Page 8 of Christmas With The Kings
He’d want that for me. In my heart of hearts, I knew he would love my guys. And if by some small chance he was looking down on me, I wanted him to know I remembered him and loved him still.
“Alright,” I said after a few minutes. “Here’s the deal. I need one tall and majestic—like it would be cast as the romantic lead in a Hallmark movie. Then one proud, perfectly symmetrical. Regal in the way only a Christmas tree can be. And the third needs to be ginormous, the tallest one we can find. With soft full branches, I can add bows and ribbons to.”
“I’m not even going to ask how your brain got there,” Marcus muttered.
Isabella trailed a step behind me, eyes flicking between the trees like she wassort ofinvested now. We trudged deeper into the tree rows, and for a few blessed minutes, there was only the wind and the sound of boots on the ground.
Then I saw it. The first one. Tall. Stoic. Strong trunk. Branches that looked like they could hold the hopes of a hundred ornaments.
“There,” I said, pointing. “That’s Alek’s tree,” I added, already assigning a personality to it.
Marcus came to stand beside me, sizing it up like a threat. “Alek’s, huh?”
“Yes, it’sperfect.”
He nodded and knelt beside the trunk, pulling the axe from its leather sheath with a practiced motion. He tested the weight and settled into a steady rhythm. The sound of blade against bark was oddly comforting. Reliable. Grounding.
I walked a little way down the row, letting the wind whip against my cheeks and the silence expand around me. And maybe that’s what cracked me open.
“Owen always let me pick,” I said, quiet.
I didn’t look back to see if they were listening. I didn’t need to. The silence behind me said enough. It wasn’t part of the mission, sharing withthem, but the truth slipped out, anyway. Isabella stepped closer, her pinkie snaked out and wrapped around mine. Encouragement to go on—so I did.
“He always made a big deal out of Christmas. Even though it was just the two of us.” I smiled to myself, blinking fast. “We’d watch old Christmas movies on DVD or go to the show if there was anything playing. We’d transform the cabin. Make hot chocolate with four kinds of cookies. A bake-off competition.”
Behind me, the sound of the axe slowed.
“He used to sing,” I went on. “Terribly and always off-key. Classic carols only. He said the newer ones were ‘overproduced garbage.’” I let out a choked laugh. “He’d get the silliest ornaments. Like…a gnome wearing a scarf. And he’d call it our ‘tree goblin.’ Said it brought luck.”
The wind picked up. I felt the weight of grief rising in my chest. A tear slipped free before I could catch it.
“He was good to me. Gave me everything. A new start. A real home again. He taught me how to bake, how to hold a knife, and how to love the sky again. And every holiday, he’d do something to make up for the ones I didn’t get to have.”
I swallowed. My hands curled into my coat sleeves.
“He liked to play old Russian folk songs. He’d make blini on Christmas Eve and cover them in powdered sugar until they looked like snow. And he’d wrap gifts in brown paper because he thought the store-bought kind was ‘capitalist glitter trash.’”
I let out a soft laugh. “I used to decorate them with stickers. He was quiet, a bit gruff and swore too much. You remind me of him,” I said, lifting my eyes to Marcus. “Just a younger version,” I added.
Marcus had stopped. He sat there, axe resting across one knee, watching me with a soft expression. Even Isabella’s face softened in a way I hadn’t seen since—God, maybe ever.
There was grief there. But more than that, there was recognition. Because I wasn’t talking about a stranger. She knew how significant he was to all four of us girls.
I looked down. My chest ached. “I miss him every day,” I whispered. “But at Christmas? It’s like he’s in the walls. Like if I decorate enough, sing enough, bake enough…maybe I can feel him again. Even if for only a second.”
I don’t know when, but Marcus had set the axe down, and suddenly his arms were around me—one across my back, one around the back of my head, pulling me tight. The warmth and solidness broke me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, burying my face in his jacket. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t,” he said, voice low. “You don’t ever have to apologize for loving someone.”
I held onto him and sobbed. The slow ache I’d held onto for so long leaked out the edges. Eventually, I pulled back.
“What happened to the gnome?” Isabella breathed.
It took me a second to catch up. “The what?”
“The tree goblin.”
