Page 58 of A Winter Wish

Lexie rolled her eyes. “Agreeable is my usual resting state; you just have a habit of bringing out my bad side.”

He opened his mouth and the glint in his eye made her hold up a finger.

“Don’t.” But a smile pulled at her lips despite herself—the problem was, she liked this side of him.

“OK, so at the Christmas party, I was thinking…Maybe we could do your wish jar.”

“What?”

“Well not your wish jar, but you know, the idea.”

Lexie frowned and folded her arms.

“I just thought, it’s your company too now, and it would be like a way of bringing in a tradition of yours and…” He trailed off. “You hate it.”

Lexie tried to smooth out her expression. “No. Sorry, no. It’s just…Won’t people think it’s kind of silly?”

“I think, after everything that’s happened—losing Richard after only just pulling it all back after the last few years…” He shrugged. “I just thought we could do with some hope. But I can see you overthinking this.”

“You can see me overthinking?”

“You get a crease…” He reached out, and despite herself her body tensed in anticipation of him touching her. But he didn’t quite trace the line between her eyebrows. And really, she should probably work on making her expressions less easy to read.

She batted his hand away. “You do remember the part about me putting wishes in there to let them go, right?”

“Yeah, well, about that. We’ll probably aim to have wishes in there that people think they can make come true.”

Lexie sat back against her chair. “Are you criticizing my wish jar?”

Theo sat back too, mimicking her pose. “I’m only saying, maybe by ‘setting them free’—your words—you are hiding from what you want, making it so that you don’t have to hope for things.”

“You are criticizing it!”

He gave one of his too-casual shrugs. “Just seems like you might be using it wrong.”

“It’s my wish jar. How can I be wrong about how I use it?”

He crooked one eyebrow at her in answer and she felt a surge of annoyance.

The waiter came, cleared their plates, and Lexie thanked him, then turned her attention to the people walking past, laughing and chatting in the sunlight.

“So you take it with you? The wish jar?”

She frowned, still not looking at him.

“Everywhere you go, you take it with you?” he prompted.

She spared him a brief glance. “Haven’t been able to kick the habit.”

She didn’t really know why she’d kept it up all these years. It had always been something consistent, she supposed, something that made her feel like it was Christmas—and something that made her think of her childhood home. She could still remember the year she’d first started the tradition, with her mum sitting next to her, cross-legged on the living-room floor. It was one of those memories that was a little hazy, and it was hard to be sure if even the parts that stuck out in stark focus were real, or if they had been layered with other people’s stories, making her think she remembered.

She could remember finishing the wish jar—sticking gems to it that had then fallen off, over the years, and running into the kitchen, to show her dad.

That is the best wish jar I think I’ve seen. There’s no chance the wishes won’t come true if you put them in that.

Lexie had looked at the jar in her hand, wanting to believe but also a little suspicious. How can they come true? I made it, and I’m not magic.

He had put one arm around her and winked. She could still remember the faint smell of tobacco and mint. It’s the act of making it, Little Lex. It becomes magic. And maybe the wishes won’t come true right away, maybe not the same year you put them in the jar, but one day, if you want the wish hard enough, it will come true.