Page 42 of Hero for the Holidays

Obsessionwasn’t love.Lustwasn’t love. She and Landry had a lock on lust, that was for sure.

They did lust very well.

Dammit.

She hummed, mostly to fill the silence, mostly to try to redirect her thoughts.

“It’ll be like ripping a Band-Aid off,” Lila said sagely.

“I don’t like ripping Band-Aids off, though,” Fia said.

“Landry would probably say you can’t avoid taking Band-Aids off forever or they’ll mold. Or a bobcat will come eat your knuckles.”

Fia looked at Lila out of the corner of her eye. “Would he?”

“Yes.” Lila paused. “You and Landry don’tlikeeach other, do you?”

That didn’t land quite right. She’d...despised him. For years. Hated him, even. He was also the only man she’d ever seen naked.

“It’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

“Likehimnot telling you about me being herelevels of complicated?”

She sighed. She hadn’t had any time to think about what kind of mother she wanted to be to a teenager. And she had never let herself fantasize about what it would be like to be a mom to a baby, because that just opened old wounds, and since she hadn’t dated since Landry, it had been kind of a moot point anyway.

She had made the farm and the farm store her baby. And she had decided to be happy with that. To be a cool aunt.

Now she was trying to be a cool mom? While she felt like a combination babysitter/failure/maternal figure. Maybe? So she wondered what all she needed to say to the kid.

How much transparency she owed her.

And then she remembered that Lila was thirteen, and Fia had been fifteen when she got pregnant. The truth was, depending on what was happening in their lives, some kids just grew up too fast. She and Landry had been at a dangerous intersection. Adult hormones and desires colliding with teenage brains and coping skills.

Maybe if somebody would’ve noticed, maybe if one of her parents would have paid attention to her. Maybe if somebody had talked to her. About how feelings could seem savage and fatal when you were that young, but they were only feelings, and deferring pleasure wouldn’t kill you. Using condoms was important. Protecting a piece of yourself might be a good idea.

“It isn’t very straightforward when you used to...care about somebody very much.”

Lila looked sage then. “So you had a bad breakup.”

She felt relieved that Lila had managed to make it sound so simple. “Yes. We did. A long time ago.”

“Was it over me?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes and no. We definitely disagreed about what to do, but we would’ve broken up anyway. I knew that. We couldn’t listen to each other. We didn’t know how. We weren’t raised by parents who listen.”

“I can’t imagine that. My mom listened to everything I had to say. She was so great. She—” Lila stopped suddenly. “You probably don’t want to hear this.”

She needed to hear it. To keep imagining Lila in all those happy times. To stop being so tempted to imagine Lila as a baby, as a child, with her. With Landry.

She swallowed hard.

“I do,” Fia said, with more gusto than she felt. “It’s pretty lucky, actually, for me. That I get to have a kid who knows what kind of mom she wants.” She looked away quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I didn’t mean to say it like I was trying to take over. Or erase the mom that you had.”

“I know. I mean... I need...somebody.”

Somebody.

Fia could be that. She didn’t know if she’d ever be the best, but she could besomebody. She might never be a manicured walled-in garden, but she could be a quiet place on a mountain.

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