Plus just when I thought we were in an inviolable bubble of sex and gelato, Sunny or Vanya or Angel’s sister Astrid would find some flight deal and wind up crashing on our secondhand couch for days at a time and never seeming to leave. So there was that too.
Angel stopped in front of a stand selling a million different kinds of torrone. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Must have torrone,” he told me in tones of great urgency, and because I am a hunter-gatherer, I bought him some torrone and had it bundled up for us to take back to the villa. Then we finished our snacks and wine, and wandered over to the massive Christmas tree in the corner of the square and stopped to admire it.
The blue-white lights of the tree added a silver sheen to Angel’s eyes as he took in the scene, and there was a soft smile on his lips as snowflakes drifted gently down from the sky to catch in his hair and on his shoulders. And of all the Christmas shit I’d seen over the last year, this was the most magical. This quiet moment after fried olives and wine, just a free tree and fickle snowflakes and Angel’s soft, content expression.
Without thinking about it, I got down to one knee.
Angel didn’t notice at first, didn’t notice until he turned to murmur something about how designing light in animation could be tricky without the right depth buffers, and saw I wasn’t standing next to him. And when his eyes finally dropped and he saw me kneeling with the ring box open, his lips parted.
“Luca,” he said, and the breathlessness in his voice made my chest ache.
“I love you,” I said. “I love you so much that I’ll kiss you even after you eat fried olives. I love you so much that I’ll listen even when you talk about render layers. I love you so much that when I think of a future without you, it feels like a future without happiness or joy or hope. I want to keep taking huge steps with you, Angel, and I want to take our next one tonight. Please marry me. Please marry me and let’s be the most talented, tragically handsome couple that everyone knows for the rest of our lives.”
Angel’s lips were still parted and a tear trembled on the edge of his eyelid as he looked down at the ring in my hand. I hadn’t had the biggest budget, and so I’d been scouring every secondhand shop, flea market, and creepy estate sale in Milan, until I’d found this in a tucked-away shop in a case next to several old pocket watches. It was a thin gold band, twisted with Art Deco designs, and dotted with tiny ruby and sapphire and emerald chips. It reminded me of colors on a palette, of Angel when he paints. And it would always remind me of Milan, the new home we’d made together.
“Oh, Luca,” Angel said, the tear spilling over and racing down his cheek. “Yes. Yes. Of course.”
“Really?” I asked, looking up at him, barely able to hope I heard right. “Yes?”
He laughed. “Sì, certo, Luca. I mean it. Yes.”
My own eyes were burning as I tugged off his vegan leather glove and slid the ring onto his finger. It was a perfect fit, since I’d already measured his finger with a length of string while he was sleeping. Very normal stuff!
For a minute, I just admired how it looked on his hand, winking in all the Christmas lights, and then he grabbed me by the lapels of my coat and hauled me to my feet, crushing me into a bruising, scorching kiss. I could taste the spiced wine, feel the snowflakes on our cheeks, hear the cheers and applause of the other Christmas revelers in the square, and I could hardly stand it. After an entire lifetime making fun of Christmas magic—including the time I was on the set of a movie designed to promote Christmas magic—there was a little Christmas magic in the air, just for me. Perfect night, perfect man. The rest of forever just waiting for us to take it.
As our mouths slipped apart, Angel pressed his forehead to mine, his hands cradling my face. It took a light breeze off the lake to make me realize I was crying.
“I hope you know I’m getting an engagement ring too,” I sniffled. “A giant, ridiculous one. So people think I’m a trophy fiancé.”
Angel laughed and kissed me again. “We’ll figure it out.”
“And I call Bee and Sunny for my bridesmaids.”
“I figured.”
“And I think Vanya should marry us, but isn’t your dad a licensed officiant?”
“It’s a long story, but yes.” Angel rubbed his nose against mine. “And we’ll have food and music and dancing . . .”
We were kissing again, snow falling all around us, and slowly our hands met and laced together. His tongue was soft and perfect, his lips warm, the sounds of Como at Christmas cheerful and bright as they echoed through the square.
They say there’s no place like home—and it’s true that there’s no place like LA.
But there’s really no place like being right in front of the person you love, knowing there’s nothing but kisses and the rest of your lives ahead of you.
That—that is home.
And worth every huge step it takes to get there.
Acknowledgments
We knew from the moment Luca entered the chat that he was destined for a main character moment, and we’re eternally grateful for everyone who helped Luca achieve his destiny! Especially our marvelous agent, John Cusick, and our incredible editor, May Chen, who let us get away with far too much, and whose insights were invaluable in making Angel and Luca’s HEA as sparkling as possible.
We’re also deeply grateful for the Avon/HarperCollins family: Brittani DiMare, DJ DeSmyter, Julie Paulauski, Kelly Rudolph, Jennifer Hart, Erika Tsang, and Liate Stehlik.
We’d also like to thank Farjana Yasmin and Jeanne Reina for their work in making yet another beautiful cover for us, and Lisa Nicholas, for polishing our words to a high shine!
We’re also grateful for all the union members of HarperCollins and honor their energy and vision in this last year as they strive to make publishing a more equitable and fair industry.
Thank you to all of our dear family and friends, especially everyone who was in a house with Sierra while she brainstormed goldfish boots—Becca Coffindaffer, Tessa Gratton, Christie Hall, Sarah Henning, Adib Khorram, Natalie C. Parker, and Q.
We also want to thank our Alone marathon pod—Ian, Josh, Noah, and Teagan—for nurturing us while we buried ourselves in Pretty Woman quotes and Christmas Market research and ate microwavable soup. There’s snow place like on the couch with y’all.
And finally, thank you to all the readers who didn’t blink twice when we showed up with porn-y Christmas chaos! Thank you for your trust and willingness to have wild and wacky holiday capers with us. We’re so grateful that you love Christmas Notch as much as we do, and there’s plenty more sexy anarchy where that came from!
An Excerpt from A Holly Jolly Ever After
And don’t miss the next Christmas Notch novel,
A Holly Jolly Ever After
by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
On sale October 2023
Prologue
Teddy Ray Fletcher
When Teddy Ray Fletcher’s children were little, his fridge was covered in finger-paintings, macaroni art, and paper mosaics framed with Popsicle sticks. He kept their masterpieces in his office and hung them in the hallways of his house; he made mouse pads and coffee mugs with their pictures and proudly showed them off to his friends, his performers, and complete strangers alike.