Page 47 of Holly & Hemlock
It is, for now, enough.
14
The Christmas Tree
Later, I take my lunch in the window seat, sandwich cut with surgical precision, an apple sliced into thin, nearly translucent fans. Whitby’s work. It is almost enough to make me forget the aftershocks that still flicker across the surface of my skin. Almost. My body is tired, but there is a residual voltage in the hands, the mouth, the pulse at my throat. I wonder, as I chew, if this will last, and if so, if I will ever grow used to it.
I open my book and read the same line eight times before giving up. The words melt together, unable to hold shape in the heat of my thoughts. I wonder where Lane is—probably on the grounds, hacking at the storm’s aftermath with the same ruthless focus he brought to me last night. Larkin is less predictable; he could be napping, or staging a coup, or composing a sonnet about the cruelty of morning light on a lover’s bruised skin.
I try to picture them together, then forcibly erase the thought. It is too strange, even for this house. Not the idea of two men, but ofthese two men, so wildly different from each other. But seeing them together was one of the sexiest thingsI’ve ever witnessed, so I think I will need to keep seeing it. Just to get used to it, of course. I finish my apple and press my forehead to the cold windowpane.
I don’t hear Lane approach. One moment, the air is as empty as my plate; the next, there is a presence in the doorway, vast and gravitational. I look up and there he is, hair still wet from the shower, beard flecked with tiny shards of sunlight, hands knotted behind his back in a posture that is almost repentant. He stands there for a long time, as if unsure whether to cross the threshold.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, voice barely above the register of the radiator.
“You didn’t,” I reply, closing the book on my thumb. “I was just pretending to read.”
He nods, once, as if he’d expected this answer. I reach for him and he comes to me, grabbing my hand, and holding it as he kisses me. He pulls away just as quickly, though, as if afraid he’ll get caught, by whom I’m not sure.
His gaze travels the length of the library, cataloguing the clutter, the faint footprints left by Whitby’s morning rounds, my lunch tray. He seems different today: less the wounded animal, more the man who, in another life, would have been a general or a martyr or something even less forgiving.
He shifts, clearing his throat. “It’s almost Christmas.”
“Is that so?” I do not bother to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
Lane’s mouth twitches—almost a smile. “If you want a tree, now’s the time.”
“A tree? I hadn’t really thought about it.”
He glances at the window. “It’s a tradition.”
I try to recall the last time I had a real one. The years collapse together. I’d been using an old fake tree my neighbors gave me instead of throwing away. Before that, awithered fir from the gas station lot, dead on arrival was a treat. I didn’t even invest in ornaments. There was never anyone else there to appreciate them.
I say, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Lane shrugs, big shoulders rolling under the flannel. “I’ll show you. If you want.”
The offer is simple, but I feel the charge in it—the unspoken hope that something as ordinary as tree shopping could bridge the impossible gap between the morning’s violent sex and the day’s new silence. I nod, and Lane smiles. Actually smiles.
“Bundle up,” he says, softer now. “It’s colder than it looks.”
I gather my things—book, scarf, the memory of their mouths on my neck—and follow Lane down the hall. The air is charged with the anticipation of the ordinary, and I find myself hoping, irrationally, that nothing will disturb it.
We walk in silence. Lane’s boots are muddy, the laces frayed, but he moves with the confidence of someone who has never once questioned his right to take up space. I try to match his stride, failing, but the effort feels good, like stretching a muscle that has long been dormant.
As we round the curve of the main staircase and into the foyer, I catch the echo of my own voice—higher, more uncertain than I remember—asking, “Does it bother you? What happened this morning?”
Lane stops, just short of the vestibule. He turns, and I am struck again by the violence of his eyes, gray and bright and full of weather.
“I don’t know,” he says, truthfully. “I keep thinking it should.”
“Me too.”
He looks worried, broken. “It doesn’t though?”
I step closer to him and rest my hand on his chest. He puts his on my waist, gripping me as if I’m a lifeline.
“No.”
