Page 10 of A DIY Christmas Miracle
I barely managed to suppress the pathetic sigh that wanted to escape my lips. I was so fucking doomed.
“Oh, wow… thank you.” Will cleared his throat, his cheeks blazing, eyes everywhere but on me. And there I had my answer: the gesture had been too much.
Not a big surprise. How was one supposed to find the right balance to express one’s feelings after pining for a guy for years? My goodness, I was long past the right point of giving up on my crush.
“I brought an ice pack?”
“Huh?”
“An ice pack.” Will held up the neon blue bag. “For your knee.”
“Oh, of course. Thank you.” I forced a smile to my lips, hobbled a few steps to grab my travel bags, and made the mistake of bending my knees to lift them off the floor.
Fuck! A sharp pain shot through my knee, up my leg, right into my hip, and sent me reeling.Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! Thatreallyhurt.
“Wait, let me take this!” Will, being the good Samaritan he was, rushed to my side and literally snatched the bag out of my hands. If I hadn’t still been busy trying to stay upright, I’d have protested. It was my luggage… and I wasn’t exactly traveling light.
“Take the coffee and the ice pack and get your ass to the car. I want you to sit down and stop putting weight on your knee, got it?” Will ordered.
I looked at Will in bewilderment. I’d known Will for more than two years now, and yet I’d never seen him like this. I hardly knew this dominant, demanding side of him.
Did he use that voice with his students? I often wondered what kind of teacher the rather reserved and somewhat shy Will was. How he managed to stand in front of a class of teenagers and teach. I liked him a lot, but I’d often worried his students wouldn’t respect him for his nerdy antics. Students could be cruel — especially students in the throes of puberty with hormones running wild.
That was one of the reasons I’d become an elementary school teacher. I mean, small children were exhausting in their own way, but teenagers? Nah, I hadn’t even really liked most of them when I’d been one myself.
“Eli?”
“Huh?”
“I told you to get in the car.” Will shoved the travel mugs and ice pack at me and basically pushed me out my front door. “Don’t worry, I’ll lock up for you,” he added, closing the door in my face. Now I was outside. In the snow.
Screw the pain; it was snowing!
A smile tugged at my lips as I looked up at the sky. White, nothing but white. Thick flakes were falling from the white, cloudy sky. Not a hint of blue in sight, and the sun was hiding behind the closed cloud cover.
I carefully hobbled down the stairs outside of my front door and over to Will’s slightly rusty black pickup. The snow was crunching beneath my feet, and the snowflakes were landing on my face again and again. It was freezing cold, but it didn’t bother me. Quite the contrary. I halted for a moment, closed my eyes, turned my face towards the sky, and enjoyed the cold but soft flakes falling down onto my cheeks, slowly melting away on my skin.
The weather had taken pity on me. It’d sent me snow and was promising me a blizzard later tonight.
My plan would work. My father had been right after all. You had to take fate into your own hands.
Chapter 5
Eli
“Okay… my plan for today is to get the Christmas tree first to get it out of the way, then do the grocery shopping, and then drive up to the cabin. Sound good?” Will asked. His eyes flitted to me for a fraction of a second before focusing back on the road ahead of us. It was still clear outside… well, the road was. The snow that’d fallen during the past couple of days and weeks had been piling up on the sides of the road, at times almost four feet high, giving the impression that the roads were actually carved into the snow. Which, I guess, was kinda accurate.
If there was one thing that was working here — you know, besides a functioning health care system — it was the plowing services. From what my parents had told me about their various trips through Europe, that was not the case everywhere, and a couple of inches of snow in the wrong region could result in absolute chaos for days.
“Good plan,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll want to leave again after arriving at the cabin. At least not right away.”
Will chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I hear you. I mean, my car’s heating up nicely and everything, but once I’m sitting in front of a fireplace? You’ll need a crowbar to pry me away.”
“Yeah, me, too.” I grinned. Something else we had in common. “Whenever I sit down in front of the fireplace with a book, it’s like I’m glued to the spot for hours. The whole house would probably have to be on fire to get me to move.”
Damn. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t want Will and me to sit mere feet apart in front of the fireplace with him not daring to talk to me because he didn’t want to disturb me while I was reading. I’d much rather we talk. If anyone was allowed to disturb me while I was reading, it was him. Always him.
I’d even stop reading my favorite Christmas novel for him, which was basically the highest praise I was capable of and something I didn’t do lightly. I’d certainly never done that for any of my exes.
