Page 22 of Their Little Snow Angel
“I didn’t get you anything—” Violet begins.
“That doesn’t matter to us.” Heath sits on the floor in front of the tree, patting the spot next to him. While Violet gets comfortable, I go to the kitchen and bring three mugs of hot cocoa.
Violet sits cross-legged, and I sit on her other side. We each take a sip of cocoa. I feel like we’re starting a new tradition, something we can hopefully do every year.
Next year, hot cocoa under the Christmas tree…and an engagement ring. I’m that serious about her.
I reach under the tree and take out the tiny gift.
“How did you get anything so fast?” She weighs the small package in her hands.
Heath touches her knee. “Open it, angel.”
She unfolds the red and green paper coffee label to reveal a flash drive. Her brows scrunch together as she frowns. “Don’t tell me you recorded everything we did yesterday?—”
“No. Never.” I clear my throat and grab my laptop from where I stashed it behind the tree. “Well, not without your permission. Making a home movie with you might be fun sometime.”
Violet plugs the drive into my laptop. A folder pops up.
“Go ahead,” I say.
She opens the folder and sees the video file inside labeled Angel. She shoots me an uncertain look.
“I promise we didn’t film sex with you.” I give her an encouraging smile. “See for yourself.”
She double-clicks the file and it begins to play. A soft Bastian Crown love song is the soundtrack to a montage of photos that Heath and I took of Violet yesterday—photos where she is fully clothed. We’ve captured as many emotions and expressions as we could find. There’s even one where she’s seething after Heath played a “draw four” card right when she was about to win Uno yesterday. But mostly we have images of her looking thoughtful, happy, excited, uncertain, annoyed, victorious—like when she won Uno. Content. Sleepy.
She’s quiet as she watches the video, taking tentative sips of her cocoa. When it ends, she says, “I didn’t see you take most of these. A couple of times I noticed, but I thought you guys were just messing with your cameras…why did you do this?”
“Because we were looking at you all day.” Heath takes her hand. “We couldn’t look away from you, angel. Every emotion that passed over your face, every expression—we were watching them, cataloging them. Each and every one is precious to us.”
“My dad said—” She shakes her head.
I was worried about Mason killing us, but if he ruined our chances with Violet, he might have to worry about me killing him.
“What did he say?” Heath’s tone is measured, careful. Good thing, because I want to growl and shout.
“He said you’re never serious about anyone. He said he doesn’t want my heart broken.” She takes in a big breath. “And Callum didn’t break my heart. He embarrassed me, sure. He made me doubt my desires. But my heart wasn’t broken. I think at the end of this week in the cabin with you two, when we go our separate ways? My heart will break then.”
I take her other hand. “Violet. Angel. We don’t want to go our separate ways. We don’t want to leave you—we want to stay together.”
“You—you do? But what about never being serious…?”
“We’ve been serious in the past.” Heath meets my gaze as he speaks.
I don’t want to dredge this up, but Violet probably needs to hear it.
Heath continues, “Our long-term girlfriend left us, this time of year. It was three years ago.”
“We didn’t get serious about anyone since,” I add. “Honestly, we couldn’t trust anyone like we had trusted her. We couldn’t bring ourselves to care enough, either—or maybe we just didn’t meet the right woman.”
“Until you.” Heath kisses her cheek. “If you’ll have us, we’d like to see where this relationship takes us.”
“I—yes.” Violet smiles, her gorgeous lips stretching across her face, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’ll have you.”
I can’t resist—I take her mouth in a soft kiss. She tastes like hot cocoa and sweet marshmallows. She’s going to be our girl, our angel, and we can try out every kinky little thing she wants to try.
When I pull back, Heath turns her to face him. He kisses her just as softly as I did.
