Page 77 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

She stepped out of the truck. “It’s fine,” she said.

Benny seemed perfectly happy with that statement. Brody, she could tell, was not.

Benny was hopping around in the snow, not paying attention to them anymore at all. Brody brought the tree up onto the porch, and she made her way up to where he was.

“And what happened?”

“That was my ex-husband. He wants Benny to come for all of Christmas break.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

“I didn’t think so either. Except he hasn’t seen him for a while, and I think...”

“Are you trying to make yourself feel better?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I? If the judge decides that it’s fair, because I moved...”

“Christmas means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

She wanted to shy away from the grave understanding on his face. It was too sweet, and she felt too raw.

“I just try really hard to give him happy holidays because...”

“And you try to give them to yourself too,” he said. “I get that.”

“You don’t care about Christmas, do you?”

“Not really.”

“Thank you for this. I’m going to decorate the tree with him tonight and... It might be the Christmas that I get to spend with him.”

“Hey. It doesn’t have to be Christmas Day. You can make Christmas whatever day you want. I mean, maybe that’s the kind of freethinking that comes with having a terrible childhood. I don’t have a lot of sacred days.”

“Thank you.” And she still wanted to cry.

“Let’s get the tree inside,” he said.

He opened up the door and carried it into the living room. She went down the hall and got her box of Christmas ornaments and her tree stand out of the closet. Brody took care of setting it up. She marveled at how easy it all was for him. She was usually the one wrestling with the tree and trying to screw it into the stand, and it was always too heavy for her, and it was really annoying.

It was really nice to have a man around, frankly. As regressive as that might seem.

But he was stronger than her physically, and that was quite handy.

“I have some spiced cider in the fridge,” she said.

“You have cider?”

“Yeah. I’ll heat it up. We can decorate the tree.” And she realized that she was maybe stepping over some invisible line. “I mean, you did help.”

“I don’t know that I’ll help decorate, but I’ll drink some cider.”

She went to the fridge and got the bottle out, and poured the contents into a pan on the stove. It was premade, she had not done it herself, but she did add an extra cinnamon stick.

Tears started slipping down her cheeks. She was being so dramatic. It was just... It was just not fair. Because Carter was doing what she had hoped that he would do, but it was a terrible time for him to do it. And he had given voice to a bunch of things that she had been worried about, but if he was dealing with them, how could she be angry about them?

She heard Brody walk up behind her, and he came to stand next to her, his big hands on the counter. He didn’t touch her, but he was close. “You’re not okay?”

“I’m being dramatic, because we aren’t even talking to the judge until Monday.”

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