Page 42 of Nice Guys Don't Kiss Like That At Christmas
“I’m lucky.”
And those words lodge themselves into my heart.Because it’s not about this moment.
It’s about the fact that I’m alive.
That he still sees me.
That I let him.
I close my eyes.Try not to feel too much.Completely fail at it.
Despite how many times I repeat myself that this doesn’t change anything.
Tomorrow, he leaves.
Tomorrow, I go back to the version of me who doesn’t make messy choices like this.
But tonight…
Tonight I get to keep this, to keep him, to keep us.
His breath slows as his strong arm wraps around me.
He doesn’t say anything else.
But I don’t need him to.
For the first time in a long time, I understand what all those romance novels were trying to say.It’s not about the perfect ending.It’s about the person who sees you, even with the scars.
And chooses to stay.
Even just for one night.
Chapter thirteen
ADAM
She’sstillwrappedaroundme, breath shaky against my neck.At some point we migrated from the floor to the bed, moving the dogs to the office area and closing the door.The mattress dips as she shifts closer, and I pull the comforter higher around us, creating a cocoon against the December chill seeping through the B&B’s historic windows.Our damp skin, the messy sheets around us, the air that smells like her, like me, like us.And I don’t say anything yet.Just let the moment exist.Let us both absorb it.
Because this isn’t just sex, and we both fucking know it.The B&B’s ancient pipes groan overhead.Sally’s famous Christmas plumbing with its mysterious matchmaking properties.Usually I’d roll my eyes at the town superstition, but with Eve Foster’s leg hooked over mine, her fingers drawing patterns on my chest?Maybe there’s something to it after all.
Her lips brush my collarbone.“So many things I didn’t tell you.”
My fingers still on her back.“I know.”I’m not going to push her.Not going to press.She shifts slightly, her fingers grazing absently over a scar, down my abs, back up and each touch registers deep under my skin.
She swallows and then, almost to herself, she says, “The first time we chatted on that Reddit thread…”
I smile.“For hours about the need for more shows likeiZombie.Before arguing about the best character…”
“And then about thatiZombieconvention we wanted to go to.”
She huffs out a small laugh.“Yeah.We could have met in person if I had gone.”That would have been four years before Pittsburgh.She said her parents weren’t comfortable with her traveling that far alone at nineteen.Especially with a twenty-two-year-old.And I got it.We were friends then.Nothing more.
“Yeah?”
“That’s when I was diagnosed.”
My chest tightens with that same hollow feeling I get when I see fear in an animal’s eyes and know they don’t understand what’s happening to them.Twenty-two-year-old me had no idea she was fighting for her life while I rambled about shelter puppies and exam stress.
