Page 79 of Santa's Girl
Her eyes lit up.
“Definitely, but I have to work the holiday craft fair, it starts at five.”
“Course. I’ll pretend I know what I’m doing and hand you stuff while you boss me around.”
“That sounds dangerously domestic,” she teased.
“Only if we add matching pajamas,” I shot back.
She snorted into her coffee.
But when she looked up at me again, her eyes were soft. Full.
“Okay,” she said. “Can’t wait.”
I sipped my coffee, leaning back against the headboard. Just… watching her. Taking in the quiet. The calm.
She glanced over at me, chewing the corner of her lip like she was working up to something.
And then she asked it.
“Do you have any family, Bear?”
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a soft question dropped in the middle of scrambled eggs and snow-dusted windows.
I set my mug down slow.
“No,” I said. “Not anymore.”
Her face shifted. Not pity, exactly. Just that kind of quiet understanding that comes when someone’s lost their own people, too.
She nodded once, looked down at her tray. I thought she might press, but she didn’t.
Then her voice was soft. “Do you have holiday plans?”
“The Club,” I said. “I’ll be at the Clubhouse just like every year.”
She didn’t ask what that meant. Didn’t have to.
It meant cold beer and too much food. Loud voices. Firepits. A crew of rough men who'd bleed for each other, even if they’d never say the wordfamilyout loud.
It meant staying busy enough to not think too hard about the ghosts.
She poked at the toast on her tray, nodded again, but this time it was tight. Like maybe I wasn’t the only one with ghosts pulling at the edges of the holiday.
“You?” I asked. “What’s your big Christmas plan?”
She shrugged, but the air shifted.
“Work, mostly. The community center's got more going on than they know what to do with. Margie’s hosting something for her book club. I’ll be around. My mom and her plus one will arrive with Stanley, her dog.”
She said it like it there were no expectations.
I didn’t push.
Neither of us did.
Some things don’t need to be dragged into the light all at once.
