Page 39 of Take Me Home for Christmas

Up at the house, the back door opened. “Hey, you two,” Liam called. “We’re heading to bed. I wanted to make sure Dad didn’t lock you out.”

“Be right there,” Mia called. “Hey, could you grab us a couple of towels?”

“Sure thing,” Liam called.

She moved to get out, but I stopped her with my words. “Before you leave, please tell me who Gracie was.”

She sank back down. Blew out a sigh. “Gracie was my twin sister. She died when we were nine. Of leukemia.”

My head reeled. Died? Of cancer? My mind went instantly to the trials I survived with my sister, how we might’ve been separated, but our bond was never broken. What would it have been like to lose her permanently? I couldn’t imagine the tragedy that this family had suffered, that Mia had suffered.

I remembered the birthday cake photo, the two little girls side by side. The little brown-haired girl full of mischief. Hertwin.Of course!

And of course, Mia had become a doctor—a pediatrician. I thought of her attachment to Rylee and her sister. And about how wonderful she was with the kids on the heme-onc unit, yet how difficult every single day on that ward must be for her.

Click click click. The pieces of the puzzle that was Mia snapped into place.

The back door opened. “Towels are right here,” Liam called.

Mia called out a thanks. “It’s all right,” she said softly to me. “Now you know. So I’ve been honest with you, but I still feel that I don’t know anything about you. That’s your choice. But Brax, I don’t want what happened to happen again—those kisses.” She waved her hand in the air. “Whatever that was.”

“It won’t.”

She got out of the tub, wrapped herself in a towel, and walked into the house.

I stood in the hot tub watching Mia leave, thinking about how I’d just messed everything up.Again.

My hands were clammy, my throat was dry, and I felt like a complete a-hole. She was right. I hadn’t opened up at all.

I’d panicked, just as I had last summer.

It wasn’t because I had nothing to say.

Mia was different. She’d always been different. If I’d been honest, I would’ve told her that I thought about her constantly. That no one I’d ever met could compare to her in kindness, brains, or beauty. But something inside me told me loud and clear that I couldn’t deliver what she deserved to have.

She deserved everything. A guy who’d had a normal upbringing and knew how to be part of a family. How to be a good husband and father.

I didn’t have a clue how to live like normal people.Lovelike normal people.

In my misery, I heard something above the hot tub motor and the bubbling of the swirling water. It was my sister’s voice, telling me that I’d had the confidence to push myself to be successful in so many ways, to never give up, but that confidence didn’t seem to extend to my relationships. I’d always believed that my upbringing had been too chaotic for me to take the chance. But what if I somehow found the strength to fight my past?

Mia deserved so much better than Charlie. I never would’ve done what he did to her.

Yet she hadn’t even felt comfortable telling me about asshat Charlie. She hadn’t trusted me enough to. And that was the worst thing of all.

Chapter Thirteen

Mia

I went up to my room and took a shower. At one point, I heard Brax rummaging around in his duffel. When I reentered the bedroom, he was gone. And so was the down comforter from my bed. I was relieved to have my room all to myself.Good, I thought.Be like that. It wasn’t any kind of friendship if only one person revealed difficult things. Or feelings. Or…anything.

I climbed into bed, snuggling in between fresh sheets and a blanket that smelled of fabric softener, but I couldn’t rest, and it wasn’t because Brax had taken off with my warmest blanket. Christmas peace evaded me. Things weren’t right, and I couldn’t even pretend that they were.

I threw back the covers, grabbed my plaid flannel robe, and opened the door to the hall.

The house was as silent as falling snow. A slight chill hit me, always the case in winter in the old house, so I ran back into my room and shoved my feet into my fleece-lined slippers.

Brax was nowhere. Not on the family room couch, not in the kitchen. I pulled back the drapes on the front window and wasrelieved to find his car still sitting in the driveway, covered with a thin coating of new snow. So he had to be somewhere. The grandfather clock struck one.

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