Traffic was awful on I-75, and the drive to Abelard Vineyards was taking longer than usual.

I was cranky and tired. I’d been that way pretty much since Nate and I had split up. I couldn’t relax enough at night to fall asleep, and even though I tried to grab the occasional nap before nighttime events, I wasn’t always successful. Coco had suggested I take a few days off, maybe head up north and visit with Mia, get some rest. She was confident Amy could handle the events we had scheduled, and even volunteered to be on call if Amy needed help. I’d visited her earlier this week and she said she was desperate to get out of her house.

But she was happy, too. Who wouldn’t be in her shoes? Her new baby girl was healthy and beautiful, her husband was over the moon to dote on her, and her mother-in-law was on hand to help with her boys. When I left their house, I recited my affirmation all the way home in an effort not to let envy eat away at my happiness for her. It wasn’t Coco’s fault I was still hopelessly in love with Nate.

He was never far from my mind. Over and over again, I went over our final encounter, wondering if I’d handled it wrong. Should I have kicked him out? Demanded more answers? Treated him civilly? Told him the truth—that I wasn’t over him and had only taken the job up north to put some distance between us?

But I had no answers. I didn’t even tell my sisters about the post-breakup fuck—I was too embarrassed. Somehow I knew neither one of them would have given in. They’d have been stronger, able to resist his kiss and his touch and his cheap shots at my conscience. It was obvious he was miserable, and I was glad. He deserved it.

“I am deserving of a supportive, loving, awesome relationship,” I said. I believed my affirmation. I really did.

But I was weak for him, and I feared I always would be. Distance would help.

Just after nine, I pulled around the circular gravel drive in front of a beautiful French-style farmhouse. Mia and Lucas came out the front door and greeted me warmly. Lucas kissed both of my cheeks and grabbed the little suitcase from my trunk, and Mia hugged me extra hard.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” she said, taking my hand. “I have you staying in one of the best little guest cottages on the property. Lucas turned up the heat earlier, so it should be nice and cozy for you.”

“Sounds good.” It was definitely chillier up here than it had been in Detroit. A cozy little cottage sounded perfect. It would be even better with someone to share it with.

I shoved that thought from my mind.

“I’ll take your bag over now,” Lucas offered.

I smiled at the handsome man, who spoke with a slight French accent. His scruffy jaw and lean good looks reminded me of Nate. “Thanks.”

“Are you hungry?” Mia asked, leading me inside the house.

“Actually, yes.”

“Perfect. I’ll get you some supper and we’ll have some wine. Come sit down in the kitchen. The kids are already in bed, so we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

I followed her to the big airy kitchen off the back of the house, which was modeled after the kitchen at Lucas’s family’s chateau in the south of France, where they’d gotten married. It was beautiful, of course, lots of natural stone in neutral shades, dark timber beams across the ceiling, walls soft slate gray, white-painted cupboards with open shelves, and Mia’s signature pop of color in vibrant pink flowers in a glass vase on the counter. I chose a stool at the marble counter and watched as Mia bustled around the kitchen, warming up something in a big pot on the stove that smelled absolutely delicious. She looked adorable—jeans cuffed a little higher than her ankle, maroon velvet flats, black long-sleeved shirt with a gray infinity scarf around her neck, hair twisted up into a messy bun. And she looked happy.

“So we haven’t had much of a chance to talk since you texted me,” Mia said, handing me a folded linen napkin. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“You mean why I accepted the job?”

“Sure, you can start there.”

“I’m looking to make a change.” I unfolded the napkin and placed it on my lap.

She nodded, pulling down three wine glasses. “Okay.”

“And I really like what I do, but a new scene will be a good creative challenge, I think.”

“Sure.”

“And things with Nate sort of fell apart,” I admitted, smoothing the napkin over my jeans.

“I wondered.” Mia pulled a bottle of wine from a fridge beneath the counter as Lucas came in through the back hall.

“Yeah.” I took a shaky breath, hoping I could talk about this without crying. “It happened kind of suddenly.”

“I’ll do that, babe.” Lucas took the corkscrew from Mia and opened the bottle.

She gave him a quick pat on the butt before going over to the stove to stir whatever was in the pot. “What exactly happened?” she asked me.

“It’s hard to say, exactly. We had what I thought was this awesome thing going for a couple weeks, and then boom—it just exploded.”

“It exploded?” she asked, rising on tiptoe to pull a big shallow bowl from an upper shelf. “Or he blew it up?”

Lucas set a glass of wine down in front of me. “You know, Mia, this could be kind of a private thing,” he said to his wife.

She turned around and gave him a disapproving look. “Girls like to talk about this stuff. Go away if you don’t want to hear about it.”

He held up two hands. “I’m fine if Emme is.”

“I’m fine.” I sighed. “I mean, I’m fine talking about it. I’m still sort of reeling over the split. To answer your question, yes—he blew it up. I think we got too close for his comfort.”

Lucas leaned back against the counter, wine glass in hand, and nodded. “Sounds like a guy move.”

Mia ladled whatever she’d warmed up into the bowl, and grabbed a spoon from a drawer, shutting the drawer with her hip. “Honey, will you slice that baguette on the counter, please?” she asked Lucas.

“Of course.”

“So you think he sabotaged the whole thing on purpose?” She set the bowl and spoon down in front of me. “Here. Beef bourguignon cures everything.”

I inhaled the fragrant, steaming stew and my mouth watered. “You might be right. This smells incredible.”

Mia smiled and lifted her glass. “Bon appétit.”

I picked up my spoon and dug in, confiding in them in more detail—how careful I thought I’d been, how wonderful it was to see Nate growing to love his baby daughter, how seeing the changes in him had affected me, how learning about his family history and the visit to his childhood home had revealed so much about his emotional makeup. They listened thoughtfully, commented sympathetically, poured more wine.

“But in the end, either he hadn’t changed at all and I saw only what I wanted to see, or he got freaked out and decided to end things before they went any further.” I mopped the bottom of my bowl with a piece of bread.

“Hmm.” Mia lifted her wine glass to her lips. By now, she was sitting on the stool next to me.

“My guess is he freaked out,” said Lucas. “Just like Mia did.”

I looked at my cousin in surprise.

“What?” Mia shrieked, sitting up taller. “I did not freak out. It was you who was all, Marriage is futile and I never want kids.” She imitated his deep voice and exaggerated his French accent.

He laughed. “But right after we met, when we were still in France at the end of your vacation, you wanted to call the whole thing off. I wanted to see where it might go.”

“Oh, yeah.” Mia’s spine curled a little. “I always forget that part.” She recovered a little spunk. “But I only did that because I thought ultimately there was no hope for us—I wanted a husband and family by age thirty and I was already twenty-eight—”

“Twenty-seven,” Lucas interrupted, a rakish grin on his face.

Mia glared at him. “Fine, I was twenty-seven,” she corrected, “but I knew what I wanted and it was exactly what you didn’t want. I didn’t see how we were going to make it work, and I didn’t want to get hurt. I was half in love with you.”

“Oh, you were totally in love with me.” He drank, his eyes dancing over the rim of his glass.

“How did you?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Make it work, I mean.”

“I taught her to live in the moment,” said Lucas. “To stop obsessing over her silly life deadlines.”

“And I taught him to be open to the idea of lifetime commitment,” said Mia, shooting him a venomous look. “I showed him how amazing it would be to be married to me.”

“And she was right. It is.” He came over and kissed his wife’s lips, leaving a smile there. “Bottom line—it was trust, patience, and compromise.” Lucas pulled another bottle from the wine fridge. “Should I open it?”

“What time is it?” asked Mia.

Lucas checked his watch. “A few minutes after ten.”

“Yes, open it.” They exchanged a look I didn’t quite understand.

I was totally into another glass of wine, but I didn’t want to keep them up. “If you guys need to go to bed, I’m fine doing that, too,” I said, wiping my mouth with my napkin. “I know it’s late, and the kids will be up early.”

“No!” Mia turned to face me with a smile so bright I almost thought it was fake. “No, I want another glass too. And we’re not tired.”

“Not at all,” Lucas said, pulling the cork from the second bottle.

I wasn’t sure I believed them, but it’s hard for me to say no to wine and good conversation, and I loved being around Mia and Lucas. Like Coco and Nick, they were so at ease with each other. They’d found a groove. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, there was still a fair amount of teasing and eye-rolling and poking fun, but underneath was this incredible chemistry, unspoken love and support. It was palpable in the air between them. They admired each other and desired each other. In the wake of my disappointment, it was comforting to know that it existed.

We moved to the opposite end of the room and settled on the large, comfortable furniture in front of the fireplace. Mia and Lucas sat next to each other on the couch and I curled up in a chair. I asked about the wine we were drinking, and Lucas chatted enthusiastically about the success he’d had with certain grapes up here that few other winemakers were trying. In the middle of that conversation, Lucas got a text and excused himself to make a quick phone call. When he came back ten minutes later, Mia was talking about the events she had planned for the winery this summer, and how the new guest cottages were almost completely booked from May to September. But I noticed the way she kept her eye on the clock above the fireplace.

Eventually, she yawned and stretched theatrically. “Well, I have to admit, I’m beat.”

“Me too,” I said. We’d finished the second bottle of wine some time ago, and I was pleasantly drowsy. I looked at my phone. “Wow, it’s after eleven already.”

“I’ll walk you to the cottage,” Mia said as she rose to her feet. “Let me grab a sweater.”

I stood up and brought my wine glass to the kitchen, setting it on the counter. Lucas began turning off the lights. “Thanks so much for dinner and the wine,” I said to him. “Everything was delicious.”

“You’re always welcome,” he said.

Mia appeared wearing a gray cardigan. “Ready?” She tugged on my hand.

“Yes. Night, Lucas,” I called.

He looked over at us and smiled. “Night.”

Mia practically pulled me down the hall and out the back door. Outside, she took off down a winding gravel path at a pretty good clip.

I laughed, trying to keep up. “Is there a fire? My heels are sinking into the gravel.”

“Oh, sorry. No, it’s just chilly. I want to get you all tucked into your cottage.” But she slowed down a little, pulling her phone from her pocket and checking the screen.

I breathed in the cool night air, scented with wet earth and the coming of spring. Tilting my head back, I looked up at the sky. “Too cloudy for stars,” I said with a sigh. “No wish for me.”

Mia glanced at me. “What would you wish for?”

I smiled ruefully, dropping my gaze to my boots crunching on the gravel. “Tonight, I think I’d have wished for some sign that I’m not crazy—something to show me that the kind of love I’m looking for is actually possible. Not just a dream.”

Mia put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.

We passed a couple guest cottages before she guided me off the main path down a narrower one that led right to the door of an adorable little one-story stone structure that mimicked the look of the winery and their house, right down to the steeply pitched roofline and slate blue shutters. At the front door, she pulled out her phone again. “Well, I don’t have any stars to offer you, but it is eleven-eleven.” She showed me the screen. “You could still make a wish.”

I sighed, feeling a little embarrassed I still believed in that stuff. “Nah, it’s silly. My wishes never come true.”

“You never know,” she said. “Better do it, just in case.”

Sighing, I closed my eyes and made the wish, altering it a little. If you’re out there, love of my life, come find me.

When I opened them, Mia was frantically patting the pockets of her sweater. “Oh my God, you’re not going to believe this. I forgot the key.”

“No worries,” I said. “I do it all the time, and Nate always has to rescue me. I’ll walk back with you.”

“No sense in both of us going. Your boots have heels, I’m in flats. Be right back.” Without another word, she took off up the gravel path, leaving me alone in the dark.

It wasn’t even twenty seconds later, I heard footsteps again—but they weren’t hers. These were heavier, slower. I squinted at the figure coming toward me, someone taller and bigger and broader than Mia. Before I even had time to get nervous, I heard his voice.

“Heard you were locked out.”

“Nate?” I blinked as he got closer, but he didn’t disappear. He wore a suit and tie like he’d just come from work, and my heart was pounding at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, it was the craziest thing. I looked at the clock and noticed it was eleven-eleven, so I made a wish.”

I could hardly breathe. “What did you wish for?”

He was right in front of me now. “I wished for another chance to tell the most beautiful girl in the world that I love her, that I’m sorry, and that even though I don’t deserve her, I hope she’ll believe me when I tell her she’s the only one for me, and I never should have let her go.”

Chills shimmied up my spine. “So here’s your chance. Tell me.”

He rested his forehead on mine and lowered his voice. “Only you, Emme. And always you.”

I wanted to believe him, but I was scared. Placing my hands on his chest, I pressed back. “What’s changed, Nate? How can I trust that you won’t break my heart again?”

He slipped his hands around my waist and drew me flush against him, solid and secure. “What’s changed is that I realized how wrong I was to think I could control my feelings for you. I thought it made me a stronger man, a better man, if I never loved anyone, because I saw love as a weakness. Something to be feared. I always thought I’d be happier alone, but I wasn’t. Part of the reason I told myself never to touch you was because deep inside, I wanted it too much. It scared me.”

“I wanted you, too,” I confessed, “but more than that, I wanted to be special to you. I didn’t want to be like those girls leaving your apartment Sunday mornings.”

He grimaced, his eyes closing briefly. “You were never going to be that. I was struggling with what I felt for you when Paisley came along. You were there for me the whole time, every step of the way. I’d have been so lost without you.”

“You had it in you to be a good dad, I knew you did. You just needed confidence.”

“I needed you. I’m so much better because of you. I get it now, Emme, what you said about alpha males acting the way they do because they have someone they want to protect. For too long, all I cared about protecting was myself. Now, all I care about is you and Paisley, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing. And I’m not afraid to show it.”

“Or accept it?” I challenged him. “I love big, Nate. I can’t help it. And I don’t want to hold back.”

“I want it all, everything you have to give.” He squeezed me. “Tell me it’s not too late.”

“It’s not too—”

He crushed his mouth to mine, lifting me right off the ground. His body bowed back, and mine curved along his. “I’m going to make you happy, Emme. I promise. For as long as you’ll let me.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have believed it, but I did.

He set me on my feet and pulled a key from his pocket. “Here’s the key to your cottage. If you want to spend the night with me, I’ll stay. If you ask me to go, I’ll go.”

“The only thing I’m going to ask you is how you got this key in the first place.” I took it from him, and opened the cottage door. “But that conversation can wait.”

He grinned. “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

With the door barely closed behind us, we came together, clinging and clutching, desperate to make up for lost time and prove to one another we’d meant what we said. I could feel in Nate’s kiss, in his touch, in his body that he loved me without reservation, that he’d broken free of whatever chains had been holding him back. He’d always been a powerful, aggressive lover, but there was something different this time. He was more passionate, more uninhibited, more unguarded than he’d ever been before—especially with words.

Over and over again, he told me he loved me.

Whispered it against my lips as we tore the clothes from each other’s bodies. Murmured it between kisses across my breasts, down my stomach, along every limb. Spoke the words as he carried me to the far end of the cottage where the king-size bed awaited. I realized he must have gone in ahead of time, because dozens of lit candles were scattered around the room, flickering softly in the dark.

He laid me on the bed and covered my body with his, and I opened everything to him—my arms, my lips, my legs, my heart. I, too, held nothing back. I rolled with all my might, forcing him onto his back so I could rain kisses over his face and chest, run my hands along the hard lines of his body, look him in the eye as I lowered myself upon him, his cock gliding slowly inside me.

“I wished for you,” I told him when he was buried to the hilt. “For this, for us.”

“I did too.” He sat up so we were chest to chest, mouth to mouth, arms wrapped around each other. “The very first night when you told me to make a wish, I wished that the next man you fell in love with would love you back the way you deserved. And he does.” We began to move together, our bodies a perfect fit, our rhythm in perfect synch. “I swear to God, he does.”

Eventually, he took over, tipping me onto my back and driving into me harder and faster and deeper—so deep I gasped for air and cried out in shock and arched up desperately beneath him, my body craving both the pleasure and pain he wrought.

But mostly, I craved that elongated moment of shared bliss, the final seconds of the dizzying ascent, the agonizing hover on the edge of the peak, the feverish breath as we took each other over, the exquisite spiral of the pulsing free fall, our bodies entwined, inseparable, one.

“Tell me again,” I whispered breathlessly as our hearts refused to calm down, even after his body and mine were sapped and his chest was heavy on mine.

He picked his head up and looked down at me. Brushed the hair from my face. “I love you. Only you. Always you.”

I smiled. “Told you wishes come true.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head. “So it was Stella who convinced you?” We were lying in bed late Friday morning, Nate on his back, me propped on an elbow on his chest. We’d gotten very little sleep, but I felt energized and refreshed. Alive.

“Kind of. I mean, I knew I was miserable without you and that I’d fucked things up, but if I hadn’t seen her at the grocery store near that house I told you about, I don’t know that we’d be where we are right now.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “You were right about her. She gets underneath the surface fast.”

“She does,” I agreed. I made a mental note to call her and say thanks, and also to stop being so annoyed by her therapist ways. “And she gave you Mia’s number?”

He nodded. “Yeah. She told me you’d left for the winery, and basically said, ‘If you want her, prove it.’”

I beamed. “I love Stella. Stella is amazing.”

“She is.”

“And what did Mia say?”

“Well, at first I could tell she wasn’t too keen on me. But after I explained myself, she was up for helping me try to win you back.”

I laughed. “I keep thinking about her checking the clock all night as we sat there drinking.”

“Oh yeah.” His eyes widened. “We were totally nervous about it. The timing was tight. I didn’t even get here until almost ten-thirty.”

Something clicked. “So it was Lucas who gave you the key when he went out to make a phone call.” I made little air quotes and rolled my eyes. “What a sneak!”

Nate grinned. “Yep. I texted him when I pulled up at the winery. Then I walked over to the house.”

“I still can’t believe it. Those two knew the whole time!” But I was so happy. I felt like this was a completely fresh start.

Nate glanced at the bedside clock. “I hate to say this, but I have to go soon. I need to pick up Paisley at three.”

“I’ll go too,” I told him, sitting up.

He looked distressed. “What? No, Em, you just got here. You should stay the weekend and relax. Visit with your cousin. Talk about the job. Which you can still take if you want. I mean that. We will make this work, no matter what.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said honestly. “I really was looking forward to it, but I love where I am now, too. Your firm doesn’t have a Traverse City office, does it?”

He shrugged. “No, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find another job up here. People get divorced everywhere. Every day.”

I groaned as I hopped off the bed. “Naaaaaate.”

He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back into bed and hauling me across his lap. “Hey.”

“What?”

“We’re different.”

I raised one brow. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He kissed me and touched his forehead to mine. “Only you. Always you.”

Somehow, I knew it was the truth.