Page 32 of Holly's Grizzly

“Stay here,” he tells me. “And put your hands over your eyes.”

I toss him a questioning look, but do as he says. His footsteps echo across the floorboards, pausing for a moment before I dimly sense the room plunge into darkness on the other side of my hands.

“No peeking,” he calls from somewhere on the other side of the room.

“I’m not,” I say with a laugh.

Another few silent moments pass before his footsteps return. The warmth of him washes over me a split-second before his hands brace my shoulders, turning me so I’m fully facing the window.

“Alright, you can look.”

My hands fall away and my eyes go wide.

There, in the center of the clearing, framed perfectly by the window, is a brightly lit tree. The quintessential pine, strung with lights and casting the surrounding snow in a warm golden glow.

“I hang the lights over my back patio in the summer,” Irving says, and when I crane my neck to look at him, there’s a bit of bashful color on his cheeks. “And I thought they could work for this, too. I know it’s probably not the kind of Christmas tree you’re used to, but—”

His words cut off when I turn and throw my arms around his neck. He bands his own around me, lifting me up so I’m on my tiptoes as I bury my face against his throat.

“Thank you,” I croak. “For all of this, thank you.”

“You never have to thank me, Holly. It makes me happy to make you happy.”

My heart feels at least two sizes too big in my chest, and Irving is suddenly a blur in front of me. At least until I reach up with a small, hiccuping laugh and self-consciously wipe the tears away.

He curls his hand around my jaw. “Why tears, sweetheart?”

“I just… all of this is… I never thought I’d…” The words come out in a jumble, filled with more shaky tears that Irving uses a thumb to swipe away. “I’m just really happy.”

Happyisn’t anywhere near strong enough a word for what it is I feel, and all of this is still a tangle. So fast, but achingly real, this connection between us. Something new and familiar. Foreign and just like home.

And by the way Irving nods—his warm brown eyes soft and knowing, like all of this makes just as much impossible sense to him—I’m not alone in that feeling.

We’re here. Together.

Right now, none of the rest of it matters.

It feels as natural as breathing to lean up on my tiptoes and wind my arms around his neck, to kiss him and taste the certainty in the smile on his lips, to draw him down to the rug in front of the fire and lose myself in him.

In the sparkle of the lights and the flickering of the flames, in the wonderful warmth of him, there’s only me and Irving and nothing else in the world seems to matter.

It’s all I want, and I take it without a moment of hesitation.

12

Irving

Holly surprises me by drawing me down onto the floor.

Like she’s too impatient, too eager to spare even the time it would take to get upstairs to my bed.

And I’m not about to make her wait.

I’m not about to do anything but make her comfortable as I tug at the pile of blankets on the couch so I can make a haphazard nest on the floor for us.

It’s not the most elegant solution, and it’s made even harder because I can’t seem to stop kissing her, touching her. I can’t disentangle myself from her for long enough to do a proper job of it, but oh well.

It’s perfect in its imperfection.

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