Page 81 of Bad Boy Bachelor Christmas
He turned his attention back to me. “You heard him, Winter. Ever since you left, he’s been brooding all around town, missing you. We tried to talk sense into him, but you know how he can be. It’s like talking to a very thick, very stubborn, very large brick wall.”
“I know.” I smiled.
“He’s not going to be able to tell you no twice,” Justin said, his voice ringing with confidence. “Mark my words. Saying goodbye to you the first time gutted him. He’s not going to do it again.”
I turned to Cami.
My friend nodded. “For once, I agree with Justin.”
* * *
I spent the bulk of the lighting ceremony event being approached by people who’d heard from word of mouth who I was. They had questions about my design experience, where I went to school, and why I’d come to Maple Hill in the first place. I tried to answer them as best I could while not getting distracted by North, who was always close by but just out of reach.
This town sure loved him.
For such a grumpy guy, he’d made decades’ worth of good impressions on these people. A few days ago, I felt like I knew the ins and outs of his soul, including the darkest and brightest corners, but now I felt like there was so much more left to learn about him. So many more mysteries to solve.
I hoped he’d give me the chance to solve them.
When Justin and Cami had peppered me with questions, I’d been too afraid to tell them what I’d really wanted.
I wanted North back.
I wanted to make this work.
Yes, I wanted to speak my piece, but at the end of the day, all I wanted was for him to acknowledge that this love between us was not mundane, and it wouldn’t come around twice, and we’d be fools not to lean into it.
If I said all of that, it would become real, and I wouldn’t be able to face them if he turned me down again. For now, I had to play things close to the vest.
Marge and Leslie approached me at one point, and Marge had a motherly glint in her eye as she told me all about how happy she was to see that I hadn’t given up on North, who she affectionately referred to as “my boy.”
“Not yet,” I assured her. “The real question is if he’s given up on me.”
Marge shook her head, and her permed hair danced across her forehead. “Don’t worry yourself over it, dear. That speech he gave earlier? That wasn’t for us or for the tree. It was for you. Everything he has done and become this month has been for you. I think he finally knows it.” She nodded across the way to the hot chocolate stand, where North was being bombarded by kids after offering to treat them to hot chocolates.
I giggled into the warmth of my white glove.
The kids kept on coming, emerging from the crowd like dogs being called to their bowls by a bell, and North continued to supply them with hot chocolate, laughing that booming but rare laugh of his as they tugged at his pants and jacket, competing for his attention and whichever cup he was handing down at the time.
“He’ll be a great father someday,” Marge said.
Leslie, her dear friend, nodded beside her. “Like his daddy before him.”
I studied the older women who’d known North his whole life. “He mentioned on a trip he wanted kids. Does he really want a family?”
“He used to,” Leslie said.
“Before Veronica died?” I asked.
Both women nodded.
Marge found her voice first. “They had dreams of having two children, perhaps three. North wanted to break the family tradition of only having one child, and always sons. He wanted a little girl. Over the years I think he has forgotten that dream. But with you around? Well, let’s just say he usually avoids children like the plague.”
I watched the man of my dreams as he knelt down in the snow, handing over the final hot chocolate to a tiny girl who couldn’t have been more than three and a half, perhaps four. Her hair, short and curly, was tied off in two tiny pigtails and secured with little red bows that matched the ones on her red boots. North said something to her that made her shy and bashful, and she looked down at the snow before he lifted her chin, said something else, and earned himself a radiant little smile.
I’d never felt so full of desire and need before—and this wasn’t sexual desire. I wanted North more than I wanted anything in my life. He’d shaken things up for me like I lived in a snow globe. All at once, I’d come out to the other side, and the world was bigger here. Scarier. Brighter.
But it was nothing without him.
