Page 12 of The Santa Situation
I leveled him a look that was supposed to shut him up, but only made him grin wider and waggle his eyebrows suggestively.
“Don’t start.”
He cackled, and I followed him downstairs, watching as he donned his coat, wound his scarf around his neck, and stuffed his gloves into his pockets.
“You’re sure you don’t want a ride?” I asked.
“Nope. I’m meeting up with Maggie and Lilah.”
“And Gavin?” I asked in a sing-song voice.
If he could tease me about Charlie, I could damn well tease my son about his new crush.
His face turned red. “Yes, and Gavin.” He dropped his eyes, brushing the toe of his boot over the nicked hardwood floor. “When you meet him, try not to embarrass me too much.”
“Ooh, I get to meet this one?” I leaned against the banister, my tone teasing but my chest tightening a little.
Eli had dated before, but the boys were never out, which meant he often hid those relationships, or Maggie pretended to be their girlfriend so they could spend time together. He’d once told me it was either that or nothing, and my heart had broken for him.
The fact that this Gavin was open to meeting me felt big. Like maybe Eli had finally found something worthy of him.
I hesitated. “Does that mean he’s …?”
He looked up, meeting my eyes. “Yeah,” he said softly. “He is.”
My throat tightened, the feeling equal parts pride and protectiveness. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Then I can’t wait to meet him.”
His grin came back, bright and a little shy. “You’re such a sap.”
“Runs in the family,” I said, nudging him toward the door. “Go. Have fun.”
Eli chuckled all the way down the porch steps. “Have fun with Santa!”
Ten minutes later, old Joe McGillicuddy, the lone taxi driver in Mistletoe Bay for as long as I could remember, pulled up in his black Lincoln Town Car.
The drive out to Cade Murphy’s took us along the familiar backroads that stitched the outskirts of Mistletoe Bay together—fields rimed with frost, barns strung with lights, smoke rising in thin threads from chimneys.
And then, just before the turn that led to Cade’s place, we passed the old Slater farm.
The fields were bare now, the cornstalks long gone for winter, but my pulse still stuttered as the road curved past the same stretch where, after Homecoming, everything had changed between Charlie and me.
God, I hadn’t thought about what we used to get up to out here in years. Hadn’t recalled the way the windows of his car had fogged with our mingled breaths, the way he’d learned my body in the dark, and I’d learned his.
The same spot where, months later, we’d calmly discussed breaking up before going off to separate colleges. I could almost hear the echo of my nervous laughter as I tried to make the ache of our looming goodbye a little smaller. “I mean, it’s not like you love me or anything,” I’d said, almost as a joke.
But the memory that surfaced next—the way Charlie had gone still, the way his smile faltered—made my stomach twist inthe here and now. For one quick beat, I’d seen something raw in his eyes by the glow of the dash. Something that I realized now looked an awful lot like heartbreak.
After a long pause, he’d finally said, “Can you imagine if we’d said that to each other? How crazy would that be?”
We’d laughed, though even then it had sounded hollow to my ears. And then I’d kissed him, and he’d kissed me back, and we’d spent the next hour making each other come.
Pushing that memory aside, my hand came up, pressing against the ache that bloomed beneath my ribs. For years, I’d told myself that we were just two kids living in the now because there wouldn’t be a later. We cared about each other—deeply—but we knew we didn’t have a future.
But what if there could have been? What if he’d been about to tell me he loved me, and I’d laughed it away?
The thought hollowed me out.
“No,” I whispered to myself with a sniff. “Don’t you dare go there.”
