Page 57 of Her Holiday Arrangement
“I was thinking,” Riley muttered, though she wasn’t sure about what exactly. About last night. About the way Elizabeth had everything. About herself, about the lie, about the too-real tension that had built between them. “Trying to figure stuff out.”
Elizabeth finally looked at her, and Riley caught her eyes flicker, something brief, maybe worry, maybe curiosity. She looked away immediately, settling back against the sofa cushions like a practiced image of indifference.
Riley’s hands were folded in her lap, fingers twisting, nails pressing against her palms. She wanted to reach for Elizabeth. Wanted to move closer. Wanted to risk the collapse of that wall she had built between them, the one Elizabeth seemed to manage so effortlessly.
Elizabeth’s lips moved in the ghost of a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “This wasn’t supposed to feel like this,” she murmured.
The words landed heavy in the quiet room.
Riley blinked, her heartbeat thudding. “Feel like what?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer right away. She tilted her head slightly, as if she could find the explanation somewhere in the dying fire. “Complicated,” she said finally. “It was supposed to be simple.”
Simple. Riley almost laughed, but it would have come out sounding too close to pain. “Guess I’m not really the simple type,” she said instead, pulling the blanket tighter.
Elizabeth’s gaze flicked to her then, just for a second, but it was enough to make Riley’s stomach flip. There was somethingbehind her eyes, something that looked a lot like longing, and that was almost worse than the ice.
They sat in silence. The unspoken stretched between them, taut as a thread that could snap at any second. Riley wanted to say something, anything, but the air felt too charged. It was as if one wrong word might shatter whatever fragile thing they had left.
And then Elizabeth’s hand moved. Slowly, deliberately, she reached across the cushion, her fingers brushing the edge of the blanket that covered Riley’s leg. Her hand hovered, an inch from Riley’s, close enough for warmth to reach across the gap.
Riley’s breath caught.
Elizabeth hesitated. Her jaw tightened. Then, as though the contact burned, she pulled her hand back into her lap, folding it neatly over the other.
It was the smallest rejection in the world. And it gutted Riley.
She stood, the blanket falling from her shoulders in a heap. “Goodnight,” she said, and her voice came out more brittle than she wanted.
Elizabeth looked up at her, something flickering in her expression. Regret? Confusion? Want? But she didn’t speak. She just watched as Riley left the room.
Riley didn’t look back. She wouldn’t give herself that moment, wouldn’t give Elizabeth that power.
The hallway felt colder than the den. Her footsteps were muffled against the old runner rug, but her pulse sounded loud in her ears. Upstairs, the guest room was dim, the soft glow from the snow outside seeping in through the window.
She shut the door quietly, leaning against it for a second before crossing to the bed. The red-and-green quilt was still mussed from the night before. She crawled beneath it, curling on her side, the way she had so many nights when she needed to protect something inside herself.
She wanted to cry. She didn’t.
Instead, she stared out the window. Snowflakes drifted past the glass, slow and heavy, layering over the world in white. The storm was still going strong, swallowing the horizon, closing them all in.
She thought of Elizabeth’s almost-touch. Of the way her voice had cracked, just barely, on the wordcomplicated.
Riley exhaled, her breath fogging in the faint chill of the room.
She wasn’t going to beg. Not for affection, not for scraps of attention. She wasn’t going to let herself be the one chasing someone who couldn’t decide whether to open the door or slam it shut.
But God, she wanted her.
She pulled the quilt tighter, watching the snow fall until her eyes blurred, not from tears, but from exhaustion that went bone-deep. Somewhere downstairs, the fire was probably out by now.
And upstairs, in this room, Riley was determined: she might be trapped in the same house as Elizabeth Hale, but she would not be trapped in her orbit. Not anymore.
Even if it killed her.
10
December 21st - Elizabeth
