Page 105 of Stay this Christmas
“Baby, you kiss a man on Second Street, word is going to get back to your mother.”
I exhaled a laugh, unsurprised the gossip had done the rounds. Between the holiday market, the Village, and the tree farm, we hadn’t been all that secretive.
How to even explain? “I don’t know what’s going on. We argued.”
“What about?”
“Work. He said basically everything you did.”
She nodded approval. “Smart man.”
“But it’s more than that. He’s willing to take a desk job he doesn’t enjoy just to try to make a relationship with me work.”
“Do you want him to do that?”
“No. I want him to do what makes him happy, even if he’ll be gone sometimes, as long as he comes back to me.”
She looked about ready to break into song. “And why is that?”
“Because I—”
I loved him. The man I’d resented and wished would go away, the one I’d so desperately hoped I could get over…was also the man who talked me down when I panicked, encouraged me to live my life to the full, and indulged my every Christmas whim. He made my life an adventure, whether that was climbing at the gym or just sitting together watching a sappy movie. I loved him.
He’d told me he loved me last night, and I hadn’t said it back. I’d been so afraid of making a mistake if I did or said the wrong thing, I’d done nothing at all. Eden’s addition to my Life List ran through my head.
Give yourself permission to make a mistake.
I couldn’t predict exactly how things would go between us or guarantee a mistake-free future, but I knew what I wanted.
I wanted Sam.
“I have to go.”
Mom’s smirk might as well have been six miles wide.
THIRTY-THREE
sam
“Why aremy romance novels all out of order?” Georgia frowned at her bookshelves she’d arranged by color, their bright covers no longer a perfect rainbow.
I pretended ignorance. Best not to admit I’d flipped through them late into the night, searching for a solution to my problem. Some neat, tidy way to convince Harper to choose me, not because I loved her, but because she loved me. I found a lot of grand gestures, but nothing I could apply to my situation.
Georgia flopped onto the couch next to me. I had one of Dad’s financial pamphlets in my lap as though maybe I’d gain insight into the industry by skimming through it.
“Are you seriously going to do this?” She pinched a corner of the pamphlet as though it were trash.
“It’s a good job.” Or so Dad kept saying.
“You don’t want to do it, though.”
“No, but I’m running out of options in town.”
“Why do you have to work in town?”
I shot her a smile I didn’t feel. “Georgia, I just got back. Are you trying to kick me out already?”
She made a face like she wasn’t impressed with my act. “You want me to dumb it down, let’s dumb it down. Why would you work in a joy-sucking office with Dad when there’s an excellent guiding outfit in Georgetown? Wouldn’t be mountain peaks or anything, but you’d be out doing what you loved every day.”
