Page 68 of Bad Boy Bachelor Christmas
Nothing? It doesn’t feel wrong to you that we have to end this before it had a chance to get started? It doesn’t feel wrong that we have to say goodbye?
He cleared his throat and stood up abruptly, leaving me staring up at him as he grabbed his coat from the back of the armchair by the window. He shrugged it on.
“Where are you going?”
He fixed the collar of his jacket, pulling it up against his throat. “We should call it an early night. We have an early start tomorrow to get moving on the town square’s Christmas tree. This was fun.” His eyes flicked to the tree. “It looks good.”
“Yeah… yeah it does.”
His features softened when he leaned over and gave me a kiss. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
With that, he was gone, leaving my head spinning. Had I been foolish to think he was going to spend the night with me? My cabin felt hollow and silent, and the tree felt a little less magical without him here.
CHAPTER31
NORTH
Justin settled into the brown leather sofa by the fire in my living room. “No tree?”
“Haven’t had the time,” I said, which was true. All my time this month had been split between work and the pretty girl staying in my cabin. Now that it was coming to an end, I kind of wished I’d bothered to put up a tree in the living room.
Veronica never would have let this stand.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Justin said.
“Just beat, I guess.”
“So it has nothing to do with Winter leaving in five days?”
“Why would it?”
He laughed. “Because you’ve fallen head over heels for her. Everyone knows it. You’ve been the talk of the town for weeks already. Cami said Winter wants to come back.”
“Oh yeah?”
He cocked his head to the side. “I thought that would make you excited?”
Excited?
Not really.
We’d strung this thing along between us too long, and neither one of us had pulled our heads out of our asses long enough to realize it wasn’t sustainable. All that truth came crashing down on me last night after we finished decorating the tree in Winter’s cabin. She had to go home, and I had to stay here. She had a whole life carved out for herself back in Portland, and her future was only just beginning. Being ten years younger than me, she had a whole facet of life to experience that I couldn’t be a part of. She had to lay her foundation, whereas I’d already done that.
I refused to be the reason she missed out on huge life experiences.
This was a Christmas fling. Nothing more. Nothing less.
One of us had to face the music.
“I know that look,” Justin said.
“Uh huh.”
“You’re going to gut her, man.”
“We were both being naïve,” I said. “When she goes home, she shouldn’t spend her time thinking about me or the farm. She should immerse herself in her studies and think about her future. I don’t want to be the thing that holds her back.”
“And what makes you qualified to make that decision?”
