Page 50 of No Business Like Snow Business

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For the family. For us being a bunch of...” I searched for a fitting word. “Of totalassholes.”

Yeah, that one fit.

“Did you really come to warn me off—or pay me off?” he asked softly.

I dragged a hand through my hair. “I don’t even know anymore. I thought I did, but Harvey said it’s not true.”

He shrugged. “Well, you haven’t pulled out a checkbook yet, or a baseball bat, so maybe Harvey’s right.”

“Did you leave because you were gay?” The word ‘too’ went unsaid, but I was sure we both heard it all the same.

“That was part of the reason,” Win said. “The biggest part of it. It was wrapped up in a whole lot of teenage angst and kicking against the cage, but when I eventually shed all the other stuff we’d fought about—the summer I dyed my hair, the earring, the drinking and the drugs; the usual poor little rich boy bullshit—I’d still be gay. I wasn’t going to outgrow that, so if I ever wanted a chance at happiness, I had to go.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked. “Throwing away the money, the education, the opportunities, the Van Ruyven name, for this?”

“Not for a second.” He lifted his chin. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have done things differently, if I hadn’t been an angry teenager just bursting to get the hell out. Left a note, rented a post box, wrote home more than the one time I sent the card and the photo...” He snorted. “Packed some decent winter clothes. But leaving itself? No, I have never regretted that.”

My skin tingled, like sinking into a warm bath after coming in from the cold. How freeing it must have felt to just walk away like that. I tried to imagine doing the same. What would I miss, really? Nothing much about my life in New York compelled me to claw onto it desperately. If I left, the family and the company would go on as before. The initial chaos caused as my father scrambled to gather his allies in the boardroom would barely be a ripple on the stock exchange, and wasn’t that the only thing that ultimately mattered to him?

And to me, in this moment, nothing could have matteredless. The realization was dizzying.

“And Sterling? If there are questions you’re asking yourself right now, and if they’re anything like the ones I asked myself, then maybe you’ll be smarter about it than I was. But I don’t think you’ll regret it either.”

“I don’t know if I’m staying yet,” I said again, faintly.

“No.” He crossed the room and put his hand on my shoulder. Squeezed. “But there’s a spare blanket in the drawer if you need one in the meantime.”

And then he left me alone with my swirling thoughts.

fourteen

HARVEY

There was no part of a Trixie Belden book where, after the mystery was solved, Trixie had to sit around shoving sugar cookies into her face and waiting awkwardly to be told whether the guy she’d slept with under the assumption it was one-night thing would be staying around. Mostly because you’d hope that sort of scenario would never come up for Trixie until she was at least college-aged, but also because everything was nice and neat in Trixie’s world. When Jim was adopted by the Wheelers he just dropped seamlessly into his new life in Sleepyside. Then again, Jim’s family had the good narrative sense to be dead and completely out of the picture before the story began; Sterling’s didn’t. There was no way he was going to walk away from his life in New York just because of a casual hook up and the power of Christmas.

Was there?

It was stupid to want that. Sterling and I liked each other and we had chemistry. But you didn’t throw your life away for a new relationship, let alone a potential one. Not even at Christmas. It felt as though Sterling and I could be something, but we weren’t there yet.

Also, Sterling was in the next room reconnecting with his long-lost uncle and facing some family trauma head on, and I was worried about whether or not he liked me enough to stay? I felt like a selfish, petty asshole for trying to make this all about me.

The couch creaked as Kyle leaned forward to help himself to another sugar cookie. “You look like you’re thinking very hard about something, Harvey.”

I tried for a casual smile and probably missed. “I guess I just thought finding Sterling’s missing uncle would be a lot more dramatic, you know? It’s meant to be the thrilling end of the story.”

“Who says it’s the end?” Kyle shrugged his massive shoulders. “Anyway, life’s not a book. Life’s messy. It’s that shoebox full of receipts and ticket stubs and letters and photographs you keep under your bed.”

“Did you ever think Win would go back to New York?” I asked quietly.

Martha cast Kyle an appraising look.

“No,” he said, and shook his head. “Because Win burned all his bridges with his father the moment he left. Going back to New York, and back into the closet, was never going to happen. So no, I never thought for a second he’d go back there, but there were times I was scared he’d go somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Kyle said. “What the hell did Christmas Falls have to offer a guy like that?”

Martha raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly, and Kyle returned the smile, as though they were sharing a private joke, or perhaps the silent answer to a question that had been asked a million times before.

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