Page 76 of Mistletoe and Mayday
“We were going to tell you after the engagement. As a surprise.” She smiles, the expression not reaching her eyes. “A wedding at the club has been your dream since you were a boy.”
“My dream?” I can’t help the disbelieving laugh that escapes me. “Mother, that was your dream. I don’t recall ever expressing a burning desire to get married at the country club.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you did.” She turns to Father, seeking backup. “Richard, tell him.”
Father clears his throat. “Your mother has put a great deal of effort into these arrangements, Sebastian.”
“Effort I didn’t ask for.”
“It’s done,” Mother insists, her voice rising. “The right venue, the right timing, the right family connections—these things don’t happen by accident. Do you think the Astors just stumbled into their social standing?”
I push the plate away, my appetite killed by the weight of expectations I never agreed to carry. “I don’t care what the Astors did. I’m not marrying Rebecca.”
“This is about that pilot, isn’t it?” Mother’s eyes narrow to blue slits. “I saw the way she looked at you at the hospital. She got these ideas into your head.”
Bailey’s face flashes in my mind. Her green eyes were bright with laughter as she named everything around us, her fierce determination as she threw her precious snow globe to save me, her warmth against me during those cold Alaskan nights.
The realization hits me with absolute certainty.
I love her.
Somehow, in those few desperate days, I fell in love with Bailey Monroe. Five days of raw, unfiltered honesty that made four years with Rebecca feel like a business arrangement I’d signed without reading the fine print.
“Leave her out of this.”
“So it is about her.” Mother looks triumphant, like she’s caught me in something shameful. “Sebastian, be sensible. You spent a few days in a cabin with some...some cargo pilot. It’s natural to develop confused feelings in a survival situation.”
“Bailey,” I say through gritted teeth. “Her name is Bailey.”
“Fine. Bailey.” Mother pronounces the name like it’s contaminated. “The point remains. She’s not your world, Sebastian. This—” she gestures around the dining room, “—this is your world. The company. The responsibilities. The right connections.”
“She’s hardly appropriate,” Mother continues, warming to her topic. “Did you see how she spoke? No filter whatsoever.”
“That’s what makes her real.”
“Real? Is that what you call it?” Father scoffs. “Real doesn’t build empires, Son. Real doesn’t maintain socialstanding.”
I look around at our perfect dining room—at the paintings chosen to impress visitors rather than move souls, at the furniture no one actually feels comfortable sitting on, at my parents who seem more concerned about what the Hendersons will think than whether their only son might be drowning in expectations.
“Maybe that’s the problem.” My voice drops lower. “Prioritizing social standing over what actually matters is the problem.”
“She said she collects snow globes,” Mother says, as if announcing a criminal record. “Tourist trinkets.”
And I’m done. The last thread of pretense snaps inside me.
“She collects joy.” My words come out raw, each one torn from somewhere deep and long-neglected. “Life. Everything we’ve forgotten how to feel in our perfect, empty world. She made me laugh until my sides hurt. Made me feel alive for the first time in years.”
My voice cracks again. I don’t care. I’m channeling Bailey’s courage, her fearlessness, her refusal to be anything but authentic.
“I love her.” The admission bursts from me, shocking us all. “I love Bailey Monroe.”
“Sebastian!” Mother gasps, clutching her heart like I’ve announced allegiance to a terrorist organization.
“Sebastian,” Father warns, his voice dropping to that register that once made me straighten my spine without conscious thought. “Think carefully about your next words.”
“I have.” The certainty flows through me like a current. “For the first time, I have.”
The silence that follows feels different from all the silences that have punctuated our family dinners over the years. This isn’t the pause before someone proposes a business strategy orsuggests a more advantageous social connection. This is the silence of something breaking beyond repair.
