet music open on one side of the room and a pile of shoes beside the front door. The place looks lived in, homey. Not like a business at all, unless that business is some kind of farm. 

Flashes of the lumberjack from earlier appear in her mind. But, no. There’s no way. That would be way too big of a coincidence.

“Christmas tree farm,” Answers the young girl who she can only assume is Madelene, the younger sister. The younger sister of the co-owner of the Christmas tree farm. Nina quickly takes note of the girl’s long, golden hair and gulps. “It’s been in our family for generations.” 

“He should be back soon, actually,” Wylan says, taking Nina’s coat for her and adding it to an already-full coat rack. “He just went into Djerholm for the day to make some deliveries. It’s a busy time of year for Christmas tree farmers.” 

“No fucking way,” Nina says under her breath before she can stop herself.

Wylan lifts an eyebrow. “What was that?” 

Nina opens her mouth and then closes it again. She has absolutely no idea what she’s going to say, but before she can figure it out the door swings open again and in from the storm blows the very last person she wants to see right now. 

“Hey, Wy, did you know there’s a car stuck out—” The words die on his lips when he realizes who’s standing in front of him. For a moment he’s silent and then, much to Nina’s horror, he doubles over in laughter. “I should have known it would be you!” 

Nina tilts her head back and looks up at the ceiling. “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?” 

In her peripheral vision, the scowling boy—Kaz, she assumes—cracks the barest hint of a smile. “I’m getting the impression they’ve already met.” 

“How do you know Matthias?” The girl who must be Inej pipes up, glancing at Nina with curiosity shimmering in her big, brown eyes. 

“I don’t,” Nina says and the exact same time that Matthias the lumberjack decides to open his big, stupid mouth and say “We met earlier.” 

Nina shoots him what she hopes is a scathing glare. “I would hardly say we met. I didn’t even learn your name.” 

“As I remember it, you were too busy insulting my homeland and insisting that you would be able to drive home in the blizzard to ask for it.” Matthias’s eyes shine with quiet amusement in a way that absolutely infuriates her. “How did the drive work out for you?” 

Nina only barely manages to not groan and stomp her feet, folding her arms over her chest as she glares even harder at him. “Listen, I’ve had a really shitty day—” Now it’s Matthias’s turn to glare and Nina’s gaze snaps over to Madelene, who can’t be older than thirteen, and winces. “Sorry. I’ve had a really sucky day. And I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have to spend another second of it being talked down to by you.” 

“Okay,” Inej interrupts, smoothly sliding between them and looping her arm in with Nina’s. “Why don’t I show you upstairs?” 

Matthias raises an eyebrow. “She’s staying here?”

“You saw her car,” Wylan replies with a look that borders on admonishing. “Where else is she supposed to go?” 

“She could have stayed at the hotel like I strongly suggested that she do earlier,” Matthias mutters, but even Nina can tell that he’s no longer protesting, just complaining. 

“Well, she didn’t,” Wylan shrugs. “We’ve never turned anyone in need away before and we’re not going to start now. Especially this close to Christmas.” 

Nina rolls her eyes as she allows Inej to tug her toward the stairs. “Give me a break. He’s talking like we’re in some Hallmark Christmas movie.” 

Inej glances over at her with a little smile. “If we are, you’re the main character.” 

This time, Nina fails to stifle her groan in time. “Great. Fucking great.” 

“Language!” Inej reprimands under her breath, so quickly that Nina is sure it’s a knee-jerk reaction to correct her language, and a reminder that she likely has to give multiple times a day. 

“Come on,” Nina whines. “She’s all the way downstairs.” 

“You’d be surprised how much an eleven year old can hear when they want to.” 

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

Inej laughs at that, a pretty sound that Nina could get used to hearing. “I am. I have a younger brother.” 

“That must be nice,” Nina sighs. 

“No siblings?” 

“No family at all, really.” 

It’s not the kind of the thing that she usually drops on someone the first time that they meet, but something inside her just intrinsically knows that she can trust Inej. She’s always been a sucker for pretty eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Inej says, and for once the words don’t make her wince. Usually it feels like pity but Inej makes them feel like a warm hug, instead. She knows that she just met Inej like five minutes ago, but she would literally die for her. “But you’ve come to the right place.” 

Nina lifts an eyebrow. “Oh? Have I crash landed on the Island of Misfit Toys?” 

“Something like that.” Inej laughs that pretty laugh again and warmth blooms in Nina’s chest. She stops at a door and gestures over her shoulder. “This is me. I was thinking that we could share? It’s a big bed.” 

“I’m a cuddler,” Nina warns, daring to even crack a smile for the first time since driving into that stupid snow bank. “Is that going to be a problem with your boyfriend? Or any of your boyfriend’s boyfriends?” 

Inej’s eyes honest-to-fucking-god twinkle. “Not at all.” 

So that’s pretty much all the convincing that Nina needs to shack up with a pretty girl for the night. She follows Inej into the bedroom and when she deposits her suitcase at the foot of the bed, she can’t help but notice that there’s not another one lying around. “You live here?” She asks before she can stop herself.

Thankfully, Inej doesn’t seem to mind personal questions. “Sometimes. Right now. Running the farm is kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation during the busy season.”

“Which is now,” Nina says. “Christmas, obviously.” 

“But during the spring and the summer, it’s mostly just Matty and Maddy.” Inej perches on the edge of the bed and tucks her legs up underneath her. “We all visit when we can, Wylan more than anyone, and then in the winter we all come down and stay for a couple months.” 

Something in Nina’s chest aches with longing for a kind of friendship that she’s never known. She had her friends back in school—Zoya, Genya, Alina—but nothing like this. She’s never had the kind of friends who would drop everything and uproot their lives to support her, to take care of her. Not that letting people take care of her is her strong suit, exactly. 

She does her best not to let any of what she’s thinking show on her face as she lowers herself to sit beside Inej. “I feel like I need a quick summary of like… everyone. Everything.” 

Inej nods understandingly and reaches for a framed photo that rests on the bedside table. “We all went to school together in Ketterdam, that’s how we know each other. Matty and Maddy—” She points at Matthias and his younger sister, tucked under his arm and smiling wide. “—this is their family’s farm. The Helvar Christmas Tree Farm. Matthias inherited it after they lost their parents, less than a year after we graduated. Wylan—” She points to the redhead in the center of the photo. “—was his roommate since freshman year, they’re best friends. Basically family, since Wylan’s blood relatives are the actual worst. We’re all a family, really.” 

There goes that ache in her chest again. She hates the way she has to force herself to smile. “That’s nice.” 

“We take care of each other here,” Inej offers her a smile that doesn’t look forced at all, reaching a hand to touch her knee. “Kaz calls us his crows. They remember human faces, you know. They remember the people who are kind to them, and they tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.” 

 “I’d like to be the former, not the latter,” Nina says. “To be clear.” 

Inej smiles even wider. “I think we can make that happen.”

Before Nina can press any further on the interesting group dynamic at play here, a voice comes calling from downstairs. “Ladies, it’s time for dinner!” 

Nina gives Inej a look. “Is this going to be a whole thing?” 

Inej nods solemnly. “A whole thing.” 

And it is. It’s a whole thing. She’s never actually seen anything like it. The table is huge and yet the seven of them are still crowding in close to all fit around it. She feels like she’s in the fucking Brady Bunch, or something. 

But, at the same time, there’s a weird sense of familiarity tucked beside the quiet longing in her chest for this strange life that she’s been suddenly transplanted into. She knows this doesn’t belong to her, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling like she’s come home anyway. 

“So,” Jesper says as he passes Nina a plate piled high with rolls, still warm from the oven. Her mouth waters. “Where were you off to before the blizzard derailed your plans?”

“Home,” Nina answers, before remembering that these people don’t know her, so they have no idea where home is. “Ravka. Os Alta.” 

Madelene sighs dreamily from the other side of the table. “The city. That must be so cool.”

Big brother must hate that. Nina sneaks a glance toward the head of the table, where Matthias is predictably frowning, and smiles bigger. “It’s so cool.”

“What do you do there?” Madelene prods, leaning her chin on her hand as she stares at Nina wistfully, and Nina wants to put her in her pocket. She remembers what it was like being a little girl with big dreams. 

“I work in advertising.” 

“Like commercials?” Matthias asks, and Nina can’t tell if he’s actually unimpressed or if he just sounds this patronizing all the time. 

“I mean… sometimes. But saying that my job is just commercials would be like saying that your job is just…” She trails off and glances away from Matthias. “What’s a kind of Christmas tree?”

“Balsam fir,” Inej offers helpfully.

“Blue spruce,” Jesper chimes in.

“Eastern pine,” Wylan adds. 

Nina waves a hand in their general direction. “Any of those. Commercials are just a part of what I do.”

“What’s the rest?” Matthias raises a challenging eyebrow. 

“People.” Nina refuses to back down. “Advertising is all about people. Knowing what they need, what they want, what makes them want something, finding out a way to communicate one message with people all over the world.” 

“Sounds like we could have used you around the farm this season!” Jesper chimes in, and though his tone is lighthearted enough, Nina can tell that he’s trying to diffuse the tension. 

“We do not need her help selling trees,” Matthias says before she can even think of a response, his jaw set in a hard line. 

Her instincts tell her to fight back, to assert her dominance as a master saleswoman, but there’s part of her that can just tell that Jesper’s joke has struck a nerve in Matthias and because she’s an incredibly gracious houseguest and overall civilized human being, she instead gives Jesper a polite smile and says “I’m sure you guys have it handled. You seem like a great team.” 

She very pointedly does not look at Matthias when she says it, because she’s not saying it to spare his grumpy feelings. She’s just trying not to be thrown out into the blizzard. That’s all.

“So,” Wylan says, apparently eager to change the subject. “Is this blizzard keeping you from any big holiday plans?” 

Across the table, Inej’s eyes widen and she gets a look on her face like she wishes she could pluck the words out of mid-air and take them back. It’s strangely comforting to know that someone, even someone who is largely a stranger to her, cares for her enough to consider it. 

“No,” She says, softer than she intended to. “Christmas is usually quiet for me.”

“I bet your parents will miss you,” Madelene says and beside her, Inej reaches a hand out to touch her forearm, as if to stop her and Nina shakes her head. 

“It’s okay,” She says first, to Inej, and then to Madelene, “I lost my parents when I was younger.” 

“We lost ours, too,” Madelene says, and Nina finds herself glancing toward Matthias despite the fact that she already knew this. His gaze is focused on Madelene, and she kind of hates how much this whole thing is humanizing that really big asshole from the hotel. “But we still have family.”

“Yeah,” Matthias nods, and Nina almost feels shocked when she sees him smile. “We do.”

After dinner, they retire to the living room, where Wylan takes a seat at the piano and plays every Christmas carol that Inej and Madelene shout out at him. Jesper and Kaz sit on opposite sides of the coffee table, arm wrestling over who has to go do all the dishes, and then disappear together five minutes later and never return. 

After a while, Wylan’s upbeat songs turn into slower melodies and Nina watches as Madelene’s eyes begin to droop where she sits slumped against her brother’s side—a rehearsed dance. Once she’s asleep, Matthias scoops her into his arms and carries her upstairs. When he returns to the couch, Wylan tucks himself neatly into the space that Madelene previously occupied. It’s not unlike the way that she and Inej are sitting on the loveseat, but she didn’t peg Matthias for the cuddly type. 

He’s content enough to stay that way for a couple hours longer, the four of them making idle conversation as the fire dies out. It isn’t until Wylan’s head drops and hits Matthias’s shoulder that he finally nudges him up. “Come on, yöndla , off to bed with you.”

Yöndla. Lamb. The tenderness of the nickname lands somewhere between her ribs, feeling struck with the recognition that this grumpy lumberjack might not be at all who she thought he was. 

She doesn’t realize she’s staring until Inej steps into her line of vision, offering her a hand to pull her up. “Shall we, my lady?” 

Nina nods, shaking off the strange, hazy feeling. She’ll feel better after a good night’s rest. Everything will make perfect sense in the morning. 

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

When she wakes up the next morning, it’s still snowing, somehow. 

Inej’s side of the bed is already empty, and if the way that she left it all nicely made up is anything to go by, it’s been empty for a while. She’s only kind of surprised when she rolls over to check her phone and finds that it’s barely nine in the morning. It stands to reason that the people living on the farm wake up early. 

The cold that meets her when she slides out from beneath the covers is biting and she’s immensely grateful for the hefty robe that Inej retrieved for her on their way to bed last night. She insisted that it was an extra and it was fine for Nina to borrow it, and it smelled enough like laundry detergent for Nina to believe her, but she still feels a little bit like an imposter when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the other side of the bedroom. It reminds her of when her mother used to come downstairs in her father’s robe in the early hours of the morning to start the coffee pot for them and the memory makes her chest ache.

She averts her gaze from her reflection and does her best to shoo the thought away as she makes her way over to take a look outside. As cold as it is inside, it’s clear that it’s even colder outside—the kind of cold that fogs up windows. She has to pull the sleeve of her robe over her fist to clear the glass enough to take a look outside, where snow is still falling steadily. 

She sighs. Looks like she won’t be going home anytime soon. 

She has half a mind to retreat back to the safety of the warm bed that she just left behind, but she gets the feeling that she’s already the last one awake and any additional time that she spends upstairs is only fueling the lazy houseguest allegations, so she decides to woman up and head down. 

For being what she assumes is an old—if this farm has really been in the Helvar family for generations, like Madelene said—and largely wooden house, the staircase is surprisingly un-creaky. Which isn’t to say that she’s impressed by the place. She definitely isn’t. It’s just nice to be able to have control over when everyone notices she’s arrived downstairs, that’s all. 

She follows the sound of voices to the living room, where she lingers outside of the doorway for a moment to take stock of everything. Today, Jesper and Wylan are cozying up on the loveseat and Inej and Kaz have laid claim to the couch. Matthias and his sister stand by the window, watching the snowfall like she had been upstairs, just a few minutes ago. 

“What are we going to do if it doesn’t stop?” Madelene asks, and Nina instinctively takes a step back to conceal herself from their sight, just in case they’re going to start talking about her unplanned appearance at the farm. 

“We’ll figure something out, Maddy,” Matthias replies, and though the voice is probably reassuring enough to comfort an eleven year old, Nina is able to pick up on the shred of doubt in his voice. Nina peeks her head out from around the corner; this doesn’t feel like it’s about her. “Don’t worry.” 

Madelene turns to face her brother with an expression that’s the eleven year old girl equivalent of a kicked puppy. “But the Winter Wonderland!” 

“What’s the Winter Wonderland?” Nina asks, finally stepping into the doorway. Matthias and Madelene both whirl around to face her, but it’s the wide-eyed look on Matthias’s face that makes her freeze in place, suddenly self conscious. It’s been a long time since anyone has seen her fresh out of bed—not that she was at her most put together when Matthias saw her yesterday—and she reaches to smooth her hair down before she can think better of it. “What?” 

Matthias blinks and clears his throat. “Nothing. It’s just—that’s my robe.” 

Nina casts her own gaze down before she looks over at Inej, who is watching this whole exchange with what appears to be a look of quiet amusement that she can’t quite puzzle out. Inej doesn’t seem like the type to set her up, but she doesn’t exactly know her that well. “Inej said it was an extra.” 

“It is an extra,” Inej confirms, visibly trying to hide her amusement when Matthias looks her way. “I got you that nice, new one for Christmas last year.”

“It’s my old robe,” Matthias amends, rubbing at the back of his neck with his hand. “It’s just—never mind. It’s nothing.” 

“Okay…” Nina hedges, looking from Matthias to Madelene. “I guess that brings us back to my original question: What’s the Winter Wonderland?” 

Madelene brightens immediately. “Only the greatest thing in the world. Every year on Christmas Eve we put on this whole winter fairytale festival at the farm with cookies, and hot chocolate, and Christmas carols, and twinkly lights, and people from all over come to see it.” She deflates when she looks out the window again and is reminded of the blizzard. “But nobody will be able to get here if it keeps snowing like this all day. We saw how well it went for you.” 

“Maddy,” Wylan says from the couch, and it’s just about the gentlest warning that Nina has ever heard. Her heart twists in her chest when she remembers Inej’s earlier comment about his “horrible family.” 

“It’s okay,” Nina assures, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I mean, she’s not wrong.” 

“Where was that attitude when I was the one saying it?” Matthias says under his breath. Nina pretends not to hear. 

Madelene pouts. “I’m just saying that if it keeps snowing like this then Christmas is going to be totally and completely ruined!” 

“I thought you said there was nothing more magical than snow at Christmas,” Jesper quotes, in a surprisingly good imitation of the dreamy voice that Nina had heard the night before at dinner. 

“Not this much,” Madelene insists as, much to Nina’s horror, her eyes begin to well up with tears and her bottom lip starts to wobble. “Not if it means no Winter Wonderland.” 

In a surprising turn of events, it’s Kaz—the same man who has said a total of maybe twelve words since she arrived here—who makes the first move to comfort her. “Oh, chin up Little Bit,” He says, tucking her under his arm and ruffling her hair affectionately with his gloved hand. “The weather app says it’s supposed to stop by dinner. There will be plenty of time to get the road clear.” 

“Yeah, because the weather app is always right,” She huffs and rolls her eyes and Nina can’t help the way that her eyebrows shoot up on her forehead. Up until this moment, she thought the only thing that Madelene and Matthias had in common was their looks—their matching golden locks and icy blue eyes—but that was like a miniature Matthias. 

She must not be alone in thinking it, either, because Jesper bursts out laughing from the loveseat. “You just sounded scarily like your brother for a minute there.” 

That seems to snap Madelene out of it; she wrinkles her nose and jerks away from Kaz, clearly displeased with the comparison. 

Matthias makes a wounded noise. “Like it’s such an insult?”

Madelene peeks over at him guiltily. “You’re just a little… grumpy.” 

Matthias clutches his hands to his chest and stumbles backwards, like he’s been struck through the heart, and just like that Madelene is back to giggling again. 

Suddenly, Nina has an idea. Before she can stop herself, she says “Well, since it looks like I’ll be here for a little while longer, is there anything that I can do to help get ready for the Winter Wonderland?”

She isn’t sure what compels her to say it—maybe Madelene has some superhuman ability to make every adult that meets her want to become her pseudo-parent—but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, the girl rushes over to grab her arm in excitement. 

“That’s a great idea, Nina!” Inej praises, and Nina feels like her heart grows three sizes in her chest. 

“I think you mentioned cookies?” Nina tries. “I’m not too shabby in the baking department.”

“Yes!” Madelene literally squeals, practically vibrating. “Wylan’s our head chef and our head decorator. He makes the most beautiful cookies. Jesper absolutely cannot be on frosting duty but he’s allowed to cut out the shapes. And Inej is the only one allowed to use the mixer, on account of the Flour Incident of Last Christmas.” 

Jesper nods solemnly. “It’s for the best, really.” 

“Do I want to know?” She asks, aiming the question toward Inej who only shakes her head in response. Right then. “So, cookies it is! Show me to the kitchen!” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it,” Madelene says as she drags Nina off, and as she launches into her story, Nina can’t help but notice that Matthias heads the other direction, down the hall and behind a closed door.

“Not a cookie guy?” She asks Jesper, who’s walking on her other side, tilting her head in the direction of Matthias. 

Jesper glances fleetingly at him and then back to her with a good-natured smile. “Ah, it’s just another Thursday for Matthias.” 

Nina gapes. “Surely he can’t think that anyone is coming to buy a tree in this weather.” 

“I like you,” Jesper laughs. “I’ve tried to tell him the same thing many times. He always insists that he loves his job or whatever. I still think he’s crazy.” 

“Yeah,” Nina forces a laugh, suddenly grateful that none of these people know her outside of these four walls. “That’s crazy, who would ever volunteer to work more during the holidays?” 

“Here!” Madelene interrupts, shoving an apron into her hands with a beaming smile. Nina unfurls it to reveal an unflattering shade of burlap that reads “(Please Don’t) Kiss the Chef.” She already knows exactly who it belongs to. “You can wear Matthias’s apron.” 

“Right, because he was thrilled last time one of you tried to pass his clothes off to me,” Nina says warily, looking to Inej for backup. 

She finds the other girl perched on the edge of the kitchen counter, brown eyes twinkling once again. “Oh, don’t worry about him.” 

“She’s right,” Wylan says from half inside the fridge, cradling enough eggs and butter to feed a small army. “He’s harmless.”

“Just an unfortunate case of being a terrible flirt, really,” Jesper agrees, and Madelene hides a giggle behind her hand. 

Nina blinks, certain that she’s heard him wrong. “Being what?” 

Before Jesper can elaborate, Kaz glides by and grabs him by the elbow. “Not too much.” 

Nina watches as Kaz hauls him over to Wylan in silent frustration before she sighs and turns back to Madelene, who is evidently the only person in this house who will ever give her a straight answer to a question. “Madelene, have you ever seen Beauty and the Beast?” 

“Just Maddy is fine,” Maddy says. “And obviously yes. Look at me. I’m an eleven year old girl, for crying out loud!” 

“Okay, touché,” Nina laughs. “This is what I think Belle probably felt like when she ended up at this castle and all of the clocks and forks and furniture started telling her to go to dinner with their grumpy boss.” 

Maddy lets out a delighted peal of laughter at that. “Come on, your highness, let’s bake some cookies.” 

Turns out, they weren’t joking at all when they called Wylan their head chef. He runs a tight ship, putting them all to work straight away. He and Jesper work together on the frosting, while Inej and Kaz are on gingerbread duty. She and Maddy are put in charge of making the sugar cookies together, which is perfect for her plan to do some digging on Matthias. 

“So, is there a reason why everyone is trying to set me up with your brother?” She asks, trying her best to sound totally nonchalant and innocent about it as she watches Maddy carefully measure out her flour. She even leans an elbow on the stand mixer, just for good measure. “Was I onto something? Are you all trapped here until he falls in love?” 

“Nooooooo,” She slowly draws out the word, looking like she’s trying as hard to feign innocence as Nina is, herself. “It’s just that he’s the only one with no boyfriend or girlfriend in the house.” 

“The only one?” Nina asks, raising an eyebrow at her. 

Maddy looks around quickly, like she’s trying to make sure that nobody else is listening to them. “Can you keep a secret?” 

Nina puts on her best Business Woman face and holds out a pinky, which Maddy takes with a smile. “With my life.” 

“I have a girlfriend,” She whispers, and Nina really plays up her reaction just to make her feel like she’s really getting to gossip with a friend—one of the most sacred and formative experiences of girlhood. “So I’m pretty much an expert on the whole relationship thing.”

“Of course,” Nina nods, doing her best to look and sound completely serious in the face of a self-proclaimed eleven year old love expert. “And, in your expert opinion, where do you think your brother is going wrong?” 

Maddy considers the question carefully as she slowly turns her spatula around in the bowl, mixing together the dry ingredients for their dough. “Why do you think he’s going wrong somewhere?” 

“I mean, he’s obviously a handsome guy, so—” She doesn’t realize that she’s playing right into Maddy’s trap until she’s already halfway through the sentence, when she sees the gleeful look cross her face, and she snaps her mouth closed with a quickness. “Nice try. Back to my question.” 

“Fine, but let’s not forget, you’re the one who thinks he’s handsome!” 

“Stop distracting!” 

Maddy giggles and that warm and fuzzy feeling reappears in her chest. She’d always wondered what it would have been like to grow up with a little brother or sister. If it was anything like this, she thinks she would have liked it a lot. “He’s not trying.” 

Nina considers that for a moment before she carefully goes “And you don’t think that’s for a reason?” 

“Not a good one,” Maddy shakes her head. “He always blames it on his job, on being busy taking care of the farm. But I think it’s because of me.” 

Nina frowns. “Maddy, I’m sure that’s not—”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Maddy says quickly, like she’s worried she’ll hurt her brother’s feelings from a room over. “It’s been just the two of us for a long time now, almost half of my life. I think he’s worried about how I would react.” 

Nina studies her for a long moment before speaking again. “You know, you’re a lot more grown up than any other eleven year old I’ve met.” 

“Inej says it’s because I spend all my time with grown ups,” Maddy agrees, handing over the bowl to Nina. “Careful with that, the mixer is a one strike and you’re out tool.” 

Her Inej impersonation is so spot-on that Nina knows better to brush it off. Luckily, she’s had enough experience to successfully mix all the ingredients without any new catastrophes for the history books. In fact, Wylan even makes a point to tell her that it’s the fastest they’ve ever finished the cookies as they load their baking sheets into the double oven. 

“What are we going to do with all this extra time?” Inej laments with a kind of mischievous smile on her face that tells Nina she already knows exactly what they’re going to do. 

As if waiting for her cue, Maddy leaps to her feet and scrambles toward them. “Can we go play in the snow? Please, please, please?” 

“Great idea!” Wylan says, like he’s never even thought about going out and playing in the snow before this exact moment. 

“Hey Nina,” Jesper says, turning to her. “Have you ever built a snow castle?” 

“I can’t say that I have,” She answers, and she’s utterly powerless to the squeal of delight that Maddy lets out.

“This is going to be so much fun,” She promises before she takes off up the stairs, presumably to change into something more weather appropriate. 

Nina glances in the direction of the window above the sink and bites her lip. The snow has definitely lightened up, but it hasn’t stopped yet. “It looks… a little cold.” 

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Jesper says. “You can stay in and hang out with Kaz while he watches the oven.” 

And that’s how Nina ends up bundled up in what’s probably the most layers of clothing she’s ever worn at once, shuffling through a ridiculous amount of snow behind a pack of people she met less than twenty-four hours ago, led by an eleven year old who may or may not have consumed an entire pot of coffee today—just judging by the speed at which she goes flying across the snow-covered yard. 

If someone had told her when she first agreed to go to Djerholm on a business trip a few days ago that she would be here right now, she almost certainly would have laughed in their face. Now, weirdly enough, she can’t imagine being anywhere else. 

The construction of a snow castle turns out to be very serious work… at least for the first thirty minutes or so. Then a comment from Maddy about how Inej and Nina’s side of the castle looks soooooo much better than Jesper and Wylan’s side ends with Jesper launching a snowball at her. And, well, what is that if not a declaration of war? 

Nina’s always been fiercely competitive and, though she’d never admit to it as a whole-ass adult woman, a bit of a sore loser. It’s the exact reason why she has to keep making up excuses to get out of joining Zoya’s recreational kickball team, but it seems that she’s met her match here in Fjerda. 

They take the snowball fight as seriously as they take snow castle building, as Maddy is quick to tell her when they huddle up behind their unfinished castle to talk strategy. “We have a three-year championship title to defend,” She says with an impressively fiery look in her eyes.

“Heard,” Nina replies, crossing her heart over her puffer jacket. “What’s the game plan?”

“I’m the distraction,” Maddy says. “I lure them out so that Inej can ambush them from behind.” 

“I can be the bait,” Nina offers. “That way if you want to do some attacking this year—”

“It won’t work,” Maddy shakes her head, immediately dismissing the notion. “They go after me because being a little girl makes me an easy target.” 

Nina exchanges a look with Inej, who nods once. “Okay, so where do I fit in?” 

“She won’t be any good on her own,” Inej says, more to Maddy than to Nina, and then offers the latter an apologetic look. “Sorry, it’s just that you don’t know the lay of the land.”

“She’s strong, though,” Maddy points out, so at least someone has something nice to say about her. “She can help if they catch up to us before you catch up to them.”  

With a plan formed, it’s time for them to split up. Inej presses a kiss to each of their foreheads, pulls the hood of her ice blue coat tight around her face, and takes off, so quick and so silent that she practically vanishes into the snow still falling around them. 

“Wow,” Nina says.

“Wow,” Maddy agrees.

“Alright.” Nina digs her heels into the snow beneath her as she pulls herself up to her feet, holding out a hand to help Maddy up when once she’s steady. “Which way do we go?” 

Maddy squints, scanning the snow until she finds what she wants. “This way.”

She points and Nina follows the end of her finger to a pair of footprints leading away from them, already disappearing under a layer of fresh-fallen snow. “We gotta move fast or there won’t be anything left to follow.”

So they take off, not nearly as quickly or quietly as Inej, but they do their best. Unfortunately, it isn’t their speed that thwarts their plan. At some point during their escape, Jesper and Wylan remembered that they were leaving a trail behind them and started to make a deliberate effort to conceal them. About halfway between the house and the farm, they apparently stopped to run circles around each other and create a web that they wouldn’t be able to untangle. 

“Fuck,” She mutters before she can stop herself, and then she looks to Maddy with wide eyes. “I never said that. You heard nothing.” 

“Never said what?” Maddy asks, putting on a show of innocence that makes Nina laugh out loud. “All I heard was you saying that we need to figure out a new plan to find these guys.” 

“I’m hoping you have one,” Nina says, scanning the surrounding area for any hint of which direction they went without avail. 

“Not a plan,” Maddy shakes her head. “Just a hunch. Follow me.” 

And with that, they’re on the move again. Not towards the house or the farm, but towards the tree lot on the other side of the property. “Usually the lot is off limits,” Maddy explains. “It’s against the rules to play there, on account of the customers. But Jesper is always looking for a good reason to break the rules, and since there’s no customers at the lot today, that’s where he’ll go.” 

Once again, the only thing that Nina can say is “Wow.” 

Maddy laughs and tugs at her arm. “Come on!” 

Once they get closer to the lot, they both drop to scoop up a snowball—arming themselves just in case they’re about to stumble upon a trap set by their foe—and something that Nina sees catches her eyes immediately. “Look,” She says, grabbing Maddy’s arm and pointing at the ground between the rows of trees. “It’s been shoveled.” 

They don’t even get two rows into the lot of trees before a movement in Nina’s peripherals makes her stop and wind up, ready to fire a snowball off until she realizes it’s Matthias standing in front of her, not Jesper or Wylan, and she stops just in time. She doesn’t, however, see the great, white dog that jumps out from behind his legs and barks out a warning at her. The sound startles a yelp out of her, alerting everyone in the vicinity to their presence, including Matthias.

“Hey!” He frowns. “No playing in the—”

Before he can finish the sentence, he’s cut off by a snowball hitting him upside the head. “Oops,” Jesper’s voice sounds from a few rows over, where he and Wylan’s heads poke out from opposite sides of a tree marked Douglas Fir and Maddy dissolves into hysterical giggles beside Nina. 

Matthias turns his gaze on his sister, raising a betrayed eyebrow. “You think that’s funny, do you? I’ll show you funny!” 

As he reaches down, Nina grabs Maddy by the arm and shouts “Run!” And just like that, they’re in the thick of the battle again, but this time Matthias has joined the fight. He nearly gets them cornered when Inej appears out of thin-air and fends him off enough for the girls to get away. 

They keep going like this—weaving through the trees and dodging snowballs, screaming and laughing until their cheeks ache and their lungs burn—and it’s just as Nina and Matthias find themselves in the middle of the lot, ready for their final showdown, that they’re interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. 

Before them stand a couple—or at least, she assumes that they’re a couple—bundled up just like them, but with the addition of skis strapped to their feet and some kind of sled-stroller hybrid attached to the taller one’s waist. 

The second that Matthias processes that they’re customers, his snowball falls from his hand and he paints on the same polite smile that she had seen him wear the first time that they met, in the hotel. “How can I help you?” 

Inside of Nina, a strange assortment of emotions are at war with each other—some that she doesn’t even feel like she’s entitled to, invading without her permission. Disappointment that their fun was spoiled, bewilderment at the fact that people came in a blizzard on their skis to support the farm, a fierce wave of protectiveness when she sees Maddy’s expression begin to fall. 

At least she isn’t alone in the last one. 

“Hey,” Wylan says, jogging across the snow toward them. “I’ll help Matty out here, why don’t you guys go in and get started on some hot chocolate and cookie decorating?” 

That makes Maddy perk up a little bit, and the strain in Nina’s chest lessens. Jesper swoops in next, wrapping an arm around Maddy’s shoulders as they head back toward the house. “That was fun, wasn’t it Mad Dog?” 

“It was,” Maddy agrees, a little smile pulling at her lips. “It’s been a long time since Matthias has joined in on a snowball fight.” 

When they get inside, Maddy is quickly distracted by the spread of cookies and frosting and sprinkles that Kaz had set up for them while they were busy waging war on each other outside. Nina, however, can’t rid her mind of the image of Matthias dropping his snowball and building up his walls any faster than she can rid the bone-deep chill from her hands. She lingers by the door while everyone else makes a run for the cookies, flexing her fingers and curling them back into fists like she’s trying to get blood flowing to her fingertips again.

When Inej catches a glimpse of her, she smiles. “I remember my first winter in Fjerda. I think I took an hour-long hot shower every night to get warm.” 

Nina raises an interested eyebrow. “Not a bad idea.” 

“Go, warm up,” Jesper waves her on, leaning in conspiratorially to stage-whisper the rest. “Some of us are very particular about the way cookies are decorated. You’ll probably be saving yourself some tears.” 

“I hear you!” Maddy hollers from the other side of the kitchen, waving an icing spatula around. “And it’s not my fault that you go in so heavy handed that all your snowflakes turn into snowballs!” 

“Watch yourself, missy, or these gingerbread men are toast!” Jesper warns, and Nina uses the resulting chaos as her cover to slip out of the kitchen and make her way upstairs. 

The thing is, taking a long, hot shower is both the best and worst possible thing she could do at that moment, because while it does a fantastic job at returning feeling to all of her extremities, it also drags her deep into her own thoughts. See, years of puzzling through new ad campaigns and brand deals while deep conditioning has led to another kind of conditioning—the Pavlovian kind—and now whenever she spends too long under the hot spray, the gears just start turning. 

The problem is just that tonight the thing she’s working through is Matthias Helvar. 

And it’s not that she’s invested in him or anything, because she obviously isn’t, it’s just that she doesn’t get him. Because, on one hand, he’s this miserable lump of muscle, who’s scowling at least seventy-five percent of the time. But on the other hand, he calls his best friend lamb, and carries his sister to bed, and potentially used to hold onto a snowball fight championship title until something in the last few years caused him to stop. 

She’s never been so frustrated not to know someone.

So, it’s only right that she comes out of the bathroom—wrapped in a towel because she forgot to bring clothes into the bathroom with her, like a fucking idiot—and winds up face-to-face with Matthias in the hallway. 

Or, well, still face-to-ridiculous-ripped-pectoral-muscles—which are on full display, now that his lumberjack flannel is unbuttoned. Any shame she feels for checking him out dissipates when she looks back up at his face and sees him flush bright scarlet. “We’ve really got to stop meeting like this.”

“Sorry,” Matthias manages to get out, casting a long-suffering look at the ceiling with such a dramatic flair that even she is impressed, and that’s really saying something because she’s not exactly known for her subtlety. All this over her collarbones and her calves?

“Relax,” Nina rolls her eyes and brushes past him on her way back to her room, tightening her towel around her chest for good measure. “I’m not going to drag you off and have my wicked way with you.” She pauses and takes a last glance at him over her shoulder with a wink. “Yet.” 

She doesn’t know what possessed her to add on that last part, but the way that Matthias’s face burns an even deeper ruby hue in response makes pride swell in her chest. She refuses to let herself dwell on it.

She knows that she was in the shower longer than she thought—she must have been, if it was long enough for Mr. Workaholic himself to head in for the night—but she’s still somehow surprised when she finds that she was in there long enough for Inej to come up and lay out a fresh outfit for her on the bed. The tenderness of the gesture, of the knowledge that there’s someone here who cares about her enough for this idle display of affection, makes it hard to breathe for a second. 

Of course, the sweater itself probably belongs to Matthias, and is likely just part of a ploy orchestrated by everyone waiting for her downstairs, so there’s that. She knows that she shouldn’t be feeding into it. She’s not the Hallmark movie protagonist ready to throw away her life in the city for the small-town lumberjack, no matter how strong, tall, or handsome.

She sits there for a long time, perched on the edge of the bed in her towel while all the warmth from the shower fades from her skin, debating whether it’s better to wear the sweater as a gesture of goodwill and risk enabling her hosts’ delusions or wear something less seasonally appropriate from her own suitcase and risk offending them. So long that she not only hears the shower shut off again down the hall, but also hears the heavy sound of Matthias’s footsteps as he retreats downstairs again a little later.

Ultimately, she decides to don the sweater that Inej chose for her because it’s festive, and cute, and it would have been incredibly rude of her to just ignore it. Plus, it’s considerably warmer than anything that she brought, so it just makes sense logically.

She’s hoping that she can sneak downstairs undetected, which shouldn’t be hard because she can hear his voice coming from the kitchen, so she should be in the clear as soon as she makes it to the living room. The only problem is that just as she’s about to slip past the kitchen door undetected, something she hears stops her in her tracks. 

“It can’t be that bad,” Wylan’s voice says, and though the words themselves are certain, his tone doesn’t quite match. 

“It’s not good, Wy,” Matthias says, and for some reason hearing the words make Nina feel like she’s swallowed a rock. “We missed out on a lot of our usual traffic over the last couple of days and with the Winter Wonderland still up in the air…” 

He doesn’t quite finish the sentiment, but he doesn’t need to. She’s been in business long enough to know exactly what that tone of voice means. That’s the most clear-cut ‘we have no fucking money’ voice that she’s ever heard.

And like, even though she barely knows these people and has no emotional investment in this farm or its success whatsoever, she still finds herself paralyzed outside the door while her brain starts moving without her permission—shuffling through potential ways for the farm to get supplemental income during the offseason, mapping out some kind of last-minute advertising that they could do to try and get people to the farm for Winter Wonderland tomorrow, anything. 

She blames it on the fact that she’s really good at her job.

She’s so busy thinking that she doesn’t hear Matthias and Wylan wrap up their conversation and leave the kitchen until it’s too late and they’re right in front of her. 

“Hey, Nina,” Wylan says with his usual good-natured smile. Behind him, Matthias doesn’t say anything. He just stares right at her. 

She can’t figure out if she’s trying to find a way to use his look to kill her so he can peel his sweater right off her lifeless body, or if he’s just trying to glare so hard that the sweater bursts into flames and neither of them can have it. She’s not sure. All she knows for certain is that the look is intense. It makes her skin prickle and something flip-floppy flutters around in her stomach. 

“That—” Matthias begins, but Nina cuts him off before he can finish the sentence.

“It’s yours,” Nina sighs. “I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’m not going to take it with me when I go.” 

Not for the first time today, Matthias’s cheeks turn pink. “I was going to say it looks nice on you.”

“Oh,” Nina replies, and now she’s the one whose face is inevitably blushing an unflattering shade of red. “Well, thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Matthias says gruffly, and then he’s gone—heading off toward the living room, where she can hear the soft hum of conversation. “Dinner’s ready, come eat.” 

Wylan stays by Nina’s side, sizing her up with a smug sort of look on his face. “Not a word, yöndla,” She warns, and Wylan just laughs. She feels like she’s losing her mind. As she sinks into her seat at the table, all she can do is cast a prayer up to whoever’s listening that she can take a backseat for dinner tonight. 

Thankfully for her, the universe feels merciful. 

As soon as they’re all seated, Maddy is clearing her throat and tapping her knife to her glass like she’s at a wedding. Beside her, Kaz spreads his napkin across his lap and says “Oh good, it’s time for the news.” 

‘The news’ is when Maddy commandeers table talk for the evening in order to regale the table with a highly dramatized version of the day’s events to her captive audience. She’s an excellent storyteller—as evidenced by the way that everyone around the table knows how to ooh and ahh at exactly the right times—but Nina is only half listening. 

See, she’s still being plagued with the urge to help these people and it’s only worse with all of them sitting around the table like this—because even though she barely knows them, they’ve taken her in like one of their own from the minute she drove into a snowbank on their property, and now it turns out she kind of actually really cares about them. 

Her gaze travels from Maddy at the head of the table, waving her hands around as she recounts their earlier snowball fight, to Kaz hiding his smile behind his drink and Jesper beside him smiling enough for both of them. Wylan scoops food out onto Maddy’s plate while she’s busy reenacting their earlier snowball warfare and Nina catches Inej smiling warmly at her from across the table and for one absolutely insane split-second, she’s overwhelmed with the feeling that this is where she’s meant to be. 

By the time that dinner is done, she has at least three fully formed ideas of how to boost the farm’s revenue enough to support them throughout the rest of the year. Now it’s only a matter of whether or not Matthias will accept them. 

“It’s still snowing,” Maddy says mournfully as they transition from the table to the living room, reminding them all of Kaz’s words from earlier that morning—that the snow would stop by dinner. The words are just proof to Nina that she has to try to do something for them.

That night, when Inej asks her if she’s ready to head up to bed, she hesitates. She doesn’t mean to, but she just can’t stop thinking about the conversation she overheard before dinner between Matthias and Wylan, and Matthias disappearing behind his office door with Kaz in tow afterwards. She can still hear their muffled voices. Before she can think better of it, she glances in their direction, and when she looks back at Inej again the girl has a knowing glint in her eyes. 

“Don’t start,” Nina warns before Inej can open her mouth to say anything. “I’ll be up soon.” 

“Take your time,” Inej insists, not even trying to hide the smile on her face. 

“I won’t,” Nina replies and Inej just laughs before she disappears up the stairs. 

Carefully, she turns to start tip-toeing toward the office, trying to catch the tail end of whatever Matthias and Kaz are talking about before announcing her presence. 

“I know you have connections,” Matthias is saying as she stops just outside of the doorway. “Can’t you get someone to come out here?” 

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. ” Kaz replies, voice careful and measured. “You know as well as I do that they’re going to be concentrating all their manpower in the city—and even then it’s only if the snow actually stops before morning.” 

There’s a long moment of silence and then Mathias says “Please” and it’s just pathetic enough to make her chest ache a little bit. 

“I’ll try,” Kaz relents, sounding clearly exasperated. “But you’d do well to remember that I’m just a man, not a god.” 

“So you keep saying,” Matthias says with a low chuckle. “You know how important—” 

Nina wrinkles her eyebrows as she waits for an end to a sentence that never comes, the room suddenly silent. Then, in Kaz’s hushed voice, “There’s someone out there.” 

She gasps before she can stop it and her hand flies up to her mouth a split-second too late. 

“Maddy?” Matthias calls, anxiety creeping into his tone. 

Taking pity on him, Nina steps out into view. “Not Maddy.” 

Matthias’s shoulders instantly sag in relief. “It wouldn’t have been the first time. She’s been known to sneak out of bed to eavesdrop on adult conversations.” 

“I can see that,” Nina dares to crack a smile. “Sometimes when she opens her mouth, it’s like there’s a thirty year old trapped inside of her.” 

“Wise beyond her years,” Matthias agrees, and just as a smile starts to settle on his features, Kaz clears his throat and makes him jump. Nina bites back her amusement at the knowledge that for a moment, she’d captivated Matthias enough that he forgot there was someone else in the room. 

Not because she likes him, or anything. Just because it’s nice to be admired. 

“Anything else you needed to talk to me about, boss?” Kaz asks, and Nina can just tell that he takes great pleasure in the way that the tops of Matthias’s cheeks are turning red.

“Goodnight, Kaz,” He says in lieu of an answer to his question, and just like that Kaz is gone and it’s just the two of them in the office. He turns his gaze back to her and she swears it’s getting warmer in there. “Come looking for more clothes to steal?” 

Nina raises her hands in surrender, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s wearing his sweater right now so she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on. “I told them that you wouldn’t be happy about it and they just kept giving me more of your stuff, anyway.” 

“So you just came to chat?” Matthias raises an eyebrow, unconvinced.

“I heard you and Wylan talking before dinner,” Nina admits. “About the farm.” 

Matthias’s posture changes immediately and Nina can practically see him building up a wall between the two of them. Which, like, fair, considering she’s only known him for forty-eight hours, but she also gets the feeling that this treatment isn’t reserved exclusively for her. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I’m not trying to pity you,” Nina corrects him quickly, because she’s not. Pity doesn’t do anyone any good. “I’m trying to help you.” 

The look that Matthias gives her is apprehensive at best. “And how exactly do you plan on helping me?” 

Nina bristles. “Did you miss the whole part at dinner yesterday where I said that it’s literally my job?” 

“You advertise,” Matthias says. “You have no idea how to run a business.” 

Nina folds her arms over her chest. “Well, if you’re going to be a dick about it, I’ll just go!”

And then, because she’s not above a dramatic exit, she whirls around and starts to stomp right out of his office. Before she can cross the threshold of the door, he jumps up from where he’d been leaning against his desk and reaches out to catch her. He doesn’t try to grab her—his fingers only just barely graze her wrist before he yanks his hand back to himself, like he’s thought better of it—but it’s enough to make her stop in her tracks, anyway.

“Wait,” He says, so quietly she barely even hears it. “I’m sorry.” 

Slowly, she turns back to face him again. “Why are you so against accepting my help?” 

“It’s not just you,” Matthias finally says, and the way that the words sound coming out of his mouth—all hesitant and uncertain, like a fawn taking its first steps—make Nina feel like this might be the first time he’s ever admitted that much out loud. It’s a stark contrast to the way that he sounds carefully rehearsed all the rest of the time, so perfect. She gets a quiet thrum of pride at the knowledge that she challenges him in this way, despite the fact that she lays no claim over him whatsoever. “Ask Wylan how it went the first time he offered to invest in this place.” 

For a moment, she feels like she’s seeing Matthias for the very first time. Up until now, he’s been more of a concept of a man than anything else and it’s just now—the two of them, alone in his office—that he’s finally becoming real to her. She decides to reward him; a truth for a truth, a shred of vulnerability for a shred of vulnerability.

“It was hard enough to take care of myself after I lost my parents, I can’t imagine what it was like to take care of someone else, too,” She says, and Matthias just looks at her, like he’s expecting for her to say something else, or like he’s waiting for some string to be attached to her empathy. “This is just me being nice. Feel free to try it any time.” 

“It is hard,” Matthias replies weakly, and he has that tone in his voice again that tells Nina he’s out of his depth, that he’s having this conversation for the very first time. “Every year it’s like there’s less and less money to go around. I don’t know how our parents did it all the time, and without ever complaining or getting stressed or angry.” 

“Oh, I’m sure they did,” Nina replies, and the way that Matthias looks over at her tells her that it wasn’t the response he was expecting. “They were just people, too, Matthias. They weren’t innately any better at it than you are. More experienced, maybe, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t struggle. They just tried to shelter you from the bad stuff, the way you do with Maddy.” 

He’s quiet for a long moment after that, and he scrubs a hand on his face as he slowly returns to his leaning position. She can tell this isn’t a fight she can win—not like this, not right now. She’ll have to do it his way. 

“How about this,” She finally says, and he slowly uncovers his face to look at her again. “I’ll bring you my business proposal tomorrow at noon. That way you can at least know what you’re rejecting.” 

She can see the tension bleed from his shoulders as she speaks and he stands again, then takes a step forward. “Deal.”

He holds his hand out for her to shake, and for some reason when she takes it, she also takes a step in toward him. She doesn’t know what she’s thinking—except that she obviously isn’t thinking at all—but it doesn’t really matter what temporary bout of insanity caused her to do it, what matters is the way that they end up only a handful of inches away from each other, locked in a touch that lingers for far longer than it should. 

Nina’s gaze drops to where their palms are touching and then back to Matthias’s face again, and it’s like they both suddenly remember themselves and all but spring apart. Matthias clears his throat and Nina pretends not to notice the flush on his cheeks—and silently hopes that he’s doing the same for her. “I’ll see you tomorrow at noon, then.” 

“Tomorrow at noon,” Nina confirms, and she even feels brave enough to give him a little smile before she spins on her heels and makes her escape before she can do anymore damage to her reputation. 

Besides, she’s got a lot of work to do. She’ll need to get an early start on the day. 

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

The next morning, by some miracle, it’s stopped snowing. 

She knows because she’s woken up by the sound of Maddy’s eager footsteps flying down the hallways while she screams “It isn’t snowing anymore! Look, it stopped snowing! Guys!” 

The Nina of yesterday would have been irritated by the wake up call being, a) an hour earlier and b) completely unrequested. The Nina of today is happy to get up, and happier to hear that some act of Djel has occurred overnight—and not for the reasons that yesterday Nina would be, either.

She stands up and wraps her robe around herself to take a look out the window and see it for herself. Immediately, she spots Matthias below—digging her rental car out on the street with his truck and its attached snow-plow parked beside it—and her heart skips a beat in her chest. 

She refuses to let herself dwell on it right now. She has a very busy day ahead of her. 

The first thing she does is kneel down by her suitcase on the floor and rifle through her condensed and folded clothes until she finds something that she can wear later today. Not right now, obviously, on account of the aforementioned business and work that she has to get done, but later. 

She settles on the same outfit that she had worn for her business meeting in Djerholm, two days or a lifetime ago—a burgundy blouse that Alina says makes her look like, and she quotes, “a total smokeshow, babe” and her favorite pair of flared slacks that make her legs look like they go on for miles when she pairs them with her heeled boots. Her Business Woman outfit.

Maybe it’s a little ridiculous of her to dress up like this for a business proposal that she’s going to throw together in a matter of hours, and one that will more likely than not be shut down by Matthias, but if there’s anything that she’s learned about him in the last couple days, it’s that he’s serious about this place. Nina wants to show him that she’s serious, too.

For now, she hangs the outfit on the back of the closet door. She’ll come back for it later, when she’s ready for her presentation. This morning’s tasks will be better suited for the outfit that Inej left folded for her—another sweater and trousers combination stolen right from Matthias’s closet, she’s sure. At least today he’s busy shoveling snow and won’t be able to make any comments about it—annoyed, complimentary, or otherwise. 

To her great surprise, Wylan and Maddy are the only ones in the kitchen when she comes downstairs. 

“Merry Christmas Eve!” Maddy greets excitedly from the table, her face partially hidden behind a stack of what very well might be the biggest pile of waffles that she’s ever seen. It’s not quite big enough, however, to hide the way that Wylan elbows her in the side, like he’s prompting her to say something else. “Oh, and sorry for waking you up this morning with all my yelling in the hallway.” 

Nina laughs at that and waves a dismissive hand. “No worries. I was glad to hear that the snow had stopped.” 

Maddy’s face immediately falls and Nina doesn’t miss the sideways look of concern that Wylan gives her. “Right, so that you can leave. Matty is digging out your car right now.” 

“Well…” Nina hedges, and Maddy’s face immediately lights up. Wylan’s expression is one of mild surprise, too, and Nina is a little taken aback herself that Matthias had failed to mention last night’s conversation to his business partner. Nevertheless, she continues. “Turns out I have a little bit of work to do here.” 

“Here?” Maddy prods, eyebrows furrowed. “Like on the farm? Work for who?” 

“For the farm, ideally,” She answers, trying to at least pretend like she’s feeling totally and completely normal about it while she pours herself a cup of coffee. “I’m presenting a business proposal to Matthias at noon. Will I see you there?” 

She aims this last question at Wylan, whose look of confusion is very quickly becoming one of understanding. She doesn’t love it. “No, I think Matthias wanted to handle this one himself.” 

“This is going to be so great!” Maddy squeals, blissfully ignorant of the way that Nina feels like she’s fighting for her life right now. “Are you going to be here for Winter Wonderland? Oh, Nina, you’re going to love it. Come eat some breakfast and then we can both go help everyone set up!” 

“Think you have enough waffles to share?” Nina teases.

Maddy glances back down at her plate before pulling it protectively toward her chest. “Well, maybe Wylan can make you some more.” 

He does, and Nina is once again impressed by his cooking prowess. She makes a mental note and files it away for later, knowing it’ll be useful knowledge later. It’s clear by the way that Maddy shovels her waffles into her mouth that she’s not in the mood for a leisurely breakfast, and that’s fine with Nina because she has plenty to get done today, too. 

Wylan takes advantage of the fact that they’re both forced into relative silence while eating to fill them in on what everyone else is up to. Kaz and Inej are busy prepping the barn, Jesper is is stringing lights on the lot, and Matthias will be starting on setting up booths for vendors—all of whom should be arriving in the next handful of hours, since Kaz called in a favor with someone he knows in the Fjerdan government to get a small army of snow plows sent their way. 

With every moment that passes, she feels more and more like she’s stepped out of her real life and into a Hallmark Christmas movie, but she’s decided to stop fighting it. Instead, she’s going to use it to her advantage in some kick-ass promotional footage of the farm. 

Nina spends the first couple hours of the morning trudging around the nearly knee-deep snow in her borrowed snow boots with an unfamiliar pep in her step, filming b-roll footage, filler clips of the farm in all its picturesque winter scenescape glory to put between the other things that she has planned. Once she’s content with what she captures, she moves onto the interviews. 

She starts with Wylan, because she gets the feeling that he’ll give her a lot of good material to work with—being the lamb that he is—and she’s right. They spend a good twenty minutes walking around the farm, talking about everything from the first time that Wylan had ever seen this place in the winter, to the decision to become an investor in it. Then, once he’s told her everything that he has to say about it, he starts walking her around to introduce her to the vendors that have started to arrive and she grabs clips from each of them, too. 

Rolf and Else-Maj Westergren are an adorable old couple who have been married for fifty years and running their woodworking business together for even longer. Hedda Ekdahl makes the best mulled wine and mince pies on this side of the True Sea. Örjan Almberg runs a tiny toy shop, and is already in the process of setting up an elaborate toy train set that will travel back and forth around his stall during the Winter Wonderland. Ulla Göransson and Margit Strandberg used to run their own booths but have struck up a partnership in the last few years, where Ulla is responsible for blowing glass ornaments and decoration and Margit hand paints them all with painstaking detail.

Each new person that she meets brings another layer of depth to the farm and breathes life into her footage, and the two of those things combined make a confusing swirl of emotions take root in her chest. She hasn’t been here for long but she feels attached to this place, to these people, in a way that she isn’t sure she deserves. She tries her best to focus the energy into her project. 

When she does, she realizes that it’s even easier than she thought it would be to pull this campaign together. It helps that, so far, everyone’s love and passion for this place has been genuine. She doesn’t have to try to make it seem like a place that people care about by slicing clips and stitching them together or playing up any video effects. It’s all organic and real. 

She’s on her way to conduct the next of her interviews—she’s on the hunt for Maddy, or maybe Jesper—when she hears Inej’s voice calling her from inside the barn. “Nina! Can you come give us a hand in here?” 

And, of course, she would never say no to a beautiful woman who needs her help, so she shoves her phone deep into her coat pocket and makes her way to the door of the barn. Inside, Jesper is balanced on the top of a ladder, holding a gorgeous, golden lantern that matches a dozen others, strung up from the rafters of the barn and twinkling overhead. Inej is standing at the base of the ladder, feeding a chain up to him from a mostly empty box at her feet. 

“How can I be of assistance, my lady?” She asks with an overly dramatic bow, like she’s actually about to get down on one knee to take an order from her. The shenanigans are all worth it when Inej flashes her a dazzling smile. She’s gay, okay? Sue her. 

“We thought that we brought all the chains for the lights in with us earlier, but we’re a couple short,” Inej explains, gesturing to the lonely pile of golden stars with no chains to hang them. “Over by where all the vendors are setting up, there’s a little shed. Do you know what I’m talking about?” 

Nina nods. “I was just over there with Wylan. I know exactly what you’re talking about.” 

Inej lights up. “Perfect! Well, in there, there’s at least one more box with the rest of the chains. Do you mind going and getting them for us?” 

“Not at all,” Nina shakes her head. “I’m happy to help.” 

And she is, right up until the moment that she walks into the shed and finds herself confined in rather small space with one Mr. Matthias Helvar and she realizes that this was just an elaborate set-up that she played right into. 

“Let me guess,” She says as he turns around to face her with a look of confusion. “You’re looking for the chains to hang the lights in the barn.” 

Matthias’s eyebrows furrow. “How did you know?” 

“They just sent me in for the exact same thing,” She replies, glancing over her shoulder at the barn where she just came from. “They must have forgotten that they asked you to come look, too.” 

The look on Matthias’s face tells her that he believes her reasoning for their innocence about as much as she does, which tells her basically everything that she needs to know. “More like they’re trying to lock us both in here,” He grumbles. “Make sure you don’t let that door close.” 

“Sir, yes sir,” She nods, giving him a mock salute. She’s surprised when it draws the faintest hint of a smile out of him but she remains true to her words and dutifully remains halfway in the doorway so that they can’t be trapped as he finally finds the box that he’s looking for and pulls it down from the shelf. “Look at that! Mission accomplished with no claustrophobia-inducing stunt!” 

The expression on Matthias’s face still is still laced with disbelief. As she starts to take a step out the door, his hand reaches out to grab her arm and yank her backwards. “Not so fast!”

The urgency in his voice alarms her and her eyes widen as she looks around, half expecting to see an army of killer wasps flying toward them or a sniper staked out in the tree line. Neither of those things are anywhere in their vicinity, at least not that she can see. 

When she turns back to Matthias with a confused look on her face, he just points above her head and she finally sees what stopped him in his place. In the doorway above them hangs a sprig of mistletoe, bound together by a tiny, red ribbon. She can’t help but roll her eyes.

“Well, I’m not going to hold you down and kiss you against your will, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nina says, folding her arms over her chest. She’s not usually met with such panic at the idea of kissing her. It’s kind of a blow to her ego. 

Evidently, Matthias isn’t listening to a single word she says. He just cranes his neck to look around her, still holding onto her arm with one hand and balancing the box in the other—which, in and of itself, is so ridiculously unfair because he definitely shouldn’t be able to haul around a box filled with heavy chains with one hand. “Is there anyone out there?” 

“Not that I can see.” She knows that she’s probably looking at Matthias like he’s suddenly sprouted two extra heads, but she just can’t figure out why he’s being such a freak over the mistletoe. “What’s the big deal? We’re both adults, we can walk under mistletoe without kissing if that’s what we want.”

The look on his face is apprehensive at best, but she doesn’t miss the way that his gaze drops to her mouth for a split second. So maybe the problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to kiss her. “Easier said than done.”

She takes another step closer to him, which is easily done in such a small space, and Matthias visibly gulps. “What do you mean by that?”

“People are very… serious about holiday traditions here.”

“Like they won’t let us out of the shed unless we kiss?”

“Something like that.” 

Nina nods once, then slowly pokes her head out of the door and almost immediately pulls it back in when she sees one of the vendors that she met earlier walking straight toward the shed. “There’s someone out there.” 

Matthias’s eyes widen comically large, like he’s just been told that Nina spotted an asteroid hurtling toward the spot where they’re standing instead of an eighty year old woman. “Did she see you?” 

“I don’t know,” Nina says. “I don’t think so.”  

“Nina!” The sound of her name being called comes from outside. “Is that you, dear?” 

She looks back at Matthias with a sheepish smile. “I’d like to change my answer.” 

Matthias, for his part, just looks confused. “Was that Else-Maj?” 

“It was.” 

“You know Else-Maj?” 

“I do.” 

His confusion only multiplies at her confirmation of her budding friendship with Else-Maj, but outside she starts talking again before he can ask her to elaborate. “Nina, what are you doing in there?” 

“Looks like you’re going to have to suck it up and kiss me, Helvar,” Nina says, using the hand Matthias still has on her arm to tug him towards the door. “I’ll make it quick and painless, don’t worry.”

“Wait, what?” Matthias says, but in lieu of repeating herself she elects to just pull him the rest of the way out the shed door, where Else-Maj stands waiting with a wide smile. 

Surely enough, Else-Maj spots the mistletoe hanging above them with a surprising quickness—she can tell by the way her eyes light up when she sees it. Nina wouldn’t be surprised if someone sent Else-Maj after them, given the level of diabolical mastermind she’s dealing with. “Oh, did you two see what’s hanging above you?”

Nina feigns surprise when she looks up and sees the mistletoe hanging above them, like it’s the first time that she’s seen it. “Oh my goodness! How did this get here?”

Else-Maj’s eyes twinkle when she laughs. “Did you know that the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe comes from Fjerda?” 

Nina nods, because she actually does know this story. And maybe she’s a little eager to show off her knowledge to Matthias. Maybe. “Segol and his mother, Jonna.” 

“That’s right!” Else-Maj claps her hands happily, and Nina dares to risk a glance over at Matthias, who is looking at her with an expression that she’s almost willing to call wonder. “When Segol was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe, Jonna prayed to Djel that it would never be used to harm another person.” 

“And Djel promised that mistletoe would kiss anyone who passed beneath it, so long as it was never used as a weapon again,” Matthias finishes, casting a wayward glance at the bundle of mistletoe dangling above them. “So we do.” 

Else-Maj follows his gaze and then looks back between the two of them with a conniving smile. “So we do.” 

And, well, Nina doesn’t need any prompting to know what comes next. 

She half expects to have to grab Matthias by his shirt and haul him down into a kiss just to appease Else-Maj, while he stands there stiff as a board with his eyes open, or something, so imagine her absolute and utter shock when she turns to stand toes-to-toes with him and winds up with his hand on her cheek. 

Her surprise must show on her face, because Matthias quickly searches her face with his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Should I not—”

“No,” She interrupts quickly, shaking her head. “No, this is good.” 

“Okay,” Matthias breathes, leaning closer. “Good.”

“Good,” Nina repeats, and then they’re kissing and it’s not at all like she thought it would be. She expected it to be fast, rushed, the kind of thing that he’s just trying to get over with so that they can both continue on with their day. Instead, he kisses her slowly, like he’s trying to savor it. His thumb brushes over her cheek as her lips part, and her hand reaches to grab him by the front of his jacket before she can stop herself. 

It’s the kind of kiss that she thinks could have gone on for a while, if not for Else-Maj clearing her throat beside them and startling them apart. Which, like, is kind of supremely unfair, since she was the one who told them to kiss in the first place. 

“Sorry,” Matthias says, and Nina assumes that his apology is directed toward Else-Maj, but his eyes remain fixed on her as she pulls herself away from their embrace, his hand falling from her cheek. As she turns away from him, she spots a flash of a long, blonde braid disappearing around the corner of the barn. She’s willing to bet a million kruge that Maddy is already on her way to tell Inej and Jesper that their brilliant plan worked. 

“Nothing to apologize for,” Else-Maj replies, eyes still twinkling. Yeah, she was absolutely involved. “Young love and all that.” 

Matthias flushes crimson at the mere suggestion that they’re in love, and Nina hates how much she loves seeing him blush. She hates that she likes to be the one responsible for getting him all flustered even more. “Oh, we’re not—”

“That’s right,” Else-Maj cuts him off before he can protest anymore. “My mistake.” 

She doesn’t sound entirely convinced, but in her defense, Nina doesn’t feel entirely convinced, either. Which, like, is totally and completely crazy. One kiss does not a love story make. 

She guesses it’s just another thing that she has to try and ignore—which, the fact that that list is getting longer and longer by the minute is also quickly becoming another problem that she has to ignore. Her therapist would be aghast if she heard her inner monologue right now. She just doesn’t have time to process all of this right now, she still has a job to do. 

A job that, unfortunately, takes her right back to the barn, where everyone is waiting for her after sending her into a kissing trap. She isn’t exactly feeling the epitome of composed after all of that, but she does make a valiant effort to look it. 

Matthias sets off for the barn first—likely to avoid any further discussion of their kiss with Else-Maj—and Nina follows behind him, smoothing down her hair even though she’s pretty positive that it looks the exact same as it did when she left the barn. Still, can’t be too sure. 

Inej and Jesper are both looking predictably smug as Matthias and Nina make their way back to the barn, one after the other. Maddy is putting forth considerably less effort to hide her glee—the girl is practically vibrating where she stands, a smile on her face so wide that it almost hurts Nina to look at. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Jesper says from the top of the ladder, putting on a whole show of snapping his fingers as though he’s just remembered something. “We told Matthias to go look for the chains, too. Sorry Nina.” 

“Save it,” Matthias mutters, handing the box of chains off to Inej before stomping out of the barn. 

Nina winces. “You guys are going to make him hate me if you keep pulling these kinds of stunts.” 

Nobody else seems particularly concerned with this potential outcome. 

“He was blushing quite a bit,” Inej says as she feeds a new chain up the ladder to Jesper. “That kiss must have made quite an impression on him.” 

Which, like. At least she isn’t lying about it. 

“Anyway,” Nina says, nice and loud and dramatic for emphasis. “If you’re done with your scheming—”

“Never,” Jesper interjects from above her. 

“I still have some work to do, and it would be nice to know that I can get it done in peace.” She looks from Inej to Jesper, both of whom hold their hands out in a display of innocence. It’ll have to be good enough. “Maddy, come with me?” 

The rest of her interviews eat up basically the rest of the morning, and before she knows it, it’s almost time to present her proposal to Matthias. She had kind of wanted to shower and clean herself up first, but time got away from her. The best she’ll be able to do is change, and hopefully that’ll be enough. 

When she gets in the room, the first thing that she sees is the outfit that she hung on the back of the closet door when she woke up—her Business Woman outfit. It almost feels silly to dress up now, like she’s trying to impress him after a mistletoe-induced kiss that meant nothing to either of them, but she doesn’t think that showing up to do her proposal in his borrowed clothes is sending the right message, either, so dressing up it is. Once she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror with the outfit on, she knows it was the right choice. 

The last thing she has to do is put together all the clips that she filmed—just a bit of light editing, really—but she’s never been good about working from bed or on a couch. Something about a comfy setting just doesn’t pair well with capitalism. She briefly considers doing her work at the dining room table, but she’d really prefer to have a place where she’s unlikely to be interrupted and she knows that if Maddy catches a glimpse of her through the window, it’ll only be a matter of time before she comes in after her.

She could go downstairs and set up shop in Matthias’s office. Last she saw, he was still hard at work outside and technically she has a little over half an hour before he’s supposed to come in and meet with her, which is more than enough time for what she has to do. And it’s not like she’ll be trying to snoop through his stuff or anything like that, she just needs a chair and a place to put her computer. And she’ll definitely be done by the time that he comes in. 

Except that she isn’t. 

She’s almost done, and in her defense Matthias comes in earlier than she expected him to, so it’s not really her fault. Still, all the logic in the world doesn’t stop her from jumping to her feet the moment that Matthias comes through the door with an apology on her lips. “Sorry, I just needed somewhere quiet to get the last of this editing done. I promise that I wasn’t going through your drawers or—” 

“It’s not that,” Matthias shakes his head, but the look on his face tells her that there’s definitely still something that he’s trying to come to terms with. If it’s not her presence in his office, then it must be something else. 

Her eyebrows knit together. “Then what?” 

Matthias’s mouth opens for a moment then closes again and blood rushes to his cheeks. Finally, he says “I almost forgot what you looked like in clothes that aren’t mine.” 

Oh. 

Oh.

“Oh.” She doesn’t actually mean to say it, but it’s like her brain shorted out and she can’t make any other words come out of her mouth. It takes longer than she would like to form any other more intelligent thoughts. “Well, thanks, I think?” 

And Matthias doesn’t exactly confirm that it was a compliment, but his cheeks flush a little darker, so there’s that. 

“Are you ready to show me your big plans?” Matthias asks, evidently ready to move on with their conversation. Nina can’t say that she blames him.

“I am,” She nods, brushing off her skirt as they trade places, Matthias sitting in his chair while Nina stands in front of him. “There’s a couple of different things that I’ve put together, and you can pick and choose whatever you want or don’t want.”

From there, it’s easy to fall back into the mentality of Nina Zenik, business woman extraordinaire. After all, it’s one of the things that she’s best at. 

She takes him through the videos she put together first. She made a couple of different versions, each one tweaked just a little bit to appeal to a different audience. A Maddy-heavy ad is geared towards kids and families, and it features plenty of Örjan and his tin toy booth to really reel them in. Rolf and Else-Maj’s interviews walking the viewers through the history of the farm and Christmas in Fjerda over clips of snow-dusted trees and twinkling lights are intended to delight more traditional customers. A tour of Hedda’s mulled wine selection interspersed with shots of everyone talking and laughing while setting up the Winter Wonderland are for the younger demographic. And all of the videos contain a healthy number of clips and sound bites of Wylan, Jesper, Inej, and Kaz talking about what the farm means to them and to everyone else who comes there. 

She doesn’t mean to stare at Matthias while he watches all the ads that she put together, but she can’t help it. It’s been a long time since she’s felt so proud of her work, since an ad campaign has brought her so much joy. She’s just hoping that it’s well received. She’s just hoping that it works. 

“Nina…” Matthias finally says, once he’s finished the last of the videos that she put together. “These are incredible, really… But you don’t think it’s too late?” 

She shakes her head. “I mean, the ideal promotion window starts six to eight weeks before the event, but you should never underestimate the power of last-minute marketing. There are plenty of people with nothing to do just waiting for something to come across their Instagram feed, or something.” 

“I don’t really do social media,” Matthias says, looking hesitant. 

“Lucky for you, I’m kind of an expert at it,” Nina assures him, a little smile toying at her lips. “I’ve got plenty of connections, I can push these all out as soon as we’re done here, tag some friends who owe me a favor, and voila!” 

“Okay, great,” Matthias nods, leaning back in his chair, apparently at ease again. “You nailed it, Nina. Really.” 

Nina bites her lip. She could take this out, secure in the knowledge that she did as much as she could to help get the Winter Wonderland ball rolling. The problem is, she doesn’t want to stop there. She doesn’t just want to help with an event. She wants to help with everything. “There is one other thing that I thought up… but not for the Winter Wonderland. For the farm in general.” 

Matthias raises an interested eyebrow. “And what might that be?” 

“Just something to help you get some extra income during the off season,” Nina says, leaning forward to press a key on her laptop to take them to a new slide, one full of pictures of the inside of the house. “Inej mentioned that during most of the year, it’s just you and Maddy here and I figured… since you have the space and since the farm is in such a great location—I mean, really right on the main route between Djerholm and Os Kervo—you could get some really good business if you decided to rent out the rooms when everyone isn’t here.” 

Matthias wrinkles his eyebrows. “Like a landlord?”

“I was picturing more like a bed and breakfast,” Nina replies. “It wouldn’t be a small undertaking, by any means, but I think, realistically, you could do it. If you wanted.” 

Matthias pauses at that, looking thoughtful. It’s not a look of outright refusal, so she’ll take it. “I’d have to talk to Wylan and Maddy about it first, but… it’s not a no.” 

Nina beams. “I’ll take not a no. I’ve definitely had business proposals go way worse.” 

Matthias chuckles as he rises to his feet again to come around the corner of his desk. When he reaches a hand out, she assumes that he’s going for a handshake, and winds up surprised when he pulls her into his chest instead. Then again, they’ve already kissed, so a hug is kind of small potatoes at this point. 

“I don’t know how to thank you for this,” Matthias murmurs against her hair and her heart takes flight in her chest. 

“You’ve done enough, really,” She assures him as they pull away, just a little, just enough to look each other in the face again. “It was just my payment for my lodging.” 

He nods once and smiles and Nina takes that as her sign to go, slowly making her way toward the door. Before she can get too far, Matthias opens his mouth again. “Nina?”

She turns back to face him fully, probably too eager. “Yeah?”

“About earlier…” He hedges, and the blush that rises high on his cheeks again tells her exactly what earlier he’s referring to. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you had no choice but to kiss me.” 

“I wanted to,” Nina says, and the honesty of her words surprises her. It wasn’t what she intended to admit to him right now, but she can’t bring herself to regret saying it when his eyes immediately light up, interested. “It was nice.” 

Matthias takes a small step toward her, and his eyes flicker down to her mouth again. She doesn’t miss it this time, either. “It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed someone.” 

“We can try it again, if you want.” She doesn’t really mean to say that, either, but the words come out without her permission. “But it was plenty good the first time.” 

“Well, striving for improvement is always a good principle in life,” Matthias says, and the smile on his face makes Nina want to eat him alive. “Care to assist me?”

And, well, after that, Nina is absolutely one-hundred percent powerless to the way that she drifts right back into his arms and leans up toward his face. Thankfully, Matthias gets the message and meets her halfway. 

This kiss starts off slower than the last one, more tentative—which is almost funny, since it isn’t their first time in this position. But, at the same time, she understands why. There’s no audience, no external force pushing them into each other. This time, they’re doing it all on their own. The thought of it is exhilarating enough that she finds herself wrapping her arms around his neck, pushing herself up onto her toes just to get a little bit closer to her. 

For someone allegedly out of practice, Matthias really knows what he’s doing. She supposes that it’s kind of like riding a bike. Once you learn how to kiss, you never really forget. Maybe she’s just really in the Christmas spirit, but she’s genuinely considering whether or not it’s possible to get a gift basket sent to whoever taught him to kiss like this. 

Matthias wraps a strong arm around her waist and Nina makes a soft noise of surprise when he uses it to pick her up and set her on the edge of his desk instead of pulling her flush against his chest, like she expected. 

When Matthias hears it, he pulls away a little to take a good look at her face and Nina grabs him by his sweater to keep him from getting too far. “Is this okay?” He asks, sounding breathless. Nina feels the same way.

“Perfect,” Nina replies without a moment’s hesitation, pulling her hands away from his chest to bury her hands in his hair, instead. “Don’t stop.”

Of course, the moment that he starts leaning in again, there’s a knock on the door that causes them to spring apart. 

“Matthias?” Comes Wylan’s voice from the other side of the door. “The Bergmanns are here and they want to know where they should set up their stall.”

Nina slides off the edge of the desk as Matthias takes a step away from her with a frustrated exhale of breath and an incredibly longing look that she understands well. 

“Sorry,” He says, reaching to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear as she shakes her head. 

“Not your fault,” She replies with a little smile, scooping up her laptop in her arms. “I should probably get to work on pushing out these ads, anyway.”

“You can work in here,” Matthias says, and she does her best to give him a gracious smile despite the disappointment she feels at being interrupted. “And we can finish this later?”

“Later.”

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

Later turns out to be much later than she originally anticipated—like Winter Wonderland levels of later.

It’s nobody’s fault, really. She knows that he’s a busy man, with a lot of work to do, so she doesn’t hold it against him. Still, she feels like she’s on the edge of her seat for the rest of the day, trying to satisfy herself with brief glances and fleeting smiles shared across wide open spaces as they finish their set up.

By the time that Winter Wonderland is upon them, she’s so distracted by everything going on that her earlier conversation with Matthias has almost slipped her mind entirely. Almost. 

She’s not sure what the usual turnout is for the event, so she can’t say how successful her attempt at advertising really was, but it sure feels like a big turnout. Every time that she overhears a conversation in Ravkan, pride swells in her chest, especially when those snippets are people talking about how they’ve never seen anything like this before. 

She has to say that she agrees. Everywhere she looks, she catches a glimpse of children laughing or lovers embracing. There’s so much joy and love and happiness around them that it’s contagious. It makes her feel like she’s walking on air instead of shuffling through snow. 

Her favorite part, by far, is the barn. Tables are scattered around the edges of the barn for people to drink their mulled wine and hot chocolate, and eat their cookies. The center of the barn was cleared out completely to make space for a dance floor, with Wylan sitting at a piano on the far end, fingers dancing across the keys to produce beautiful melodies for everyone to sway to. The golden stars glitter and twinkle above them where they hang from the rafters, illuminating the entire space in a warm glow.

Everything about it feels magical. 

After she’s done a full round to see all the vendors—and stopped to talk to her new best friend Else-Maj for at least twenty minutes—she sets up camp at a table in the barn with Inej, Jesper, Kaz, and Maddy. She must be watching everyone being spun around on the dance floor with gigantic cow eyes, or something, because after a few songs, Jesper stands up and offers her his hand. 

“Most beautiful, radiant, Nina,” He says with an overly dramatic half-bow. “Would you please do me the honor of giving me this dance?” 

“Why certainly, my good man,” She grins, taking his hand and allowing him to hoist her onto her feet and drag her out onto the center of the dance floor. 

They make it through the entirety of White Christmas without any toes being stepped on—which is impressive in and of itself when considering the fact that they’ve both had at least three glasses of Hedda’s mulled wine over the course of the evening—and just as they’re about to start their second dance, there’s a tap on Nina’s shoulder. When she turns, she finds Matthias standing behind her with a small, hopeful smile. “Mind if I cut in?”

Jesper shakes his head. “Not at all. I’m going to try to talk Kaz into giving me one dance.” 

“Good luck,” Matthias says, sliding in to steal Jesper’s place as he heads back toward the table. As their hands meet, she hears Wylan beginning to play Auld Lang Syne on the piano. “Last song of the night.” 

“Maybe if we chant for an encore enough we can get another couple of songs out of him,” Nina jokes, and warmth blooms in her chest when it earns a laugh from Matthias. 

Right off the bat, dancing with Matthias is different from dancing with Jesper. For one, she’s wildly attracted to Matthias. For another, their earlier interaction makes it hard for her to think about the feeling of his hand on her waist without getting carried away. He pulls her in closer than Jesper had and Nina has half a mind to worry that their proximity allows him to feel the way her heart is racing. If he does, he doesn’t say anything. 

“It’s beautiful here,” She says as Matthias spins her around and then pulls her back toward his chest. “You could probably have weddings at the farm, if you wanted. Another source of income.” 

Something in Matthias’s expression softens and his beautiful, ice-blue eyes glimmer. “My parents got married here.” 

“Oh,” Nina breathes, trying to gauge if the memory is like a bruise, too tender to touch. “I bet it was amazing.”

“It looked a lot like this,” Matthias smiles, his eyes leaving Nina’s face to take a slow look around the room, like he’s seeing it for the first time—or maybe like he’s reliving a dream. “I’ve seen the pictures. That’s why we started doing this part of the Winter Wonderland after the accident. In their memory.”

“I think that’s wonderful,” Nina murmurs, and the look on Matthias’s face is tender when he turns his gaze back to her. “I’m sure they would love it. Everyone else does. I do.”

Then, as if it couldn’t get any more magical in there, tiny pieces of shimmering, white, snowflake-shaped confetti begins to float down from the ceiling above them. 

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Matthias asks, evidently noticing her look of wonder. “Wylan did it. He studied chemical engineering for a year in college because his dad made him.”

“I feel like I’m in a fairytale,” Nina admits, and Matthias laughs warmly as he pulls her in closer, and it’s the kind of moment that’s so perfect it’s almost dangerous. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to move on from this—being spun around by Matthias, glittering snow falling all around them, like they’re inside one of the snowglobes her mother used to give her every Christmas. They still line her mantle in her place back in Ravka. She wishes she could freeze this moment and tuck it safely inside one of them, too, so that she could look back at it again whenever she wanted. 

The longing in her chest only multiplies when Wylan’s final song—tragically, mournfully—comes to an end and she and Matthias slowly come to a stop, faces only a few inches away from each other. “What now?” 

Matthias lifts a hand away from her waist to check the watch on his wrist. “We have about forty-five minutes until the Winter Wonderland ends.” 

Nina bites her lip. “So… in other words… forty-five minutes that we could be potentially uninterrupted upstairs?”

“I like the way you think,” Matthias says, expression wolfish and hungry.

Nina grins. “Lead the way.”

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

For the first time since she (literally) crash-landed in Fjerda, Nina doesn’t wake up alone. Instead, she wakes up with her head tucked into the crook of Matthias’s neck and his arm slung around her waist, holding her close to his chest. 

As soon as her eyes open, memories from the night before come flooding back to her—giggling as Matthias chased her up the stairs and into his bedroom, his strong, calloused hands charting their way across her thighs and hips while the warm press of his lips down her throat caused goosebumps to erupt over her skin. She can still hear the way that her name sounded so reverential on his tongue while he took her apart, like there was nothing he’d ever wanted more than he wanted her in that moment. She still wears the evidence of their night together, wrapped in a t-shirt that he offered her to sleep in. 

So, basically, she’s fucked. 

She has half a mind to stay right where she is, because it’s Christmas and it’s been years and years of spending the holidays by herself, and she didn’t think she minded it much until she ended up here. Now she remembers what it feels like to be a part of a family, what it feels like to not be alone anymore. She isn’t sure that she can go back to that. 

And the thing is, she could stay. It would be so easy to close her eyes and nuzzle back into Matthias, to go downstairs wrapped in his robe and spend Christmas morning pretending like all of this could ever possibly belong to her for real. But the truth of it is, it doesn’t. This place isn’t her home. These people aren’t her family. They’re extraordinarily kind people who have done more for her in the last three days than everyone she knows back in Ravka combined have done for her in the last year, but they aren’t hers. She could stay, but she doesn’t think she could shake the feeling that she doesn’t really belong. 

So, instead, she decides to steal a few last, selfish minutes wrapped up in Matthias’s arms, memorizing the lines of his face while he sleeps peacefully before carefully trying to slip from the bed. 

She knows that with the way they’re intertwined, sneaking out without jostling him is a feat easier said than done, but she doesn’t expect his eyes to open the moment that her body disappears from underneath him. It’s unfortunate that that’s the way it goes, too, because he’s even cuter when he’s just waking up—blinking up at her sleepily as he rubs at his eyes and rumbles a low, scratchy “Good morning” to her. 

“Sorry,” She murmurs, stilling on the edge of the bed, sheepish look on her face. “I was trying not to wake you up.” 

“It’s okay,” Matthias replies, casting a glance over at the alarm clock sitting on his bedside table that blinks 7:03 back at them. “I’m sure Maddy will be awake soon, anyway. Christmas morning and all that.” 

“About that…” Nina hesitates, glances down at her hands while she searches for the right words. “I was thinking that I should leave.” 

Matthias sits up, brows furrowed. “Leave? Why? It’s Christmas.” 

“Well, that’s exactly why,” Nina answers, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “I don’t want to intrude on your family celebration like I have with everything else.” 

“You’re not intruding,” Matthias protests. “You’re our guest. We want you here.” 

“That’s not what you said a few days ago,” Nina points out, even though she knows it isn’t the right thing to say. 

“Is that what this is about?” Matthias frowns. “I was wrong. Obviously. I want you here, Nina.” 

And, damn if that isn’t a compelling case. Still, she knows that she can’t stay, regardless of how much she wishes that she could, so she shakes her head. “I appreciate it, but I still think that it’s time for me to head back home.” 

The kicked puppy kind of look that Matthias gives her is almost enough to change her mind, to make her abandon her plans and curl back up in bed with him until Maddy comes to drag them downstairs. Almost. 

“And there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind?” He asks, and it takes everything in her to shake her head. “Okay. At least let me help you load up your car.” 

So, it’s settled. 

She goes back to the room that she’d previously been sharing with Inej to retrieve her suitcase and finds the bed empty, save for a Christmas sweater laid out for her on the foot of it. It sends a pang through her chest and she runs her fingers over the beautifully knit tree-pattern and wishes that things were different for a moment, wishes that she didn’t have a life back in Ravka to return to. 

Of course, wishes don’t change reality. Not even on Christmas. 

She can hear the quiet hum of a hushed conversation between Matthias, Inej, and Kaz in the kitchen as she comes down the stairs, suitcase in tow, and even though they all shut up with remarkable speed when she rounds the corner and comes in the door, the expressions on their faces tells her exactly what they were talking about. Her. Her impending departure, more specifically. 

Sure enough, Inej comes right over to her with a look of concern in her beautiful brown eyes. When she touches a gentle hand to Nina’s shoulder, her heart twists in her chest and she has to focus all of her energy on not tearing up like a big baby. “Are you sure you have to go?” 

“Positive,” Nina replies, giving her a sad, little smile. “You’ve all done so much for me already. I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more.” 

“And you don’t want to wait a little longer?” Inej asks, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “So you can say goodbye to everyone else?” 

“I think it would be best if I don’t,” Nina says, and that much she’s sure about. It’s hard enough to say goodbye to Matthias and Inej. She knows that if she’s faced with a disappointed Maddy asking her to stay, she’ll lose her nerve completely. 

Inej seems to understand, even if she doesn’t agree, because in reply, she just nods and throws her arms around Nina to pull her into a hug. And if Nina holds her a little longer than necessary to shed a few tears into the soft material of Inej’s sweater, then nobody really needs to know. 

Inej and Kaz decide to hang back in the kitchen so that Matthias is the only one to walk her out to her car. Once her suitcase is tucked safely in the trunk, they stand and look at each other for a few long moments, like they’re both trying to figure out what to say. 

“This has been the best Christmas I’ve had in a really long time” is what Nina finally decides on, and the way that Matthias’s eyes shine a little bit when he hears it tells her that it was the right choice. 

“Can I at least get your number?” He blurts out, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask it or not. She’s glad that he did. “In case I have any other business inquiries, of course.” 

She can’t help but smile in response. “Of course.” 

They exchange phones and plug their numbers in for each other. Nina sets her contact as “nina (beautiful farm savior)” while Matthias returns her phone with a new contact named “Matthias ❤️🔥🎄💪” which makes her laugh, despite the fact that her eyes are brimming with tears. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything about it, and instead pulls her in for one last hug. “If you find yourself looking for New Year’s Eve plans, we’d be happy to host you,” He murmurs against the top of her head. “It’s no Winter Wonderland, but it’s a pretty good party.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” She says into his chest, squeezing him a little tighter for a few final seconds before she forces herself to let go and step away. “I should head out… let you get back to your Christmas morning.” 

Matthias gives her a long look, like he has something more that he wants to say, but instead he just nods. “Goodbye, Nina.” 

“Goodbye, Matthias.” 

And just like that, her Hallmark movie has come to an end. She watches Matthias walk back inside, with one last wave from the door before he goes, and she puts her rental car in drive. 

It takes exactly thirteen minutes of driving through the scenic Fjerdan mountainscape while the radio plays quiet Christmas songs for her to realize that she’s made a terrible mistake—the catalyst for which is when Auld Lang Syne comes on and tears spring to her eyes once more. 

“What the fuck am I doing?” She mutters to herself, but for once she isn’t talking about the display of emotion. The emotions she understands perfectly. What she’s questioning this time is the fact that she had everything she wanted wrapped up in a bow back at the farm, and for some reason decided to self-sabotage it for reasons that she can’t explain. Maybe it’s the possibility of entering a real relationship, or the fear that she’ll end up more invested than Matthias. Maybe she’s afraid of the reality that this might change everything in her life. But it doesn’t matter. She’ll take whatever heartbreak may or may not come if it means she can keep this for a little bit longer. 

So she turns the car around—thankfully there’s nobody on the road to witness her incredibly illegal U-turn, everyone else in Fjerda must have the common sense to stay in their nice, warm houses on Christmas morning—and drives the thirteen minutes right back to the Helvar Christmas Tree Farm. 

She doesn’t know what she’s going to say, besides apologize and grovel and hope that they give her another chance and let her stay anyway, but she gets even less time to think about it than she thought. 

Just as she’s about to take her last step up onto the front porch, the front door flies open and Matthias comes barrelling out of it, still zipping up his coat, followed by everyone. Literally everyone. Maddy flanks him on one side, wrapping a scarf around her neck, while Inej is on the other side, pulling on a pair of gloves. Behind them, Wylan, Jesper, and Kaz follow. Everyone stops when they realize that Nina is standing there, and it’s silent for a moment while she and Matthias look at each other. 

Beside him, Maddy nudges an elbow into his arm, and reminds him to speak. “You’re back?” 

“I’m back,” She confirms, toying with her fingers nervously. “If you’ll have me.” 

Maddy squeals and comes running straight at Nina, wrapping her up in a hug. “We were just about to come after you!”

The words strike Nina right in her heart and she looks straight to Matthias, whose expression has softened. “You were coming after me?” 

Matthias rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “We all wanted you here… we figured we had to try.” 

“Why don’t we give these two a minute to talk?” Wylan suggests, and Jesper reaches forward to grab Maddy by the back of her coat and tug her back towards them. Gratefulness swells in Nina’s chest. “We can go get breakfast started in the kitchen.” 

Slowly, everyone else files back into the house and it’s just the two of them again. Matthias takes a step forward and reaches out for her, and Nina steps into his arms without hesitation. 

“What changed your mind?” He asks as he winds an arm around her waist and pulls her flush against his chest. 

“Auld Lang Syne came on the radio,” She answers, and he tips his head back and laughs. She’s not sure she’s ever felt so happy in her life. “Plus I got an invite to this really exclusive New Year’s party and I think it just makes more sense to stay than to go all the way home and come back in a few days.” 

Matthias leans in and presses their foreheads together. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re brilliant?” 

“Careful,” Nina warns, looping her arms around his neck. “Or I’ll fall in love with you.” 

Matthias raises an eyebrow. “And what if that’s exactly what I want to happen?” 

This time, no mistletoe is needed to push them into a kiss.