Page 45 of Sweet Christmas Comeback
“Agreed. We can coordinate at the gazebo—that’s the main hub.” Leo climbed onto his sleigh, gathering the reins in hands that had finally stopped shaking. “Brice?”
“Yeah?”
“I owe you one.”
“You owe me about a hundred. But we can start with one.” Brice’s expression softened slightly. “Now get going. And when you see Jade? Lead with the apology, not the excuses.”
Leo nodded and urged Comet forward. The sleigh glided smoothly over the packed snow, runners hissing, bells jingling their familiar rhythm.
He was thirty minutes late.
But he was finally doing what he should have done all along.
He was showing up.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seven-thirty. The sleigh rides were supposed to have started ninety minutes ago.
Jade ladled hot cocoa with mechanical precision, her smile as brittle as winter ice. She’d stopped checking her watch twenty minutes ago, finally accepting what her heart had been trying to deny all evening: Leo wasn’t coming.
The town square buzzed with Christmas energy despite the missing centerpiece of the evening. Families wandered between vendor booths, children played in the snow beneath the twinkling lights, and the high school choir was working its way through “Silver Bells” with an enthusiasm that bordered on dangerous.
But there was a noticeable gap in the festivities. An empty space where magic was supposed to happen.
“Excuse me,” a middle-aged man approached her booth, his young daughter tugging on his coat sleeve. “Sarah here was wondering about the sleigh rides? She’s been looking forward to them all week.”
Jade’s chest tightened. This was the conversation she’d been dreading, the one she’d been putting off with vague promises of“soon” and “any minute now.” She crouched down to the little girl’s level, forcing warmth into her voice.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but the reindeer can’t make it tonight. One of them hurt her leg and needs to rest.”
The child’s face fell with the particular devastation that only crushed Christmas dreams could bring. Her father patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Maybe next year, honey.”
As they walked away, Jade straightened up and caught sight of her reflection in the dark window of the church across the square. She looked exactly like what she was: a woman who’d been abandoned by someone she’d trusted.
The worst part was the tiny, stubborn ember of concern that still glowed somewhere behind her anger. Not for the bitter man who’d thrown her desperation back in her face, but for the boy she’d known in high school. The one who’d helped her build physics projects and brought coffee to teachers having bad days. The Leo who’d almost asked her to winter formal before losing his nerve.
Where had that person gone? When had he become someone who could walk away from a community counting on him? When had he become someone who could hurt her and then vanish?
“One cocoa, please,” a woman said, her face aglow with holiday spirit. “And a gingerbread man for little Timmy.”
“Of course,” Jade said, her voice a chipper, hollow automaton. She handed over the cup and the cookie, her hand movements practiced and detached. She felt like an animatronic character at a theme park: Sad Baker Lady, Programmed for Holiday Cheer. Push a button, get a smile and a cookie.
Felicity had done her best, God love her. She’d flitted around the table like a crazed Christmas elf, fluffing the pine boughs and straightening the precariously stacked cookies, all while keeping up a running commentary on various holiday marketingstrategies that might still save the evening. But even Fee’s relentless optimism had begun to flag as the evening wore on. She was now manning the cash box at the pond station, leaving Jade alone at the gazebo booth with her thoughts and her dwindling hope.
Jade’s eyes, against her better judgment, kept scanning the edges of the crowd. She was looking for a tall, stubborn, reindeer-herding ghost. Not because she wanted to see him. No, definitely not. She was just... taking inventory. Making sure all the town’s key players were in attendance for her grand finale of failure.
He wasn’t there.
Of course he wasn’t. The man who had accused her of looking for an excuse to run wouldn’t show up to watch her go down with the ship. He had said his piece. He had delivered his verdict. He was probably up at his farm, in his quiet, orderly world, feeling smug, miserably correct.
Caring doesn’t pay electrical bills, Jade.
The memory of his words was a fresh punch to the gut. He’d weaponized her own practicality against her. He’d taken her most vulnerable confession and twisted it into proof of her inevitable departure. The hope she’d nurtured—the insane, beautiful, terrifying hope that this time could be different, that he could be different—had been extinguished so thoroughly she could no longer remember what it felt like.
The fruitcake revelation from two days ago felt hollow now, meaningless in the face of her current reality. Understanding why Cecily hated her family didn’t change the fact that Leo had abandoned her when she needed him most. Didn’t change the fact that her booths were failing because people couldn’t walk the distance between them in the cold. Didn’t change the fact that Monday’s inspection would probably shut them down for good.
“Just look at her,” a low voice muttered from nearby. Jade recognized Ida’s signature blend of pity and morbid fascination. “Brave little soldier. Serving cookies at her own execution.”
