Page 37 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
My phone buzzes:
On my way. Fifteen.
Then,
Need anything?
I stare at the text bubble. I typeclarityand delete it. I typecandy canesand add a candy cane emoji because I’m a coward. He sends back a green check and a heart in the exact shade of the pine needles. I press the phone to my sternum like it can sear answers into my bones.
The knock comes exactly when he said it would. Of course it does. I stand, realize I care about how I look, and immediately hate that I care about how I look. I shove my hair up, then down, then up again. The baby chooses that moment to attempt a somersault. “Be cool,” I tell both of us.
“It’s Lucas,” he calls through the door, and my smile arrives before I open it.
He’s wind-chilled and bright-eyed, a paper bag with candy canes and cocoa mix in one hand, his other hovering like he’s always prepared to catch what I drop. “Hi,” he says, and the word lands warm.
I don’t let him finish anything else. I curl my fingers into the front of his coat, rise onto my toes as far as the belly permits, and pull him into a kiss that saysyou’re hereanddon’t talk yetandI like you more than my fear.He makes a surprised sound that becomes a yes in under a second, one arm circling my waist with practiced care, the other steady at my shoulder. He kisses back like he was already halfway to me.
When we part, we’re both a little breathless. His forehead rests against mine, and I can see the exact flecks of gray in his eyes and the way his mouth does that small, reverent quirk when he’s relieved.
“Hi,” he repeats, softer now.
“Hi,” I echo, fingers still fisted in his lapel. “You came back.”
“Always,” he says, like it’s the easiest promise he’s ever made.
The conversation I was supposed to have sits on the coffee table between the candy canes and the remote. I could ask him right now,what happens after the New Year?I could say,I want you. Stay.I could break the fantasy and trade it for the truth.
Instead, I step closer, tilt my face up, and press another kiss to his mouth. Not a stall. A choice. Athis too.His hand slides to the nape of my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw like a reassurance.
“Dinner?” he asks, voice low, like we could talk and eat and be a team in one movement.
“In a minute,” I say. “Just… this first.”
“Copy,” he murmurs, and kisses me again in the doorway of my very real life.
He shuts the door. Locks it and slips in the wedge. The tree is still glowing. The future is still an unmarked map.
For now, I let myself live in the warm space between his palms and tell my spiraling brain it can have its turn later. Tonight, I collect a few more borrowed Tuesdays and pretend they were always meant to be ours.
15
Lucas
I cook like I clear a room: deliberate, quiet, eyes up. Melanie hums along to some holiday playlist while I move around her kitchen, and for once my brain isn’t filing secondary exits—it’s cataloging the curve of her smile when the garlic hits the pan and the way she leans a hip to the counter to take weight off that sciatic. Chicken piccata because lemon is apparently our brand now, roasted green beans, buttered noodles for the resident carb enthusiast (both of us).
“It smells like a five-star restaurant,” she says, padding in wearing my sweatshirt and her leggings, hair up, cheeks warm. The tree throws soft gold on her skin. I plate, pour water, drop a lemon slice in hers because I am both hydrating and thematic.
We eat at the table like people who do this on purpose. She tells me a story about a client whose bulldog only posed whenMariah Careyplayed, and I tell her the G-rated version of a holiday party where a CFO tried to take a swing at a reindeer. She laughs loud and true, and I think:I could stay here forever.The thought is so clean and sudden it makes my chest feel too big for my ribs.
After dishes—she dries, I wash, we argue playfully over whose system is superior (mine), and then we migrate to the couch. She’s half in my lap before either of us names it, my arm a bracket around her, my hand tracing idle lines on her forearm. The movie is nominally on, and the tree reflects in the window.
The kissing starts the way it always should: slow and certain, that first yes that makes room for the next. She tastes like lemon and peppermint, and when her fingers hook my collar I forget to be careful for a breath, then remember and go even slower. The pressure in my chest expands—something I’ve only felt under fire and, apparently, under a woman I can’t stop wanting. It’s not panic. It’s purpose. I want to build around this. I want to earn this.
And then the future knocks. Not hard, just enough to make noise. After New Year, there’s Denver. My team. My job. I could ask Dean to float me to a Saint Pierce rotation, to stand up a permanent post here. It isn’t impossible—we staff where the need is. But I don’t know what Melanie wants. Do I ask? Tonight? Or do I protect this little pressurized bubble we’ve made and not poke any seams?
I bury my mouth in her hair instead. “You’re trouble,” I murmur against the crown of her head.
“Good trouble?” she asks, smiling against my throat.
