For Never & Always

by Helena Greer

Genres: Jewish Fiction; LGBT & Pride; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

One surprise inheritance, two best friends (now bitter exes), and three months to prove he loves her, forever and always, in this swoony second-chance romance for fans of Alexandria Bellefleur and Ashley Herring Blake.
 
Hannah Rosenstein should be happy: after a lonely childhood of traipsing all over the world, she finally has a home as the co-owner of destination inn Carrigan’s All Year. But her thoughts keep coming back to Levi "Blue" Matthews: her first love, worst heartbreak, and now, thanks to her great-aunt’s meddling will, absentee business partner. 

When Levi left Carrigan's, he had good intentions. As the queer son of the inn's cook and groundskeeper, he never quite fit in their small town and desperately wanted to prove himself. Now that he’s a celebrity chef, he's ready to come home and make amends. Only his return goes nothing like he planned: his family's angry with him, his best friend is dating his nemesis, and Hannah just wants him to leave. Again.

Levi sees his chance when a VIP bride agrees to book Carrigan’s—if he’s the chef. He'll happily cook for the wedding, and in exchange, Hannah will give him five dates to win her back. Only Hannah doesn’t trust this new Levi, and Levi’s coming to realize Hannah’s grown too. But if they find the courage to learn from the past . . . they just might discover the love of your life is worth waiting for.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

Hannah Rosenstein was seven when she made her first Big Life Plan: never be separated from Blue Matthews.

The travel trailer that Hannah’s parents called home was bumping down a dirt road somewhere in the badlands of Montana. Hannah tried to let herself be lulled by the motion. She was supposed to be sleeping in the back loft bunk, her parents driving through the night to meet a filming deadline on the other side of the dawn. Instead, the pale glow of her cheap flashlight lit the tiny nook just enough to read the xeroxed, stapled newsletter she’d smuggled to bed: the Carrigan’s Christmasland circular, several months out of date because it had taken a while for it to be forwarded from their PO box.

Hannah’s parents—documentarians whose lives were all over the world, wherever there was a story they felt compelled to tell—might have called the trailer home, but to Hannah, her real home was in the Adirondacks, at Carrigan’s Christmasland. Her dad’s aunt Cass owned Carrigan’s, which was both a tree farm and Christmas-themed inn—an admittedly eccentric career choice for someone in a Jewish family, especially one that made a very comfortable living running a chain of bakeries. Hannah’s parents used Carrigan’s as a base when they needed to stop somewhere for a while, celebrate the High Holy Days with family, or when Hannah simply got too miserable traveling.

Blue got to live at Carrigan’s all year, because his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, were the handyman and cook there.

It wasn’t, Hannah knew, exactly her parents’ fault that she hated traveling and only wanted to stay in one place, go to school, make friends, but it wasn’t exactly not their fault, either. She wished she loved what her parents loved, but she couldn’t.

She smoothed a hand over the cover of the Carrigan’s newsletter, the black-and-white print on the front showing Cass, in a turban and swing coat, posing next to a pine tree. She had already read the descriptions of the upcoming events a dozen times. Even if she hadn’t, she had the Carrigan’s calendar memorized. In the back of her head, whatever was going on, wherever they were in the world, she always knew what they would be doing if they were at Carrigan’s, with Blue.

She loved everyone there, Cass, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews and the twins, Blue’s younger brother and sister. And her cousins who sometimes visited with her, especially Miriam. But if she were really honest with herself, Blue was the reason she couldn’t stop thinking about Carrigan’s. He was the only person who always made sure she was having fun.

In the envelope with the circular had been two other pieces of paper: an airplane napkin with Cass’s neat block handwriting and a Polaroid with Blue’s wild scrawl. The airplane napkin was an old habit of Cass’s—she wrote on them when she was flying, tucking them away to send whenever she remembered, often finding them in coat pockets and putting the notes into the mail a year or three after she’d originally penned them.

The Polaroid was not of Blue. It was of a soufflé Blue had baked. She was proud of him, she knew he’d been working on the recipe, but she wished he’d sent a letter with it, or anything to make her feel more like she was there. She barely had any pictures of him and she hadn’t seen him for months. Who knew how much taller he was now?

Blue was her best friend, but he was a terrible pen pal. He was always busy. He was always up to shenanigans that were more interesting than writing letters. She, Blue, and her cousin Miriam were a trio when they were all together. They were the ones who’d given him his nickname. His real name was Levi, and when they were little, the girls thought it was funny that he was named after blue jeans. They were all the same age, and they all needed friends. (Technically, Blue was almost a year older than her, but for part of the year, they were all the same age, which was what counted.)

So, the dream team of Hannah, Miriam, and Blue was born. Blue was reckless, Hannah planned everything, and Miriam could turn anything into a scheme, a project, art. Miriam had ideas, Hannah handled logistics, and Levi had no fear.

When they were apart, she was logistics for nobody. She hated it. Her real life blipped on when the trailer drove through the gates of Carrigan’s, then back off when she left, and she was always waiting while everyone at the farm was having their real lives all the time.

When she was a grown-up and she got to decide where she lived, she was never going to leave Carrigan’s again. Then she would be real all the time. And she was going to redesign the advertising because what was Cass thinking? It was so out-of-date. She was going to get Carrigan’s Christmasland with the times.

And she would never go weeks or months without seeing Blue again.

Chapter 1



Levi

It had been four years and change since Levi Matthews had last crossed the threshold of Carrigan’s Christmasland, demarcated by giant filigree wrought-iron gates and by, he’d always suspected, some kind of boundary magic that allowed the pocket dimension of his wayward home to exist slightly out of sync with the outside world. He’d left right after Rosh Hashanah, when the apples were ripening and the woods were leaking the last of summer through their fingers. It was spring now, Passover week, the birdsong a cacophony on the old state highway up to the farm. He lifted his face to feel the sun as he turned his motorcycle off the road and drove up to the gates.

He’d expected to feel a rush of resentment at the sight of the wrought-iron twin C’s, the symbol of Cass Carrigan, who was—or had been—the soul of Carrigan’s Christmasland. The woman had presided like an empress over this place where he’d grown up, where his family lived but that had felt as often like a prison as like a home. He’d both never meant to stay away this long and never meant to come back. No single thing in his life was as fraught with complications as his feelings about Carrigan’s, unless it was his feelings about Hannah, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

What he felt instead was a bone-deep sense of readiness as he rode onto the grounds. It was time. He’d gone out into the world, to find and prove himself, destroying the thing that mattered most to him in the process, and he had done it. He’d made himself into something.

He was coming back as a man with a rising career and a sense of self he could never have found in this stifling old inn. He was ready to show everyone who he’d become—well, almost everyone. Cass Carrigan was dead six months now. He’d never be able to show her she’d been wrong about him.

The farm was beautiful against the icy bright sky of the early April day, one hundred sixty acres of evergreens nestled up against Adirondacks National Forest, spread out behind a rambling old Victorian inn squatting picturesquely at the back of a big front lawn. He didn’t follow the drive to the front porch, with its big carved wooden doors that led to the foyer and reception desk. Instead, he turned toward the back of the house. To the servants’ entrance.

He kicked off the bike he’d borrowed from a chef buddy, because his had been left here when he fled and was now probably long sold. He moved to roll it into the shed behind the kitchens where his dad kept the lawn mowers, but the doors pushed open before he could, a familiar gray head following.

When their eyes met, Levi dropped the bike and his dad dropped the wrench he was holding.

His dad stood looking at him, wary, as if Levi were a feral cat and he was afraid if they got too close, Levi would hiss and run away again. He’d earned that. He’d always been a prickly little shit. He might wish things were different between them, but he had only himself to blame. Just pile his relationship with his dad on the mountain of things he should have done differently.

Levi needed to make the first move, wanted to take away the distance in his dad’s eyes, but he was lost.

“Dad,” he said. His father nodded, as if in acknowledgment. Yes, for better or worse, I’m your dad. Both of his parents were outdoorsy sixty-something silver foxes who looked ten years younger than they were, a matched set out of a Lands’ End catalog, but his dad was holding himself a little more stiffly than Levi remembered.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen his parents’ faces in four years. They’d video chatted, and his mom loved Instagram. Since Cass’s niece Miriam had moved home last fall, she’d been featuring his parents regularly on Blum Again, Miriam’s popular Instagram account for her antique upcycling business. Levi combed through every picture she posted for a glimpse of his parents and his younger twin siblings.

He’d seen them, but it wasn’t the same.

His parents were the backbone of Carrigan’s, the unit that kept the whole thing ticking along. Mr. and Mrs. Matthews to everyone else, Ben and Felicia to each other, together with Cass, they had been Carrigan’s for forty years. His mother was the head of the kitchen, his father the jack-of-all-trades, maintenance supervisor…His title changed, but he Fixed Everything. He also managed to be Dad to his own kids and every kid who wandered in off the street.

They were the backbone of Carrigan’s, but they were not the owners.

At that thought, the memory of Cass, which was always in the back of his mind, rushed forward so strongly he thought he could hear her laugh and smell her perfume. He gasped her name. Then, shocking himself, he began to weep. His dad broke his stillness, wrapping his arms around Levi tightly. Levi felt a tear drop into his hair.

Had anyone taken time to check on their grief, as they kept feeding people, fixing things, having lost the best friend of their whole lives? He hoped the twins had and hated himself that he had not. If even he, who had hated Cass, was mourning her now, how must they feel?

“How long are you here?” his dad rumbled, his voice vibrating at a frequency in Levi that his body read as “home.” He held Levi out at arm’s length, gripping his forearms, looking him over.

“How long do you want me?” Levi asked, kicking the gravel, not answering because he didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t think we’re the ones who get to decide,” his dad said meaningfully.

“Why not? You’re my parents. This is my…where I’m from. Why shouldn’t your say be final?” His anger flared, and he was that feral cat, his fur up.

They both knew the answer to whose say was final.

Instead of leaving the Christmasland to his parents, Cass had left it to her nieces Hannah and Miriam, the farm manager Noelle, and, shockingly, to him. So, how long he stayed was up to the people—well, person—who did run Carrigan’s these days.

As it had every day of his life, his future lay in the hands of Hannah Rosenstein. His oldest and best friend, the love of his life, the reason his heart beat. The woman who had chosen Carrigan’s over a life with him. The woman who’d told him she never wanted to see or speak to him again when he left.

He’d returned to convince her they still belonged together. He’d never stopped loving her, and he was pretty sure she’d never stopped loving him, either. He was going to talk her into leaving this place with him, or letting him stay, whichever he could get, as long as it meant she took him back. He had no idea how he would bear living here, but he knew he couldn’t bear to live without her any longer.

His dad cleared his throat. “Well. Whatever you all decide, your mother and I would love to have you for as long as you can stay.”

“Aren’t you mad at me?” he asked. He knew his dad wasn’t happy with the way he’d handled, well, most things, for the past few years.

His dad shrugged. No one could put more meaning into a shrug than Ben Matthews.

“I will have some things to say to you eventually. Right now, I’m going to enjoy having my boy home for Passover. Besides, by the time Hannah’s through with you, I figure it will mostly all be said.”

Levi’s dad pulled his hat off, ran a hand through his hair, put his hat back on. He cleared his throat again. “I’m going to let your mother know you’re here. You talk to the girls.”

He pointed with his chin toward the door to the kitchen. Levi followed his gaze, then nodded.

“I’ll stash your bike,” his dad added gruffly, and disappeared.

Alone, Levi brushed the tears from his cheeks and shook snow out of his hair. He gave himself a pep talk. You can do this, Matthews. Don’t be an asshole to anyone for at least five minutes. Ten, if you can manage. He paused in the doorway to run two fingers over the mezuzah, then kissed them and walked in from the chilly morning into the warm, bright kitchen of his childhood home.

He was met with a wall of cold that rivaled a Siberian midnight.

The woman he loved, his soul made flesh, the person he had missed and yearned for and seen behind his eyelids every moment of every day since he’d left, was standing in front of him, arms crossed over her chest, eyes flashing knives. He took his life into his hands and leaned against the door frame, crossing his legs and grinning at her. (Great job, Matthews. Ten seconds without being an asshole.) He could hear her grind her teeth from across the room.

Anger was better than indifference, which was the response he’d feared the most.

He drank in the sight of her, finally here in real life—not just his memory or late-night Instagram binges. Oxygen reached parts of his body he’d forgotten existed. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, the kind she wore when she was only with family, not putting on her Manager of the Inn guise. She’d gotten highlights or spent a long time out in the winter sun, because the honey blonde was shot through with lighter streaks than he remembered. Her eyes, in the kitchen light, were the color of whiskey, though they’d be amber in the sunlight and almost yellow in the glow of a fire. She had the most stubborn jaw known to humankind and curves that went on for days and days and days.

She stole his breath.

He noticed, belatedly, that his best friend, Miriam, was also there, standing next to her. On Hannah’s other side was his least-best friend, Noelle Northwood. Unlike Hannah and Miriam, Noelle wasn’t related to Cass and hadn’t grown up coming to Carrigan’s. She had shown up one day five years ago and been immediately accepted by Cass in a way Levi had failed to be all his life. She was the Diana to Hannah’s Anne Shirley, a dapper butch tree farmer with a grudge against Levi a mile long. The dislike was very mutual.

Noelle’s stance mirrored Hannah’s, although her shoulders were thrown back, as if she were a bear challenging him at her den. While he’d been gone, the girls’ whole world had shifted—they’d lost Cass and saved the farm from bankruptcy. Miriam and Noelle had fallen in love. They’d made an unbreakable unit of three—like he, Miri, and Hannah had once been—and he’d only heard about that unit secondhand.

He was realizing there might not be room for a fourth person in this triangle.

“Hi,” he managed to get out, sounding grumpier than he’d intended. He’d meant to say “I’m home,” but he’d choked. Something about being here brought out his surly side. Most of his loved ones thought surly was his only side but that was only at Carrigan’s.

“It’s about fucking time,” Hannah said, then turned on her heel and walked away.

That had gone about as well as he could have expected, honestly. He wished Noelle hadn’t witnessed it, adding to her ever-expanding list of Reasons Why Levi Was Bad for Hannah, but at this point the list was insurmountable anyway. He looked between Noelle and Miriam.

Kringle, a massive Norwegian Forest cat and extremely rare male tortoiseshell, pushed through the kitchen doors Hannah had just exited, chattering at Levi. He leapt onto Levi’s shoulders, wrapping himself like an extra scarf, and chirped again, as if in remonstrance.

“Yes,” Levi crooned to him, “I’m sorry I left you, baby. I’m here now.”

“That’s my cat,” Noelle snapped.

Because he was feeling especially raw—and because he loved to fuck with Noelle—he said, “Oh, no, he was always mine, but thank you for cat sitting.”

Noelle grimaced, disappointing him by refusing to take the bait and get into the fight he was spoiling for. She turned and left, presumably to follow Hannah.

He scanned the kitchen, which was a beautiful blue delft and in desperate need of upgraded appliances, and waited for the familiar itchy, trapped feeling to wash over him, but it didn’t come. As he hung his leather jacket on its old peg and self-consciously fixed his hair, he could feel his ghosts, but as angry as the Ghosts of Levi Past were, the ones in his present had calmed.

Mostly. They were, he had to admit, a little lonely.

In the four years he’d been gone, he’d cooked on cruise ships and yachts, and in street markets around the world, and, most recently, competed on a reality show called Australia’s Next Star Chef, which had just begun airing. It had been exactly the life he wanted, filled with food, adventure, friends, and success. Empty of Carrigan’s. He hadn’t missed this place, but he’d missed his parents and his girl. And though they’d kept in touch, he’d missed Miriam.

Miriam Blum was Levi’s oldest friend. She’d spent her childhood vacations at Carrigan’s, before leaving for ten years because of a rift with her parents. She was tiny, looked like a young Cher dressed as a Lost Boy, and had built a cult following for her prowess at upcycling antiques into weird art, like haunted doll heads covered in glitter glue or vanities decoupaged in women’s suffrage cartoons. She and Levi had texted, written, and video chatted, but with first her, then him staying far away from Carrigan’s, their friendship wasn’t the way it used to be.

Miriam threw her arms around him and squeezed tightly. He slid up onto one of the tall bar stools at the kitchen island and patted the one next to her before slumping onto his.

She hopped up. “C’mon, Blue, I want to hear every detail of your life of high adventure as the world’s Next Great Famous Chef.” She sounded more alive than she had for the past few years. Lighter, more playful.

He groaned, and his head fell back. No one had called him Blue in a long time, unless he counted Miri’s texts. It was a name that belonged here, even though he didn’t. To the three of them when they’d been a trio. When he, Hannah, and Miriam were kids who were going to love each other forever, no matter what. He’d run away from here to stop being that person, but it was a name that swamped him with memories and he didn’t want Miri to give up calling him that, to give up their shared past.

He reached over, pulling a piece of dried glitter glue out of her raucous dark brown curls. She always looked like a half-finished craft project. “I will tell you tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales,” he said, “tales of the high seas! Tales of faraway lands! But first, I need coffee.”

She scooted off the high stool until her feet touched the floor and walked around the island to the coffee pot that he suspected, now that she lived here, was always on, and poured him a cup.

“Black?” she asked. “With three or four sugars?”

“I can’t help who I am,” he said.

She only shook her head at him. From under the counter, she pulled out a plate of dark chocolate–dipped macaroons his mom must have baked for tomorrow.

She set a cookie and the coffee in front of him, then planted her elbows on the counter and her head on her fists.

“Talk.”

He skipped all the pleasantries because that’s not what Miri was asking him. “What was Cass thinking?” he asked.

“I assume she was trying to get you to come home, since you didn’t seem inclined to ever do so without drastic intervention,” she said, bopping him on the nose with one finger.

“Hannah told me not to come back. I listened.”

“That’s a bullshit answer, but here you are,” Miriam told him.

“You sent Cole to find me. In Australia. It seemed the least I could do.”

Cole was Miriam’s other best friend, an amiable blond giant who had usurped Levi’s place in her affections. Cole looked like a surfer, dressed like a cast member on Southern Charm, and did something maybe illegal with computers. He was incredibly annoying and a little scary, which was how people usually felt about Levi. Levi shook off the thought—he and Cole were nothing alike.

“But you wouldn’t have come back if you weren’t ready,” Miriam pointed out. “So what did he say that made you decide to come home? He never told me his plan.”

He cleared his throat, trying to get around the lump that was suddenly there. “He handed me a photo, of the three of us as kids, in snowsuits. Cass called us her heirs on the back of it. I needed to know why. And he said Hannah asked for me to come home.”

Miriam kept watching him, head cocked to the side.

“I couldn’t keep running from the specter of Carrigan’s forever,” he said caustically, chugging his coffee. “Besides, the cooking competition I was filming ended, and I didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be.”

His parents, his demons, and the love of his life were all on this farm. Hannah had sent for him, asked him to come home. And he finally had something to show for himself. So, here he was, sitting in the place he swore he’d never come back to, committed to winning her back. Because he’d seen every corner of the earth, and not a single mile of it was worth a damn without her.



 

If Hannah were here, she would make him feel better. Even Miriam would make his mood less bad, although Miriam wasn’t as good at fixing things as Hannah was. It shouldn’t matter that the other sixth-grade boys thought he was weird. He was weird. He lived at the inn instead of in town, he was always in trouble for some adventure that seemed like a better idea than school, he was extremely into Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Julia Child was a genius), and he didn’t have a crush on anybody. Why did anyone have a crush on anybody? They were eleven.

Suddenly this year, all anyone had wanted to talk about was “who you liked.” He could have made something up and told them he liked Miriam, but he wasn’t going to lie about something that didn’t matter.

He kicked the stepladder on his way into the kitchen, then scowled as he picked it up, because his dad would kill him if he left it in the middle of the floor. He slammed open the fridge door, grabbing all the ingredients for mole poblano. If they thought him wanting to cook was “gay,” then he was going to get better at cooking. And start wearing eyeliner. And burn his khakis.

Because there was nothing wrong with being gay, and even though he didn’t think he was gay, he sure as hell was not going to try to convince them he wasn’t. They wanted to mock him for being who he was and not fitting in? They would get the most obnoxious, over-the-top, not-fitting-in Blue Matthews possible.

The kids in Advent, New York, would think he was an alien by the time he was done.

He slammed his knife down on the cutting board when the kitchen phone rang, but he answered it the way he was supposed to. Not that it mattered, because customers never called this extension, they always called the front desk, but whatever. He didn’t need to get his mom in trouble.

“Thank you for calling the Christmasland Inn. How may I direct your call?”

“You said there was an emergency but there can’t be an emergency because I called the desk and Cass said you were just being melodramatic,” Hannah said, without a hello.

“There was an emergency, which is that you and Miriam aren’t here and I hate school and no one will go on Shenanigans with me,” he said, but as soon as he heard her voice, some of his anxiety lessened. His shoulders relaxed down from his ears.

He didn’t need any of the asshole kids at school. He only needed his friends, who actually understood him, and he would be fine.

Except they weren’t here.

Miriam was trapped with her shitty parents in shitty Scottsdale, Hannah’s parents were filming a documentary about a famous Guatemalan poet, and the only way he could usually talk to either of them was email, but his parents got mad if he tied up the phone lines dialing into AOL, so he could only email at night, and Miriam’s dad read her emails so he couldn’t say anything real anyway. He was basically alone out here in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Christmas trees—which was ridiculous because they were Jewish, and he would never understand why his parents had stranded them all out here.

If they lived in a city, at least he might meet a couple of kids who weren’t small-town rednecks obsessed with how everybody needed to fit into a tiny little box.

“Blue,” Hannah asked, “did you zone out? I’m calling long distance from Guatemala City. Could you at least listen to me?”

“Ugh, sorry.” He went back to chopping onions, the phone cord stretched out as far as it could go, the old faded pink plastic of the headset tucked under his ear. When were they going to get a cordless phone? Like, they were in the twentieth century. Cass always h. . .