A Seasonal Romance, Told in Three Holidays

Most romances treat the holidays like scenery. A string of lights, a countdown to a kiss under the mistletoe, and then the credits roll. I didn't want scenery. I wanted architecture.

So when I sat down to build the timeline for Everything After, I didn't ask what happens at Christmas? I asked a harder question: what does it cost a woman who has built her entire life alone to let someone else hold the weight of it? The answer took three holidays to answer honestly. Halloween. Christmas. New Year's. Not backdrops — thresholds.

Here's what I mean.

Halloween: The Armor Comes Off First

Leiliana Collins is two people, and she's spent a year making sure they never meet in the same room. By day, she's the composed creative talent walking into Spherestone like she owns the floor. By six o'clock, she's sprinting to daycare pickup before the doors lock, a diaper bag doing the work a briefcase used to do. Halloween is the one night she lets both versions of herself show up dressed as something powerful. It's armor. It's supposed to be fun.

It doesn't stay fun. And when the night cracks open into something closer to fear than costume, the person who shows up isn't performing a grand gesture. He shows up with a steady hand and no need to be thanked for it. That's the moment I was writing toward — not the meet-cute, the re-meet-terrifying. Because the truth about Leiliana is that she doesn't trust people who show up for the fun parts. She's watching to see who stays for the rest.

Christmas: Intimacy Is Not a Gift Under the Tree

I didn't write a grand-gesture Christmas. I wrote a load-bearing one.

If you're picturing candlelight and a velvet bow, picture this instead: coffee and baby lotion in the same warm kitchen. Someone else's hands washing bottles at your sink without being asked. A calendar that used to say me and Tsukira now quietly making room for a third name. For a woman who has spent a year proving she doesn't need rescuing, that kind of presence is more dangerous than any declaration — because it's not asking her to be saved. It's asking her to let someone stay.

That distinction is the whole book, honestly. Kanakami never tries to fix Leiliana's life. He just keeps showing up inside it, on her terms, until staying stops looking like a threat.

New Year's: The Choice, Not the Fireworks

By the time midnight arrives, this isn't a story about two people falling. It's about two people who are very good at leaving, deciding — on purpose, with full knowledge of what it costs — to stay instead.

No countdown fixes what's been broken between them. What fixes it is smaller and harder: a decision, repeated on purpose, to build something neither of them was raised to believe they deserved. A little world. A sleeping child down the hall. A light left on for the both of them.

That's the ending I wanted to earn — not neat, not easy. Chosen.

She built her whole life alone. He keeps showing up anyway. Some love stories start with a spark. This one starts with someone staying long enough to prove it wasn't a mistake.

If that sounds like your kind of slow burn — workplace tension, a secret she's been carrying since last October, and a love story that earns its ending instead of rushing it — Everything After is on pre-order right now for $2.99, releasing September 22, 2026.

Grab it while it's on sale. I promise the burn is worth the wait. 🎃🌧️✨

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