Jeanine looked down at her hands. They were shaking. She pressed them flat against the railing. “I got a job offer. In Seattle.”
“You get one condition.”
Leo was quiet.
The rain had stopped exactly one minute before midnight, as if the city itself was holding its breath for Jeanine Benedict. midnight kisses jeanine benedict
The first firework exploded over the river—a silver flower blooming against the black sky. Then another, and another. Cheers erupted from the streets below. The radio in her apartment, still tuned to the station Leo had put on hours ago, began to play “Auld Lang Syne.” Jeanine looked down at her hands
She stood on the balcony of her tiny sixth-floor walk-up, the fire escape ladder cold under her bare feet. Below, the streets of New Orleans glistened like wet ink. The wrought iron railing was strung with fairy lights she’d never bothered to take down from last Christmas, and their soft glow caught the edges of her face—the tired line of her jaw, the way she chewed her lower lip. “I got a job offer