Page 148 of Snowed In
“I have so many marshmallows, you will never want to eat one again,” he tells me, and I beam.
“Great minds.”
But he doesn’t smile back. Just scratches the back of his neck, looking suddenly nervous. “Do you know what I was thinking earlier?” he asks. “When you left? I was thinking that I wish you hadn’t. I was thinking that I wished you’d stayed. And I was thinking, what am I going to do if she wants to stick to the plan? If, in a couple of days, she shakes my hand, and we go our separate ways. What the hell am I going to do? Because the thing is, the biggest thing I’ve realized is that this is real to me. All of it. The cabin. The party. You. Me. Everything. And I’ve been trying to figure out when it stopped being pretend, but I can’t put my finger on it. I think because a part of me has wanted this from the moment I bumped into you. It was like I couldn’t leave you alone even then. I didn’t want to.” He clasps his hands gently on either side of my face, dipping his head slightly so he can look me straight in the eye. “I’ve been searching for something my whole life, and nothing’s ever clicked. And I think it’s because I was looking for you.” His voice turns thick. “I’m falling in love with you,” he says and my heart squeezes like a fist. “I’m falling hard and fast and I don’t want to stop. But I don’t expect you to feel the same way. I swear, I don’t. We can take this slow, and if that means breaks or time apart, then we can do that. But I want you to know where I stand. I want to spend next Christmas with you, Megan. And every day in between. I want to wake up knowing I’m going to see you. I want to know everything there is to know about you and I want to start right now.”
There are tears in the back of my eyes. I can feel them gathering, burning my lids, his words coupled with the exhaustion of the last few days, but when I go to speak, I find the burning has moved to my throat, and I can’t talk. I can’t even swallow. Can’t do anything but look at him.
“I know it’s fast,” he adds haltingly, thrown by my lack of reaction. “But you’ve always felt right to me, and technically, we’ve known each other our whole lives, so—”
“Christian—”
“Plus, the sex is great, so we already—”
I laugh. Or at least I think I do. It comes out more like a strangled sob before I slam my hand over my mouth.
“It is great,” I agree when I’ve regained control. “More than great. And I think I’m falling in love with you too.”
His brows lower, his gaze searching my face like he’s looking for the truth to my words, and then he holds me even tighter. Like he’s scared I’ll disappear.
“You let me say all that when you felt the same way?”
“You’re clearly feeling so much,” I tease. “It’s good to get it off your chest.” I pull back to look at him, though he doesn’t let me go far. “There isn’t anyone else in this world who could convince me into a fake relationship,” I tell him. “And no one else who could turn it into a real one.”
“My grand plan all along.”
“I figured,” I say with a smile, and he wipes my tears as they fall. “You want to try this? For real?”
“I do.”
“No backing out?”
“No backing out,” he says, and I tilt my chin as he kisses me, his lips moving against mine as though trying to prove everything he just said. When we finally break apart, I swear my mouth tingles with it.
“Take me on a date,” I whisper. “A real one. Our first one.”
“I can do that,” he murmurs. “And then?”
And then?
“Everything,” I tell him. “And then everything.” I twine my arms around his neck, pressing as close to him as our coats allow. On the other side of the house, I hear a car drive up and then Hannah’s voice calling hello before several other voices join in.
“On second thought, maybe this should have just been an us thing,” Christian says, and I laugh.
“What’s Christmas without your family annoying you?”
“A really good one?”
“Don’t worry,” I say, as the first person rounds the corner. “I’ll be your backup.”
And as the exclamations of wonder start behind us, as the bonfire crackles and the stars glint overhead, I lift my lips to his once more and seal it all with a kiss.
EPILOGUE
MEGAN
One Year later
“Everything okay?” Hannah asks.
