Page 69 of Holiday Love
“I don’t scare easily.” Her smile grows.
“I’m learning that about you.” I glance once more at the bridge, then back to Helen. My breathing stops, air trapped in my throat. She’s beautiful. Her hair catches beams of moonlight, which makes the strands glow silver. For a second, I just stare at her, like an idiot. I’m mesmerized not by the dress or the lights or the view, but because of her. She’s so quietly stunning it doesn’t feel real. Like I accidentally stumbled into someone else’s life, and I’m not supposed to be here.
I want to touch her. Tell her. Ask if she feels it too, this pull between us.
But I don’t.
Instead, I memorize her. The way her lips curve, the way she wraps her coat tighter around herself but leans into me anyway, like she needs my warmth.
Needs me.
And I think:God help me, I could fall for her.
Unable to wait any longer, I kiss her softly, just long enough to feel the warmth of her mouth on mine. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go dancing.”
“Now?” she laughs. “The clubs shut down in a couple of hours.”
I give her another kiss, this time passionate, stroking my tongue piercing into her mouth in a way that leaves her trembling. Helen melts against me, pliant and wanting. I pull back and tell her, “A couple of hours is all the time we need.”
That’s what I say, but it’s a lie. A couple of hours with her will never be enough.
Chapter twenty-nine
DECEMBER
Chapter thirty
Helen
I’m on my way to ballet, the streetlights casting warm puddles of light across the sidewalk, when I hang up the phone with Gwen. She sounded lighter today, happier. Carter is doing better since he got the ear tubes. He’s finally eating and gaining weight. The relief in her voice was unmistakable, and it lingers in me, leaving a quiet smile on my face as I tuck my phone into my pocket and keep walking.
I’m three blocks away from home when a dark-haired woman steps directly into my path.
She’s beautiful, tall, and striking with full lips and perfectly drawn cat-eye eyeliner. Her look is polished in a way that says she either wakes up like this or spends hours watching makeup tutorials, which I never have the time or willpower to get through.
It takes me a minute to recognize her, which isn’t surprising. I only met her once before, and that was over a year ago. On the night I met Teddy, Gina worked in the bar with him. She’s his ex-housemate, and I assume from the way they interacted that long-ago night she was, maybe still is, something much more to him.
The flare of jealously is so sudden it knocks the breath right out of my chest.
“Gina?” I ask, second-guessing myself. This will be so embarrassing if I get it wrong.
As unsure as I am of her identity, she doesn’t share that same hesitation.
“Helen, right?” she says, with the kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, like she already knows the answer and is impatiently waiting for me to catch up.
I nod.
“Teddy’s staying with you?” she asks, coolly confident. Another question she already knows the answer to.
Another nod from me, slower this time.
I wonder how she got here? Is this a coincidence, or was she waiting? That can’t be right, that she’s deliberately waylaid me?
Her eyes flick over me, her mouth in a thin line like she’s not impressed by what she sees. Self-conscious, I glance down at my leotard and gauzy pink ballet skirt.
Oh god, what if she thinks I dress like this for fun?
Like I have so little fashion sense that I walk around like this all the time, dressed in pastel tulle like I’m some sort of sad adult fairy-tale princess. An off-duty sugar plum fairy.
