Page 43 of Christmas Crisis
No, I knew where this was headed.
Eventually, I’d have to give her up. Or at least take a step back.
I stood, grasping the stair rail with both hands.
It had been a long time since I’d felt the otherness that came from acknowledging my authentic self. By hiding my truth, I’d insulated myself from the discomfort. But I felt it now. The flicker of shame. The modicum of anger. Bare rage that my dick didn’t get hard the way everyone else’s seemed to.
That I was a waste.
I felt the warm press of hands circling me from behind. Miranda pushed her chest against my back, forehead nestling between my shoulder blades.
“What are you doing out here, Bear?” she mumbled into my coat.
I patted her hands on my stomach before turning around to hug her. Resting my chin on her head, I reveled in the way she fit so well against me.
“Just thinking,” I said. “You slept in late.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was talking to Stone on the phone.” My shoulders tensed. She gripped me tighter, burrowing into my chest. “He can be such a goober sometimes about forgetting things. He left his lucky flip-flops at my place, and he has a key but apparently doesn’t know what ‘front closet’ means. We spent five minutes on the phone while he tried to find them. I got so confused when he described everything he was seeing until I realized he was in my bedroom closet and not the hall one.” Against my shirt, I felt her head shaking. “Should have just started out on video.”
The way Miranda used “goober,” as a term of endearment, accurately described Stone. He was essentially harmless, maybe even a good guy, but he was no match for Miranda. I gnashed my teeth, eager for the day she realized the fun-loving doofus was unworthy of her.
Just like I was unworthy of her.
Because I couldn’t snap my fingers and make myself different.
But I also couldn’t let her go.
I pulled out the sides of my coat to wrap her inside it, embracing her more fully.
With a burst of clarity, I knew the truth. She might belong to someone else someday, but no matter where our lives took us, there was a piece of me she would always carry.
My twin soul.
Chapter thirteen
Miranda
NOW
Driving into Coleman Creek usually made my heart swell up a bit, but driving in with Leo after the eventful week we’d had felt more like coming home from a wartime deployment.
The holiday decorations wrapped around trees and sparkling in storefront windows made the warm embrace of the familiar even more appealing. I noticed the Hawaiian-shirted Santa outside the bowling alley had a friend this year, a six-foot tall sunglasses-wearing penguin with reindeer antlers. The officialcity holiday tree would not be lit until the ceremony this weekend, but we saw it as we passed, already decorated with an array of red, pink, blue, and silver bows. The high school tree lot was open, beckoning eager residents who felt confident in their ability to keep a fresh fir alive for a month. At the end of Main Street, my sister Maureen’s consignment shop beckoned, with a piece of paper in the window that read “On Vacation. Back December 9.”
I couldn’t imagine a shop in Los Angeles sticking a sign on the door so the owner could spend a week in the woods. But Maureen was a one-woman show for now, and the locals didn’t mind. That was one thing I loved about my hometown. As much as it sucked to have everyone in your business, it was good to know people had your back.
“Do you want to stop at the pub and grab something to eat?” Leo asked, humming along to the Dean Martin Christmas standards he’d queued up an hour ago.
“I’m not ready to face people just yet. Everyone in town probably knows about Stone by now, and I’d rather deal with it later.”
“Understood.”
We’d broken up the long drive grocery shopping near the highway, so I figured we could hide for a while before anyone realized I’d come to town. My sisters would be back in two days, but Leo and I had the house to ourselves until then.
We’d been quiet during the journey, content to listen to the music as the miles passed. I thought a lot about what this past week would have been like with Stone if I hadn’t messed up and posted the pic. Video chats. Counting down the days until he staged his breakup with Naomi. Waiting for him to come home so we could have a real discussion about our relationship.
To the core of my being, I believed posting that picture had been an accident, but I couldn’t stop the suspicion that—subconsciously—I’d been trying to bring things to a head. My entire relationship with Stone had been a waiting game I’d willingly participated in. A waiting game that began as commitment aversion, grew into bored complacency, evolved into paralyzed inertia, and eventually became avoiding the situation altogether. For the past few months, every interaction with Stone filled me with low-key dread because I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. The whole time I’d been convincing myself we were in a relationship, we’d actually been waiting to start one.
And part of me knew that when I posted the picture.
