Page 16 of The Santa Situation
She slid into the passenger seat, brushing snow from her hair.
“Let’s get you home,” I said, reaching over to hit the switch for our seat warmers.
I eased down the drive and out onto the road, my car’s headlights reflecting off the snow like a million tiny diamonds falling from the dark.
For a few minutes we talked about nothing in particular—what a good job the beautification committee had done with this year’s decorations, how increasingly ridiculous some of the gift requests had gotten as the kids told Santa what they wanted for Christmas, and how cold it had gotten over the past twenty-four hours—until the road narrowed, bending toward the old Slater farm.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel before my brain could tell them to relax. I’d been thinking about that field all damn day.
When Jemma cleared her throat, my pulse tripped.
“Do you ever drive out this way and think about …” she began before trailing off. “You know.”
I risked a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She was looking out the window, her breath fogging the glass.
“It was good, wasn’t it?” she continued. “Us. Back then.”
“It was,” I said quietly. “Better than I knew how to appreciate.”
That earned me a small smile, wistful and knowing.
We both fell silent again, the kind that makes you aware of your own breathing. The headlights swept the familiar curve in the road, the one that hid the pull-off where I’d learned every inch of this woman’s body once upon a time.
“Do you ever get tired of being alone?” she asked, her voice breaking through the quiet.
“Yeah,” I said. “More than I let on.”
“Same.” Her voice cracked slightly. “It’s difficult letting myself trust again. Sometimes I think I forgot how.”
Something in her tone made me ease my foot off the gas.
“Jem?”
“Can you pull over, please?” she asked.
I slowed and turned the wheel, my tires crunching over the gravel that lined the side of the road until I hit dirt. The car idled at the edge of the trees, and my heart was pounding like it used to when we’d come out here.
She turned toward me in her seat, her expression determined. “I trust you, Charlie. I always have.”
The words set off aswoopingmotion in my gut, and for half a heartbeat, I couldn’t tell if it was relief or warning. I didn’t know what she was building to, and suddenly I didn’t know if I wanted to know.
“That goes both ways,” I said, my words coming out sounding rough.
She drew in a breath and lifted her chin. “And it’s precisely because I trust you, and because you know what this … this loneliness … feels like, that I need to ask if you’d … if you’d kiss me. Like you used to.”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard her. My brain stalled, trying to make sense of the words that had just come out of her mouth, but my body already understood. Heat unfurled low in my gut, sharp and sudden, that familiar pull snapping awake.
I blinked once, twice. Jemma was watching me, her gaze steady even though her chest was rising and falling fast.
Christ. I’d spent half the day trying not to think about the shape of her mouth, the way she used to taste. And now she was sitting three feet away, asking me to remember.
My pulse thrummed in my ears, loud enough to drown out the whir of the heater.
“Are you sure?” I finally managed, pushing the words out past the lump in my throat.
Her laugh was broken, almost a sob. “No. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Wondering if it was better in my head than it really was. Wondering if anyone will ever kiss me like that again.” She swallowed. “Is it so wrong to just … want some goddamn affection from someone you actually like?”
Like.
