I wished for love and got him

Chapter 1 - The Wish Upon a Paper

The water in the flower buckets was exactly forty degrees. Zara knew this because she had checked it with a thermometer once, and also because her fingers had currently reached that stage of numbness where they felt like stiff plastic sticks.

"Merry Christmas to me," she muttered, pulling a bunch of wilted carnations out of a vase.

It was December 1st. In the movies, this was the day the "magic" started. In the real world—at least in Zara’s world—it was just the day people started getting aggressive about the perfect gift for christmas’s holiday and the fantasy of Santa’s coming .

Zara had stopped believing in Christmas miracles somewhere between her twenty-first birthday and the year her shop almost went bankrupt.

She believed in early mornings, stiff fingers, and the way a rose’s petals curled perfectly when cut at just the right angle. She believed in invoices paid late and the quiet disappointment of promises broken. She did not believe in magic or miracles.

Zara wiped her wet hands on her apron and looked around her shop, Branded scents . It was a small space, tucked between a high-end bakery and a dry cleaner that always smelled like chemicals. She loved this shop, usually. But today, the smell of damp earth and greenery felt heavy. It felt like work.

The bell above the door jingled. Zara adjusted her "customer service face"—a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes but kept people from asking if she was okay.

A man in a suit that cost more than Zara’s monthly rent stepped in. He looked frantic.

"I need something for a 'I forgot our fifth anniversary' situation," he said, not even looking at her. He was scrolling on his phone. "Big. Expensive. Something that says I’m sorry but I’m also rich."

Zara tilted her head. "Do you want her to actually forgive you, or do you just want her to stop being mad?"

The man finally looked up. "Is there a difference?"

"About fifty bucks," Zara said. She walked over to the cooling unit and pulled out a bundle of deep red peonies and white orchids. "These say you’re a jerk, but you have good taste. If you buy the cheap grocery store carnations, you might as well just sleep on the couch now."

The man sighed, handing over a credit card. "I’ll take the expensive ones."

As Zara wrapped the flowers in brown paper and tied them with a gold ribbon, she watched him. He didn't care about the flowers. He didn't care about the effort Zara put into the arrangement. He just wanted a fix.

"Here you go," she said, handing him the bouquet. "Good luck. Try to remember the sixth one."

"Right. Thanks," he said, already heading out the door.

The silence that followed was louder than the city traffic outside. Zara leaned her elbows on the counter and sighed. She was twenty-nine years old. She spent her days helping men buy "I’m sorry" gifts for women they didn't pay enough attention to, or helping brides pick out flowers for "forever" that usually lasted about three years.

She was the middleman for everyone else’s romance, while her own love life was a graveyard of bad Tinder dates and guys who "weren't looking for anything serious.."

"You look pathetic, Zara," she told her reflection in the glass of the fridge. She had a smudge of dirt on her nose and her hair was tied back in a messy knot that was slowly falling apart.

She spent the next three hours cleaning. She swept the floor, scrubbed the counters, and talked to the only living thing in the shop that didn't demand anything from her: a half-dead fern named Barnaby that lived in the corner.

"Don't worry, Barnaby," she whispered, giving it a light mist of water. "I’m not going to let you die. Unlike my social life, you actually have a chance at a comeback."

By 7:00 PM, Zara locked the front door. The streetlights were humming, and a light snow had started to fall, dusting the Chicago sidewalks in white. It looked like a postcard. It felt like a freezer.

She climbed the narrow wooden stairs at the back of the shop that led to her apartment. It was a one-bedroom setup that was mostly filled with books and half-empty coffee mugs. The floorboards creaked under her feet, a familiar sound that usually made her feel safe, but tonight just felt lonely.

She didn't bother turning on the big lights. She just flipped on a small lamp and went straight for the kitchen.

Dinner was a bowl of cereal and a glass of Merlot that cost nine dollars. She sat on her rug in front of the fireplace, which was currently cold and filled with gray ash.

Then an idea came to her suddenly , a stupid and impulsive joke. She smirked to herself as she tore off a page and wrote at the top:

Dear Santa, She paused, rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she whispered. The pen scratched against the paper as she continued.

“ I know I’m a little old for this, but since you’re already busy this time of year, I figured I’d save you some time. She hesitated, then wrote the words quickly before she could rethink them “ I’d like true love by Christmas.”

Her chest tightened unexpectedly. She laughed it off, shaking her head. “Ridiculous.”She added one more line. If that’s too much trouble, ignore this letter. I’ll understand.

She stood up and walked to the fireplace , struck a match and watched as the flame caught the corner of the parchment, she expected the usual orange glow. Instead, the edges turned a violent, electric blue. The paper didn't just burn; it seemed to dissolve into the air, leaving behind a scent that wasn't smoke—it was the sharp, metallic tang of a winter forest at midnight.

Zara woke up the next morning to a sound she hadn’t heard in her apartment in three years.

It wasn’t the radiator’s metallic groan or the wind whistling through the ill-fitting window frames. It was the clink-clink-clink of a silver spoon against a ceramic mug. It was a rhythmic, domestic sound—the sound of someone taking their time with a cup of coffee.

She lay paralyzed under her duvet. The "three years" wasn't a romantic milestone; it was simply the length of time she had spent building a fortress of solitude. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped thing.

She reached out, her fingers closing around a heavy glass lamp on her nightstand. She didn't call the police. In the quiet parts of her mind, she wondered if she had finally snapped—if the loneliness had finally curdled into a full-blown auditory hallucination.

She crept to the bedroom door. The air in the hallway was freezing. It didn't feel like a draft; it felt like the apartment had been hollowed out and replaced with the atmosphere of a mountaintop.

She swung the door open, the lamp raised like a club.

"I have a weapon!" she barked, her voice cracking on the last syllable.

Someone was there , standing next to her small kitchen table. He didn't look like a burglar. He looked like a memory that hadn't quite finished rendering. He wore a charcoal-grey overcoat that seemed to absorb the morning light, and he was holding her favorite chipped blue mug.

The door was locked. She was certain of it. Zara had three locks on her door, and she was obsessive about checking them. The hairs at the back of her neck rose, her heartbeat stuttering as the heater hummed too loudly in the quiet.

Her first thought was fear—raw and electric. Her second was confusion. Her third was something far more dangerous: awareness.

He was tall, not imposing but impossible to ignore. Snow dusted his dark hair, His eyes were the color of lake ice—beautiful, but suggesting a terrifying depth beneath the surface.

"The lamp is an antique, Zara," he said. His voice was a low, resonant baritone that made the floorboards vibrate under her bare feet. "If you hit me with it, you’ll only be upset about the mess."

"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Zara’s knuckles were white. "The deadbolt was on. The chain was on."

"The door is a physical construct," the man said, setting the mug down. He didn't offer a name yet. He just looked at her, his gaze lingering on the small, jagged scar at her hairline—the one she usually hid with her bangs. His expression flickered—a flash of something that looked like raw, ancient anger, quickly smoothed over by a mask of polite indifference.

“How did you—” The words tangled in her throat.

The man lifted his hands slightly, palms open, as if sensing her fear. His smile was gentle, almost apologetic. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice was warm. Familiar in a way that made her chest ache.

“Who are you?” she demanded, reaching slowly for the phone behind the counter.

The man’s eyes flicked to the movement, then back to her face. There was something in his expression—regret, maybe, or restraint—that made her pause.

“My name is Noel,” he said softly.

"Get out," she whispered, the terror finally giving way to a cold, sharp spike of adrenaline. "Get out before I scream."

"You already made your scream last night," Noel said, gesturing vaguely toward the fireplace downstairs. "The blue flame was the receipt. I’m here to fulfill the contract. You made a wish asking for true love by the twenty-fifth. He said smirkingly “I’m here to make sure you get it."

“That letter was a joke,” she said. Noel nodded. “Most wishes are.”he said standing up. He didn't move like a human; there was no shifting of weight, no sound of floorboards creaking. He was simply there, standing five feet away from her.

“What do you want from me?”

“To help you,” he said. “I have twenty-five days.”Noel said, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a secret. "To find the man who will keep you from writing pathetic letters to dead saints. After that, my work is done, and I go back to the cold."

“And then?” she whispered.

His expression changed—darkened, something like pain flickering across his face before he masked it. “Then I leave.”

Something in her chest tightened unexpectedly.

“You , help me , find through love !! she asked, smiling because it was the weirdest stuff she has ever heard .

"I'll be at the shop in twenty minutes," he said, his voice coming from the hallway even though she hadn't seen him move. "Don't be late. Your first candidate is a man named David. He likes lilies, and he’s remarkably easy to talk to."

Zara spun around, but the hallway was empty. Her front door was still locked. The chain was still in place.

She ran to the kitchen table. Her blue mug was still there. She touched it, expecting it to be hot.

It was filled with ice cubes. Solid, clear ice that shouldn't have been able to freeze in the five minutes she’d been awake. In the center of the ice was a single, tiny sprig of mistletoe.

Zara sank into the chair, her breath hitching in the quiet apartment. She wasn't thinking about true love. She wasn't thinking about Santa. She was thinking about the way Noel had looked at her scar—how he easily saw what no one else took time to notice.

She looked at the clock. 8:00 AM.

The countdown had begun.