Page 33 of Jingle Bell Flock
“You know that game ‘fuck, marry, kill’?” she asked, shoving her phone back into her pocket. “It looks like you wanted to do all three at once.”
Heat crept up the back of my neck, and I cleared my throat. “Well, I’ve given up on ‘kill.’”
She stood up straighter, her eyes lighting up. “And?”
“And we’ve definitely fucked.”
Stella’s eyebrows shot up under her dark bangs, and she slapped both palms on the bar top, leaning forward. “I fucking knew it.” She made a rolling gesture with her hand, fingers beckoning. “Go on …”
I stared down at my beer, my stomach clenching.
Saying it out loud would make this real. Make it something I couldn’t take back or pretend I didn’t feel. But I’d known it since the morning after our first night together, when I’d woken up next to him and hadn’t wanted to leave. I knew it when he’d looked at me across the table at Dockside yesterday, and I’d felt my entire chest crack open. Knew it every single time he smiled at me, and I forgot how to breathe.
I was in love with Harrison Prescott.
Had been for half my goddamn life.
And I wanted forever with him.
“And, uh … I’m …” I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had settled there. “I’m … thinking about the ‘marry’ part, actually.”
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the refrigeration units humming in the back.
“Holy shit,” Stella said finally. She leaned forward and lowered her head slightly to catch my eyes, since I was still staring into my beer as if it held the answers to life. “You’re fucking serious.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah. Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “We’ve been together for less than a week. It’s insane to be thinking about that already.”
Stella bent at the waist and rested her forearms on the bar top, her expression shifting into something I didn’t see from her often—stone cold seriousness.
“You want my advice?” she asked.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked with a smirk.
“No.” She held my gaze. “Stop being in your head about whether it’s too soon or too fast or too … whatever. Life doesn’t care if you’re ready, Jeremy. Moments pass. People move on. And then you’re stuck with nothing but regrets and ‘what ifs’ because you were too chickenshit to say what you actually felt when you had the chance.”
Something uncomfortable twisted in my gut. Stella wasn’t usually the type to give grand speeches about life and love.
“That sounds like experience talking,” I said quietly.
As far as I knew, Stella hadn’t dated anyone in a while. Years, maybe. Though I’d heard some rumors floating around town about her and Cade Murphy—something about them having history and a New Year’s Eve party that got out of hand. But I wasn’t a gossip, and I tried like hell to avoid people who were, so I’d never asked.
Now, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if her speech just now was about him.
Maybe you are a gossip after all, I thought, because I sure as shit wanted to know.
She shrugged, her walls coming back up. “Maybe.”
“Stella—”
“Don’t.” She straightened, picking up my empty glass. “Point is, you already wasted seventeen years. Don’t waste any more.”
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find a text from Harrison.
Harrison
Wine’s breathing, pasta sauce is simmering, and last night’s hockey game is queued up to watch. Still targeting 7?
I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face.
