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If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love a happy ending. That butterflies-in-your-stomach, rush-of-serotonin, breathless, euphoric, wrapped-up-in-a-bow happy ending. The last page of a romance novel as my eyes dance across The End. A shorefront view of the sunset, toes wedged in the sand, watching fading light spill glorious gold across cool blue waves, the grand finale to the perfect beach day. The first bite of homemade pastry, finally perfected after countless recipe tweaks. And, of course, most of all, my family, side by side with their happily ever afters, crammed
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I’m surrounded by happy endings—my six siblings, their partners, their children, my still-so-in-love parents—and, given my love of happy endings, I should be fully, utterly content, too. But I’m not. Because I’m still waiting for my happy ending.
‘Scrabble doesn’t have to be so serious.’ ” Ziggy’s boyfriend, Seb, tips his head her way. “Did you really just say that? The woman who punched my thigh when I built a word off of the letter u and compromised her plans for her q?” Ziggy blushes bright red, narrowing her eyes at Seb. “That’s different.” His tongue pokes his cheek. “How so, Sigrid?”
Axel, born after Freya, holding hands on the table with his wife, Rooney, so at home in how they lean in together and talk and touch.
Ren, the next sibling born after Axel, his arm around his wife, Frankie, who sits, hands folded and resting on her very pregnant belly, as she makes some dry quip.
Gavin, who sits, shoulder wedged against Ollie’s, our niece, Linnea, perched on Gavin’s lap as they color together, dark-haired heads bent over the page.
“Escondido?” Linnea, Freya and Aiden’s daughter, four and a half, as smart as a whip and highly observant, lifts her head, those dark waves she inherited from her dad frizzy from hours spent running around outside. “Mommy says if she got a dime every time Uncle Viggo drove to Escondido, she’d—”
“But spying on you is so much more fun!” Linnie yells. Freya sighs and hitches Linnie higher on her hip before starting up the stairs. “You, little miss, are a troublemaker.”
“You two have a disturbing lack of boundaries,” Axel mutters. Rooney beams a smile our way. “I think it’s adorable.”
“Escondido’s zoo is killer. I can’t stop going back.”
“My sister,” Charlie said, “her life has sort of blown up lately, and I’m worried about her, so I’m going to try to bring her here. I have to do something, and I feel like if I bring her here, it might help. You Bergmans can make anything better. If she says yes, if she comes, will you help me?” “How?” I asked. Charlie smiled, bright and trusting. “Just by being you. Put a smile on her face for me. She needs someone to make her smile. If anyone can do that, it’s you.”
And then, behind them, as striking as a sudden silent storm, walks in Charlie’s sister, the only other secret I’ve kept in my life: Tallulah Clarke.
As I lose all sense of balance, the chair wobbles, creaks, and, like a felled tree, tips back in slow motion. I pinwheel my arms to try to stop myself from falling, but it’s too late. I dive off the chair and land clumsily, managing to catch the chair right before it can crash to the floor.
Jesus Christ. Tallulah is hotter than ever.
but—everyone likes me.
I didn’t know what it meant, the way Tallulah made me feel. Until fall break, when my family made a long-weekend trip up to the A-frame, where I was poking around its bookshelves. I yanked out a small, worn mass-market paperback historical romance, and the back copy caught my eye. Loathing. Lust. Unrequited, burning desire. Burning. Desire. Those were words I’d been struggling to find, feelings I hadn’t known how to identify. I picked up the book, turned it over, dropped to the floor, sat with my back to the bookshelves, and started reading. That was my first romance novel.
“Wrong? With me? Nothing. Just tipped in my chair. Gave myself a little scare. Heh, I rhymed. Look at me, the poet.”
But when you’re ready to walk what you so eloquently talk, you giant hypocrite, I’ll be here.”
Those damn lovely Bergman eyes. So deceptively cold for such warm people. They’re the pale blue-gray of a winter sky heavy with the promise of snow, yet they throw heat like a fire that could thaw you on the most frigid of days, right to your bones.
The family photos are comedy gold.”
“Tallulahloo? What the hell kind of name is that?” Viggo shrugs, winking again. That damn wink. “A cute one.” “I’m not cute.” He clucks his tongue. “Sorry, Lula. You are the definition of cute:
“Really? I love it,” he says. “Crying is so cathartic. I mean, I never love it in the moment, but I always cry when I really need to, and I always feel better afterward.
My dick twitches in my sweatpants. There’s something wrong with me. Tallulah’s chilly gaze should not turn me on like that.
That’s how you know you really love something, Tallulahloo, when it feels worth the hassle, when even the hardest parts of it feel like a gift.”
“And another one on the way. Frankie, my brother Ren’s wife, she’s due next month. You saw her last night, I’m sure. Tall, long dark hair. She’s the only one in our family right now who looks like they swallowed a prizewinning pumpkin, though never would I ever say that to her face—I value my life.”
Give me this baby!!!!!
“Of course not. I’m their favorite uncle.”
I’m not sure he isn’t a vampire.”
“You think I’m delusional about favorite-uncle status? Consider the facts, Bergman. Does Linnie play magical unicorn and sorceress with you?” Viggo blinks, clearly thrown by this. “Not as such, but—” “I didn’t think so,” Gavin says, wrenching open the sliding door leading inside. “Enjoy that dose of reality with your tepid light-roast hipster coffee.”
Oh my god gavin. I love him
“Man, he gets under my skin, but I love that asshole.”
“Once you swap a secret with a Bergman, you’re bonded to them for life. We’re friends now, Lulaloo. Like it or not.” “I do not like. I unlike. Unsubscribe. Unfollow.”
Awfully confident, aren’t you?” “Better than confidently awful,” he says, winking.
Great books take great time.
Viggo reaches toward me and plucks a flower from my hair. “I could have gotten that,” I mutter. He smiles, makes a fist around the flower, then rolls his wrist before opening his palm, revealing . . . nothing. The flower’s gone. I blink at him. “Got a little magician side hustle going there?” His smile deepens. “One of many.”
“Originally, I was going to call it Happily Ever After, but I settled on Bergman’s Romance Books & More—Bergman’s Books, for short.
He takes his niece and nephew outside, tumbling across the grass, tickling their feet, making them laugh as they sway in tiny swings hanging from a tree deep in the yard.
This place is all about happily ever afters, and I’m not about to mislead them.
but this place is for the people for whom romance reading is their joy. Somewhere they can walk into and scour aisle after aisle of feel-good stories, lost in happy endings to their hearts’ content.
“That better not be adult content you’re reading in front of my daughter.”
Im bawling
Lucia, Ren and Frankie’s eleven-month-old daughter, shrieks with delight as I turn with her safely tucked in the baby-wearing harness strapped to my chest and she spots her dad. Ren’s face melts from feigned seriousness to a soft, lovesick smile. He strokes a finger down Lucia’s cheek and wipes away the drool that’s pooled on her chin. “Hi, sweetheart,” he coos. “Dada!” she shrieks. Her legs kick out, then back. She nearly nails me in the nuts with her heel. “Take it easy,” I tell Ren, clasping her pudgy feet. “She’s got long legs and she knows how to use them.”
Im not okay. Lucia Bergman offically owns my heart. And REN IS A GIRL DAD?!!!!ill just keep bawling
“Course she does. She’s a Bergman.” “And a Zeferino,” Frankie adds, stepping up beside him and arching her eyebrows. “As if anyone doubted that.” Ren ruffles Lucia’s dark hair, the same color as Frankie’s. Lucia’s legs start kicking wildly again as she clocks Frankie. “Ma! Mama mama!”
Ren takes her from me greedily, like he’s been waiting for this moment, and props Lucia up in one arm, pinned to his chest. Her hands go straight to his beard, and she tugs. “Easy, Luce,” he croons, guiding her hands from his face. “Gentle.” “Gentle.” Frankie snorts. “That child doesn’t know the meaning of the word.” “Wonder where she gets that?” I ask. I narrowly avoid being whacked in the shins by Frankie’s cane. I swear, the women in this family rule us with an iron fist.
I’m a bundle of nerves. That’s why I was wearing Lucia. Something about holding a baby makes me feel better about everything. The sweet smell of their hair, the promise of who they are just beginning, who they’ll become, bottled up in this tiny body. Babies remind me that good things grow from humble beginnings; that before we run, we crawl, then teeter, then walk. Spending this past year watching Lucia grow from a small, dark-haired, crying bundle to a bright-eyed, vivacious little person has been exactly what I needed as I worked my way toward opening the store.
Willa’s browsing, easing books off the shelf. Ryder leans against a bookshelf across from her, a small stack of books tucked under one arm, watching her with a grin on his face.
Oliver and Gavin browse the sports romance section in the contemporary aisle, Ollie laughing at something Gavin mutters as he reads the back of a book in hand.
Frankie’s got her eye on the Austen-retellings shelf, finger trailing along the spines, while Ren sits on the floor near the front of the store by the non-romance section, with Lucia in his lap as he reads her a baby board book. Pazza, their black-and-white Al...
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Nearby, at the edge of the coffee bar, Rooney and Axel sit side by side and pass each other books, a steady signing assembly line as they work their way through a tall stack of the children’s books they’ve published together, written by Rooney, illustrated by Axel.
At the other end of the shop, Ziggy sits on the floor, long legs outstretched, her back to a fantasy romance bookshelf, her nose in an advance copy that I snagged for her, the first book in a new romantasy series the publisher sent me. One of the great perks of being a bookseller—early copies of highly anticipated titles.
“You’re lucky I like you.” Seb leans a hip against the coffee bar, arms folded across his chest. He jerks his chin toward where Ziggy sits, engrossed in her book. “Thanks to you, I’m now second priority.” I roll my eyes. “She tears through books, and you know it. You’ll go back to being the center of her world in just a few hours.” “A few hours too long,” he grumbles.
“Catch me, Trouble!” He scoops her up, Dirty Dancing–style, then launches her into the air, making her erupt with laughter. I scowl at them both. “That was our move,” I tell Linnie. Seb lowers her to the ground, then Linnie runs and barrels into me, wrapping her arms around my legs. “It’s still our move,” she says, peering up at me, wearing an extra-sweet smile, now that she’s lost one of her front teeth. “I got lotsa uncles and aunts, Uncle Viggo. You gotta get better at sharing.”
“Daddy says you can have good things and still be sad. He says there’s room for all my feelings. Like when I had all of my Squishmallows, but I couldn’t find my bunny to sleep with. I was happy I had my Squishmallows . . . but I was sad without my bunny. I was lonely for her even though I had lots of things around me. I needed bunny, to make it right.”
