Page 109 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“Do you ever get to talk about that?”

He shook his head. “There’s no point. What he did to them... It’s unforgivable. So I don’t think about that stuff. I don’t think about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“It did matter though, didn’t it?”

“I don’t want to talk about this. I really don’t. I didn’t want to talk about it when Lachlan brought it up, and I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Okay. We don’t need to.”

He looked up at her. “That’s it?”

“You said you didn’t want to, Brody. I’m here if you do. We had a pretty easy time talking about everything. I told you my stuff. You didn’t run away. I’m not going to, either, because you’re telling me that your feelings are more complicated than anybody has given you permission for them to be.”

“I don’t need anybody’s permission to do anything,” he said.

“Of course you don’t. And I didn’t say you did.”

“I know you didn’t say that. I’m just... Thank you for the cookies. I appreciate the spirit. And I will consider them the first cookies ever baked for me.”

She could tell that he was trying to put a Band-Aid on all of it. And maybe he was right to do that. What was the point in playing these games? What was the point of trying to get to the truth when there just wasn’t time for that? What was the point?

She really did wonder. Maybe there wasn’t a reason. It was just that she... She knew a certain kind of closeness. But it wasn’t this. She had told him things about herself she had never told anybody. She had shared her fears, her insecurities. She told him exactly why she had been vulnerable to falling into a relationship, the things that she had thought. These small, mean issues that she always felt so embarrassed about. And he had just accepted it. He had taught her that somebody could accept it. He had made her feel like she could accept it more. Like she could accept herself more.

She wanted to give him something. Something that looked even a little bit like that. Was that not reasonable? It seems like it ought to be.

But it could also be just cider and cookies and an evening spent not being so lonely. An evening spent making each other feel good. Why couldn’t it be that?

You’re trying to make something “forever.” And you know you can’t do that. You know you can’t force it.

She repeated that to herself. Repeated it to herself because it was that important.

She needed to understand. And she needed to listen.

Because she had already done this overly attached thing. She had already misconstrued something romantic for something permanent.

It wasn’t wrong to believe that “forever” existed. She refused to believe that it was. She had found a kind of forever with Benny. That forever family that she’d always wanted. She didn’t have to project that onto a man.

“These are delicious,” he said.

She took a sip of her cider and sat on the couch directly beside him. She snuggled against him, and looked at the tree. It was beautiful.

“I always dreamed of making my own Christmas,” she said. Because she couldn’t help herself.

He didn’t need to share with her, but there was something healing about her being able to say all these hidden things in her heart that she had never been able to speak out loud before. To know that the man that she said them to was going to want to see her naked later, and he wouldn’t stop wanting her just because he knew... Because he knew her.

Because he knew she wasn’t fancy Elizabeth Colfax. Because he knew the name was borrowed, and so were her clothes. Bought with money that was never hers.

Yeah. He knew that.

He knew that, and he was here anyway. “I saw so many different Christmas traditions growing up,” she said. “Different holiday traditions. I loved all of them. I thought they were all beautiful. I love seeing the way it brought families together. Families of all kinds. No matter their faith, no matter their traditions... They were all wonderful, because they were nothing like what I had ever seen before. But I always wondered what kind of Christmas I would make. I had two Christmases with Benny while married to Carter. And I imagined those being the foundation. The traditions that I would have for the rest of my life. In the house, with that man, with all the children that we would have. And then it was gone. I did my best to make new traditions. But I’m always trying to do that.” She had realized this about herself recently, and now she was saying it out loud. “I’m always trying to make the one thing that will last forever. And this Christmas isn’t going to be like any other Christmas. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with looking back on this, and having this as a memory. And not something that happens every year.”

“I’ve never thought of things that way. Traditions and ongoing things, and one-time things... The only thing I’ve ever really counted on is that life will bite you in the ass. In familiar and unfamiliar ways, randomly all the time.”

She laughed. “I mean, you’re not wrong. I might be a little more satisfied with the state of affairs if I learned that level of acceptance.”

“I don’t know that it’s acceptance. It’s kind of pessimistic.”

“Fatalistic, maybe.”

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