Page 156 of Going Viral for Christmas
I watch him, thinking how right now we’re… safe. Real. And I don’t know what to think about that.
Normal isn’t usually mine to keep. Safe has always felt like a temporary state, something that collapses the second you breathe too hard.
But here I am, sitting across from Soren Pembry—my rival, my fake boyfriend, the man who should be the opposite of safe or normal—but I feel both.
Soren glances up and smiles. I get back to work on the puzzle. We’ve been working on this thing for over an hour—a thousand tiny pieces forming an old bookshop storefront—and somehow we’re still not sick of each other. That’s another fact that should terrify me.
Yet, it doesn’t.
Outside, the snow has mostly melted. A slushy mess now lines the edges of the road, the mid-afternoon sun havingdone its job before dipping low again. The charm of our wintry bubble is fading. And tomorrow, they’ll start clearing the roads.
Tomorrow means real life.
Tomorrow means this ends.
Soren places a piece into the top left corner and grins. “Boom. That, my Bells, is the corner of a bookshelf.”
“You’re practically a national treasure,” I deadpan, sipping my hot tea.
There’s a shift in his gaze. The smirk lingers, but it’s quieter now. I’m a little scared.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I ask.
“Have I done a good job?”
The mug hovers halfway to my lips. “On the puzzle? Honestly, I’m impressed. You’re a corner-piece king.”
Soren huffs a laugh, but it’s hollow. “No, Ava. Not that.” His gaze drops to the table, and his thumb runs along the rim of his mug. “I mean… have I done a good job showing you that this could be something… More?”
The question sinks between us like a stone in water. I set my tea down carefully, but my hands are shaking. My fingers curl around the ceramic again, searching for warmth that’s suddenly harder to find.
“I haven’t been subtle about my feelings,” he says, voice tender. “I want more than one snowed-in weekend of fucking and flirting. I wantyou,Bells. Forreal. Out there in therealworld. Not the fake one we manufactured for fans.”
Soren looks at me, and it wrecks me. It’s open, terrified, and dead serious. He’s laid his entire heart out on the dining table between puzzle pieces and steaming hot mugs.
I don’t know what to say.
“Soren…”
“You don’t have to give me an answerrightnow,” he adds quickly. “But I’ve never felt like this…with anyone. And I’ve spent the last two days trying to memorize the way your smile curves when you’re trying not to laugh. Or how you hum while concentrating. Or how you still smell like sugar cookies even when you’ve been buried in snow.”
I let out a breath. “You’ve been busy.”
Soren chuckles, running a hand through his hair. “I know. It’s a lot. But I mean it. And I’ll show you that I mean it every single day, forever, if that’s what it takes.”
A pause. Silence. The hope in his eyes makes mine sting.
“I need to think it over, okay?” I say softly. “It’s not a no.”
Soren’s eyes flash with a mixture of that same hope and now certainty…but also disappointment. He exhales. “Then that’s enough for me. For now.”
We go back to the puzzle, but the air has changed. It’s laced with words we’re not saying, a web with a thousand emotions we’re both navigating through—but not always the same ones. Some of them collide. Some miss each other entirely. But they’re all crashing together in the silence between us.
“Why?” I ask.
Soren eyes shoot up.
“We’ve been rivals for a year. And then all of a sudden, you decide I’m the girl for you? What changed? What made youknow, like you said.”
