Wrapped Up in You

by Talia Hibbert

  And this really wasn’t helping the soul-deep crack in his solar plexus.

  Abbie must’ve sensed the change in his thoughts, seen it on his face, because her smile faded and she shook her head. “Oh, Will. This is no good, is it?”

  His heart stilled. Me being without you? No, it’s not. “What?”

  “It’s Christmas, or near enough. We can’t have you upset. So …” She flicked a glance outside at the steady swirl of snow in the moonlight, and he saw a familiar, thoughtful smile curve her lips. “I know what we should do.”

  Oh God, he thought. “Oh God,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Even though he suddenly really, really wanted to do it. “I’ll probably slip and break my neck.”

  “Doubt it,” she replied. “How drunk are you? Get up,” she ordered, “and walk in a straight line.”

  He did, though he knew he shouldn’t. “It’s the middle of the night, and we’re grown-ups.”

  “Shut up. It’ll make you smile.” She watched his slightly wobbly walk, then shrugged her shoulders. “That’s good enough.”

  “Is it?”

  She clearly wasn’t listening. “Put some clothes on and meet me outside.”

  Six

  Abbie wasn’t entirely sure how she’d ended up here.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew how she’d ended up downstairs—couldn’t sleep, needed a cup of tea to silence the warring, worried thoughts in her mind. And she knew how she’d ended up wanting to make Will smile—she’d seen him drowning his sorrows during what sounded like a horrible call with his agent, had seen the sadness in his eyes as he spoke about ending his career, and knew from experience that deciding to cut something off because it was time didn’t stop it from hurting like hell.

  She just wasn’t sure what had possessed her to fix things by dragging Will out to play in the snow.

  Now here they stood, coats zipped up over their thermal pyjamas, bathed by the flashing red lights of Grandma’s giant SANTA STOP HERE inflatable. She snuck a look over at Will and found him tipping his head back to face the gently falling snow. His eyes were closed, his nose pink, his smile sweet and dreamy. Her heart stuttered. Her carefully muzzled emotions snarled awake. The sheer force of her want, stronger than ever—or maybe just harder to ignore—almost dragged her across the metres between them.

  Abbie’s toes curled up in her boots as though she could cling to her spot on the grass.

  For God’s sake, she was supposed to be staying away from him. He’d completely shorted out her circuits today, had tangled up so many dangerous emotions in her that she’d had no choice but to compartmentalise herself nearly to death. Will’s attraction to her? Locked up. Her desperate need for him? Chained down. The words “I’m trying to seriously date you” said in that steady, utterly unselfconscious way he had? Run through a shredder and locked in a box and thrown into a volcano.

  She knew that wasn’t a healthy approach to coping, but what was she supposed to do? Have a full-blown emotional crisis over lunch? Scare her grandmother by ripping out her own heart and throwing it at Will’s head, which was what the prospect of admitting her feelings felt like? Far better to tie her inner turmoil to a chair, slap some tape over its mouth, and focus on the good, easy, simple stuff—like acting natural, and playing with Haddock, and putting up the last of the Christmas decorations. All of that stuff mattered, because it was immediate and it was familiar and it would stop her getting wrapped up in her own head and examining the way she’d almost dissolved at the thought of intimacy at least seven times today.

  Because she realised now that that was exactly what had happened. She’d been … afraid, earlier outside the supermarket. Afraid of vomiting up decades’ worth of pathetic, unkillable, unrequited love, and finally confirming her lifelong suspicion that she wasn’t just too much—she was too much for Will. She’d suspected it all her life. Flinched away from it all her life.

  He was so sweet, so easy, so pure. She was so … intense. Tangled. Overwhelmed by herself, or rather, overwhelmed by the things she could feel when he looked at her, things that belonged in fairy tales with bloodied swords and dramatic happy endings, not in real life.

  Which is the kind of self-thought you’re supposed to write in your feelings journal and examine thoroughly and objectively for any cognitive distortions.

  Unfortunately, Abbie’s feelings journal wasn’t here. Before she could decide if running upstairs to get it would be too weird, something cold and hard and wet slapped her in the left tit. She gasped, snapped back into the moment, and saw the flash of Will’s bright, familiar smile before he slipped behind the trunk of Grandma’s holly tree.

  “You bastard!” she called, outraged. “We didn’t even count down!”

  “You were so busy staring into space, I could’ve counted down from a hundred and you probably wouldn’t have noticed,” he shot back.

  Touché. Squinting through the mess of her glasses, Abbie crouched and gathered a fistful of snow, packing it tight. “Get out here, you coward.”

  “Come and get me,” he replied, the words floating to her on a wave of laughter. She felt as if he’d pinched her windpipe shut for a second. Come and get me.

  I can’t I can’t I can’t I don’t know how.

  That wasn’t what he’d meant. He was fine. He’d get over it. He’d get over her. For heaven’s sake, he was barely under her, while she was fucking crushed by the weight of him and always had been and—

  She saw a flash of movement, the glint of his golden hair, and threw instinctively. A second later, he was standing there with snow all over his face, looking drunk as hell and shocked as shit, and Abbie was doubled over laughing.

  “Abigail,” he growled, shaking his head like a dog.

  “Too easy,” she told him, and it was like they were children again. This was all she wanted, all she needed: ease.

  So why did everything feel slightly hollow now?

  “You always had that unholy right arm,” he accused, and his voice came clear enough to indicate that he was close. Too close. Before she could dart away, he was there, grabbing the front of her jacket with one hand, using the other to shove a clump of snow down the back of her hood.

  “Cheat,” she shrieked, trying and failing to squirm away. Icy wetness trickled down her spine, lighting up her nerve endings, forcing hysterical giggles from her diaphragm. “Argh! Fuck! Get off!”

  He released her, but now he was the one doubled over with laughter. Abbie snatched up more snow and threw it at his gorgeous, irritating head, but he only laughed harder and grabbed her again and pulled her closer—

  Oh.

  His laughter cut out at the exact moment her humour was replaced by dangerous awareness. Whatever he’d intended to do, he seemed to have forgotten. Now he let go of her, his smile fading, his gaze all but burning away the few inches of space between them. There were little bits of snow clinging to his eyelashes, his eyebrows, his facial hair. His mouth was pink with the cold, and soft and familiar and so fucking dear.

  “Abbie,” he said, and she could smell the sharp tang of good gin on his breath. An excellent reminder to stop whatever was happening here and step the fuck away. But before she could, he asked, the words only slightly slurred, “Why did you kiss me?”

  She stared, uncomprehending. “What?”

  “Why did you—”

  And then the penny dropped, much like her heart. “Oh.” Oh God. She felt a bit sick. Was she breathing faster than usual? “Um. I don’t—I don’t know.” Fuck. They’d never talked about that. He’d never asked. And she’d avoided him like the fucking plague ever since because she hadn’t wanted him to ask.

  She’d even missed family Christmas last year, for God’s sake, which had made things easier, yes—but it had also ripped her heart out of her chest, to act like she couldn’t make it, and instead hole up with Chi
tra’s family and pretend not to care that her own nosy siblings and brisk mother were miles away. Months later, she’d dodged Will as best she could on her and Jase’s birthday—which had been logistically awkward, to say the least. Abbie had done her absolute best to force distance between them, and still, she couldn’t forget. Couldn’t stop the giddy, nauseous mix of embarrassment and yearning that the memory stirred in her.

  Kissing Will two years ago was, quite possibly, the worst thing she’d ever done in her entire life. (Which was saying something, considering the blue-eyeshadow and red-lipstick phase she’d gone through at university.)

  Will frowned at her, something urgent and demanding in his gaze, in his voice. “You do know, Abbie. You’d never do something like that without a reason.”

  “There is never a good reason,” she managed, “to be unfaithful.” Hm. She’d never said that out loud before. Shame had a very interesting flavour, and by interesting, she meant disgusting, vile, zero out of ten, would not recommend.

  “Wait.” She didn’t realise she’d been walking away until Will’s hand, his glove still cold and wet with snow, tightened around her elbow. “Stop. Don’t look like that, Abs. I didn’t mean to make you sad.” The whisper of his voice, combined with the whirl of snow and wind about them, made her feel hypnotised. As if he’d built a whole new world just for them, and they hung suspended in it, and she couldn’t escape so there was no use trying. What a sweet relief it was, to pretend to believe there was no use trying.

  “Not your fault,” she said around the lump in her throat. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Not your fault,” he volleyed back. “I know he was a bastard, Abbie. We all knew. I don’t think you did anything wrong—”

  “I broke my vows,” she interrupted, because that was a rather firm bottom line. “I never said ‘’til death do us part,’ but I certainly said ‘I give you my fidelity.’”

  Will was quiet for a moment. She assumed he was re-examining his perspective and deciding she had done something wrong that night, until he replied, “You never did say the death thing, did you? I like that. You’re always so smart, Abs.”

  She bit back a smile. One of her friends—a friend whose parents had a happy, healthy, decades-long marriage, of course—had called her unromantic for omitting that part. “Thanks? I think?”

  “You’re welcome,” Will said calmly. He was always extra extra William when he was drunk, going from laid-back to literal god levels of not-giving-a-fuck. “Anyway. What I’m trying to say is, if marriage is supposed to be love, he kind of killed your marriage the first time he hurt you.”

  Abbie stiffened. “I—you—” Her throat was tight. “I didn’t realise you, er … knew about that.” Or rather, she had logically realised he must, but had decided to ignore it for her own good.

  “Yeah, I knew,” Will said gently. “Why’d you think he wouldn’t come to Christmas the last couple of years? Harlan went to his job and threatened to kill him.”

  Abbie wheezed. “Did he?”

  “Of course,” Will said, like that was obvious and ordinary. Which she supposed it was. Or rather, it was exactly what she would do if some demon threw a book at her brother’s face and gave him a black eye.

  Abbie supposed it rarely occurred to her that the people around her loved her as hard as she loved them.

  There was something in that thought, but Will was still talking, still turning her upside down, heedless of all the feelings falling out of her pockets. “So I don’t think you should feel bad for kissing me, Abbie. I never meant that. I just meant—I always wondered—” Why was the last word, but Will sort of shook his head and decided not to say it. “Never mind,” he said instead. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, Abbie.”

  “I kissed you,” she blurted out, “because I knew it wouldn’t hurt. I knew it would be—good.” She stumbled over the words, but suddenly it seemed imperative to be honest about this one fucking thing. “I knew if I kissed you, it could only be good.”

  Will released a slow, shuddering breath, juniper and frost. His hands settled at her hips, and it felt as if she’d been shifting slightly out of her own body, but he’d just anchored her again. “That,” he whispered, “is the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Somehow, her own hands were pressed against his chest, and she knew she should move them, but this felt like the greatest possible place for them to be. “That can’t be true.”

  “It is.”

  “Didn’t I ever tell you that joke about the interrupting cow?”

  “Way better than that.”

  “Well,” she whispered, her gaze caught on his mouth, “now I’m kind of insulted. I thought you loved that joke.”

  “It’s terrible,” he replied. “I only laugh because you’re so bad at telling jokes.” She was halfway between a smile and a gasp of outrage when he added, “I’ve been a bad friend to you, Abbie.”

  Which was so ridiculous, it wiped the amusement right off her face. “What?”

  He stared at her, solemn and sad. “When you’re hurting, you’re like a porcupine. You’re all … rolled up,” he said. “You want to be left on your own. So I tried to leave you on your own. I thought that was what you needed. But I think I was wrong. I think I should’ve been with you this whole time. Because you’re hurting still.”

  Those words were so simple and yet revealed so much—he’d noticed a lot, even when she’d thought she was getting away with it, hiding herself and her vulnerabilities from the ones she loved. She should’ve known she could never hide from Will. She suspected she’d never done a great job hiding from anyone. Her whole family had given her space, and she’d thought it was because she seemed fine, but maybe they’d heard her asking for it beneath her careful words.

  That possibility was a little embarrassing—but also surprisingly lovely. It wrapped around her with unexpected warmth, as sweet and sunny as the man standing before her. The man who was sorely mistaken. “You’ve always been a good friend to me, Will.”

  “I’ve been halfway around the world,” he replied. “I send you pictures, and I don’t call too much because I know you hate it. I’ve been letting you push me away, push us all away, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s not true,” she insisted, and it seemed urgent that he believe her. That he see who he really was to her, what he’d done for her. “You’re the kind of friend who respects me enough to give me the space I need, and loves me enough to stay present at the same time. You didn’t overwhelm me, didn’t put all your worry on me when I had enough of my own—but you spoke to me every day. You sent me sunshine through the phone. You made it your mission to keep me smiling, and I have to tell you, Will—there have been days, over the years, when your messages were the only thing that kept me smiling. Don’t dismiss that. Don’t belittle it. Because it—it meant the world to me.”

  Her words grew quieter as she trailed off, her breaths cold and unsteady. She was kind of shocked by how much she’d just said, but the thing was, she couldn’t ever let him think badly of himself, not when it was in her power to disagree. Not even if it meant speaking with the kind of emotional honesty that usually made her want to crawl into the ground.

  Right now, she felt as if she might say almost anything to keep this look on Will’s face—this dawning pleasure, this aching affection. This. Fucking. Look.

  He gazed down at her the way he had this morning, as if he’d give her the moon if she could bring herself to ask for it. Then he said, raising his voice over the wind, “Abbie. Tell me not to kiss you right now.”

  She found she had conveniently lost the power of speech.

  * * *

  A sober little voice in the back of Will’s head told him that standing so close to Abbie, wanting her so obviously, wasn’t right at all. But that voice was very, very quiet under the roar of alcohol and adoration.

  She lo
oked so pretty in the cold, with her cheeks and her nose gleaming, and her glasses dotted with moisture. And she sounded so perfect, telling him their kiss wasn’t a mistake, that she’d meant it, that she’d had a reason—

  The very best reason.

  “I kissed you because I knew it wouldn’t hurt.”

  He was only going to hurt himself, courting rejection like this, but still, he said the words. “Abbie. Tell me not to kiss you right now.”

  She didn’t. She didn’t. Instead, she released this shaky little breath and then oh dear fucking God she closed her eyes.

  So he kissed her, and it was like a firework show in his gut.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d done this, not technically, but oh God, it was. Because two years ago, when they’d touched almost by accident, she’d looked immediately horrified, and Will—Will had been fucking furious. Abbie was black-and-white, Abbie was loyal, Abbie kept her word and was a stickler for the rules—so if she’d kissed him while she was married, even the teeniest tiniest bit, it had meant things were worse than he’d thought.

  And he’d already thought things were pretty fucking bad.

  So, yeah. His memory of that midnight kiss was eighty percent rage and twenty percent deadly frustration, which was the name he used for that feeling when you wanted to kick someone’s husband in the nuts until they threw up their own spleen. But this? This couldn’t be further from the last time. It couldn’t be any more different. It couldn’t be any better.

  This was Abbie, pressed up against him like she’d crawl inside him if she could, her body warm and soft, temptation wrapped in comfort wrapped in sin. This was Abbie, one of her thumbs stroking the top of his right ear, this tiny millimetre back and forth as if she couldn’t stop herself from touching him, from adoring him in the same tightly restrained way she did almost everything. This was Abbie, her mouth desperate and uncertain on his, the hibiscus scent of her hair swallowing him up like a heavenly cloud, until she suddenly pulled back and gasped, “Oh God, sorry, I’m so sorry—”