by Carian Cole
As she babbles on, I reach across the console to hold her hand. Her happiness is contagious. Her hope is infectious.
Through her, I see us.
I see tomorrows and next years.
And I like it.
There was never supposed to be a next anything.
It’s like our temporary arrangement has turned into a runaway train and we can either hang on for the ride, or jump off.
She grips my hand and bounces it up and down on her thigh, totally oblivious that I’m sitting next to her completely enamored with her smile, her eyes, her voice, the way she weaves her fingers through mine, her giggle—fuck, her everything.
“This was the best date, Lucky.” She leans across the front seat and plants a big kiss on my cheek. “You have no idea how much I’ve always loved to look at holiday lights. When I was little my grandparents used to drive me around on Christmas Eve and my gram would tell me if I looked out the car window, I might see Santa flying around. If I saw the lights of a plane fly over, I totally thought it was Santa and his reindeer.” She glances over at me, her lips quirked in a shy smile. “Does that sound silly?”
I smile back at her, drawn to everything honest and innocent about her. “Not at all, babe.”
“I miss them,” she says, craning her head to look at the sky from the car window.
“I’m sure they’re watching over you.”
She smiles up at the dark sky. “I hope so.”
“Can I take you to one of my favorite places?” I ask.
She nods happily. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
It’s almost midnight by the time we get to the cliffs, and the temperature has dropped. I pull the truck off the desolate, mountain road and onto the dirt pathway that you wouldn’t even know was there unless someone pointed it out. I’ve been here so many times I could find it with my eyes closed.
We zip up our coats and I dig a pair of my extra work gloves out of the console for her to wear. Her small hands are lost in them but I insist she keep them on so her fingers don’t freeze.
“Wow, look at all the stars. It’s gorgeous,” she says after we step out of the truck in the small clearing that parts the woods. The sky is the perfect shade of royal blue-black, pebbled with millions of shining stars. There’re no streetlights or houses nearby, but the moon is bright enough to give us enough light to see each other.
She lets out a little laugh when I lift her and perch her on the hood of my truck and then hop up next to her, hoping the heat of the engine will keep us warm enough to enjoy the view for a few minutes.
“This is so beautiful,” she says dreamily, looking out over the downtown lights beneath us. “I had no idea this was even here.”
“I’ve been coming here since I was about fourteen. The view is cool during the day, too, but on a night like tonight, the stars are wild. And now, with all the holiday lights up, it’s even better.”
I watch her as she stares out over the cliff—her breath blowing out in frosty puffs, the lights reflecting in her eyes. She looks so beautiful that it hurts me to breathe. I don’t deserve something as special and good as her. I know this, and she probably does, too. But, like with anything else that’s beautiful and rare, I can’t resist getting closer. Taking what I can while I can.
“Look,” I whisper, brushing my lips across her silky hair and pointing to the right, where a stag and a doe have quietly stepped out of the woods just a few feet away. Like us, they stare out over the cliff for a few moments.
“So pretty…” she breathes as the deer walk across the clearing and disappear in the thick trees on the other side.
We huddle together, enjoying the view and the quiet stillness, waiting for the cold to force us to go back in the truck.
“What made you want to do this tonight?” she asks softly.
I reach for her hand, because it’s always easier for me to talk when we’re touching. I take a deep breath, and decide to tell her the whole truth. “I wanted you to know I want to be with you and I’m not just spending time with you because we’re conveniently in the same house. And I wanted to share my favorite place with you.”
“This is the place on your back, isn’t it? Your tattoo?”
I nod, impressed she recognized it. “Yeah, it is. This place is like my zen. It always calms me.”
“I can see why. So many wishes waiting to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Any one of those stars could shoot at any second, and then you can wish on it.”
That does it. I’m totally crazy about her.
“This is where I came up with the idea of marrying you. I rode my bike up here and sat right there with my legs hanging over the edge.”
Her lips press together as her gaze settles on the spot I pointed to. “Really? I can’t believe you actually thought about me.”
“I think about you a lot. Non-stop since our wedding kiss, if you wanna know the truth.”
My admission puts her into a few moments of silence. “Do you regret it?” she finally asks. “Marrying me?”
Taking a deep breath, I weigh my answer. “I only regret the things that happened to you because of me. But I don’t regret helping you.”
“What about the other parts? Us being more than friends?”
I push my hair out of my eyes. “In some ways, I do.”
Her gloved hand tenses in mine, and she tries to pull away. I don’t let her. “Wait, don’t do that,” I say. “Let me finish. The only thing I regret is that I don’t know how to treat you better. I don’t know how to do… this. I’ve sucked you right into my dysfunction. You’re only eighteen, you—”
She interrupts me, whipping her hair over her shoulder. “Jude, don’t bring my age into this, please. We’re so past that.”
I sigh and soften my voice. “I just don’t want to be the reason you get hurt any more than you already have. And I don’t want to be the reason you make bad decisions.”
She studies my face and shakes her head slowly “What happened with Erin isn’t your fault. Not how she turned out, and not what she did when she came back.”
“Actually, it is. I never should’ve been bringing drug dealers to my house—where my mother and my little sister lived. Erin never would’ve met Jimmy—”
“You don’t know that, Jude. Maybe she would’ve met someone worse. Maybe she would’ve run away all on her own. She made her own decisions. I wanted to run away at sixteen, too. The only thing that stopped me was Gus. As crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t bear the thought of hauling her around in a cat cage, making her live in strange places. Otherwise, I would’ve disappeared, too.”
“You had a way worse life than her, Skylar,” I say. “Erin was just a brat who didn’t want to deal with her curfew. But she met Jimmy because of me. He’s the one who got her into drugs and every-fucking-thing else.”
“You have to stop blaming yourself. Who got you into drugs? Sometimes it’s just in people’s genes to turn to drugs and alcohol. I think she would’ve gone down that path whether she met Jimmy or not.”
That might be true. There was no one person or incident that made me start to do drugs, it just happened.
“I dunno,” I say sadly. “The whole thing’s got my head fucked up. For years, all I did was think about her and miss her. I agonized over what happened to her. All I wanted was for her to come back. To find out she just left, and never even thought twice about maybe sending me a fucking text message to put my mind at ease, is doing my head in. She said she saw me on the news, she knew how fucking wrecked I was, and she just let me be that way. That fuckin’ hurts.”
“She was young and messed up,” Skylar says softly. “Teenagers are selfish, Jude. I can admit that. We have our moments where we just don’t care about anything but ourselves. I was a little bit like that when I was younger.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of. Not just that I might hurt you, but that you might hurt me. I’m sick of being forgotten and tossed aside.
So fucking disposable.”
She turns sharply to look at me. “So am I. I could never do that to you. You’re so important to me, in so many different ways. I—” She sucks in a breath. “I can’t picture my life without you. I don’t want to. I know our marriage isn’t real, but sometimes I wish maybe…”
She doesn’t say the words. She lets the ghost of them hang between us to haunt us. And haunt me, they do.
I’ve had those wishes too and have snuffed them out fast because of her age.
But ever since Erin hurt her and I saw her lying in that hospital bed, my feelings for her have shifted. Friendship no longer feels like enough. A side of casual sex no longer feels like enough. I want the real deal with her.
It just scares the hell out of me.
“Neither one of us know how to be in a relationship, Skylar. We’re both fucked up with abandonment issues. And the age thing does matter. It’ll be a disaster.”
Good move, Lucky. Talk her right out of wanting you.
“Or maybe it won’t be.” Her voice is laced with hope. “Maybe we’re perfect for each other.”
Her body trembles next to mine, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s nervous for saying what she said, or if she’s freezing.
“It’s getting cold,” I say abruptly, jumping off the hood. “Let’s go back in the truck.” Grabbing her waist, I lift her to the ground and pull her faux-fur-lined hood up over her head. I hold on to it and stare down into her eyes. Her cheeks are pink from the frigid air and the moon is shimmering off her glittery eye shadow.
She looks magical and beautiful and she’s looking at me like she’s making a thousand wishes and every single one of them includes me.
Her hope completely shatters me.
I’m so tired of putting walls up.
“Do you really believe that?” I say, moving my hands to cup her cheeks. “That we might be perfect for each other?”
A slow smile spreads across her face. “Yes,” she whispers. “I do.”
Her voice—her words—chase the chill from my veins.
“Do you think… maybe we should try to find out?”
“Lucky,” she says softly, winding her arms around my neck. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this date thing tonight?”
When we get home, we turn off all the lights and walk upstairs together, pausing every other step to kiss. We stop in front of her bedroom door and I unzip her coat, sliding it easily off her shoulders. She does the same with my leather jacket, then fixes her big eyes on mine. A sweet, yet slightly curious smile dances on her lips.
“I loved tonight,” she says, leaning back against the wall just outside her door.
I hook my finger through the belt loop of her jeans. “I did, too. Next time you can pick what we do.”
She unbuttons my shirt to the middle of my chest, and slowly walks two fingers—playfully but sensually—up to my shoulder. “When is next time?”
Pulling her to me by her belt loop, I lean my forehead against hers. “How’s tomorrow night?” I whisper, closing my eyes and inhaling her. She smells of winter air and jasmine, and I want to drag her to the nearest bed and rip her clothes off.
I won’t though.
I want her to know I can be happy with going slow.
With knowing there will be more days and nights together.
“Tomorrow is good,” she says on a soft breath, and tilts her face up.
“Tomorrow is perfect.”
“Maybe we can cook dinner together, light some candles and eat in the sunroom, in front of all the windows.”
I stroke her hair and kiss her. “That sounds great. Maybe you have a cool skirt in that closet of yours?”
She smiles. “As a matter of fact, I do. Maybe you could wear that black sweater I like?”
“I can do that.”
“I like how it makes your shoulders look so huge.”
“You got a shoulder fetish?” I tease.
“I think I have a you fetish.”
She makes my heart pound with how much she truly wants me.
I cover her mouth with mine, kissing her with a slow, burning hunger. And damn, her lips taste delicious with the flavor of hope, and the possibility of next year on them.
Chapter 38
Jude
“You’re coming for Christmas dinner, right?”
I hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I spread out the blueprints for this new residential job I’m right in the middle of.
“I don’t know, Aunt Suze... I was thinking of staying home this year.”
I spend Christmas with my aunt and uncle every year, but I’ve been mulling around the idea of staying home and spending it with Skylar.
The past few weeks have been up and down. While things have been great between me and Skylar, I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything that happened with my sister, and Skylar’s been having a hard time mentally. She hasn’t admitted it, but I see it. She walks around the house locking the doors, then checks them every few hours to make sure they’re still locked. She’s terrified to go in the garage, but that’s actually working in my favor now because I’ve been working on a secret project in there.
She sees her therapist twice a week now, and I found out she’s upped her anxiety and depression meds. Lately she’s been nibbling on bread again, which is a step back because she was doing great eating new foods and going to restaurants to eat things out of her comfort zone.
“It’s Christmas, Lucky. A time for cheer! I’m sad about Erin, too. I cried myself to sleep every night for days after you told me what happened. But we have to keep going. Life is for living.”
“I’m not feeling cheery.”
“You will once you get here. I let you off the hook for not coming on Thanksgiving, but you have to come for Christmas. I’ll make all your favorite things. And we have presents for you.”
“I’m too old for presents,” I grumble.
“You’re never too old for presents. You’re bringing Skylar, right? We have presents for her, too.”
I walk across the demo’d second level and stare out the window. “I really don’t know, I’ll have to ask her. She might have plans of her own.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have any plans. Other than me and Megan, who does she have? Does she spend her holidays with Megan and her family? I’d say probably not. If I had my guess, I’d say she sits home with Gus in fuzzy pajamas watching Christmas movies.
And now, with that visual stuck in my head, all I want to do is exactly that with her.
Pots bang on the other end of the phone. “She’s your wife. Uncle Al and I would like her to come.”
“I’ll ask her tonight.”
“Promise me you’ll both come.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, knowing damn well I’ll be there.
“This could be my last Christmas. I’m old, you know.”
“Stop it. You are not dying. You’ve been pulling that since I was seventeen years old.”
“Well, I’m definitely getting closer.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Come by during the week and help your uncle drag the tree upstairs. You can tell me what Skylar likes to eat then. Oh, and I’d like an air fryer, and a parakeet for gifts.”
I run the back of my hand across my forehead. “Please tell me you’re not planning to air fry the parakeet.”
“Of course not. I’ve always wanted one—they sing and chirp. I want a pale-blue one. Not green.”
“Anything else?”
“No, just my favorite nephew and his beautiful wife. And a parakeet. And the air fryer. That’s all,” she says cheerfully.
“Okay,” I say, too exhausted to argue with a determined seventy-something-year-old. She always wins.
After we hang up, I decide to go to the boutique to surprise Skylar with lunch. On Fridays she goes to school ’til eleven, then works the rest of the day, so the timing is perfect.
I tell the guys
I’m heading out for a break and stop at the deli on my way to the boutique to get Skylar a cup of vegetable and white bean soup—perfect. Nothing too squishy, chewy, or chokey.
Her eyes light up with surprise when she sees me walk into the store, and I finally get a glimpse of that beautiful smile I’ve been missing all day.
“Lucky,” she says, beaming. “What are you doing here?”
I put the small, white bag on the counter between us. “I brought you soup.”
She takes the bag and gives me a teasing side-eye. “You want cookies, don’t you? Is this a trade?”
Laughing, I shake my head. “Nope. I just wanted to see you. I heard you coughing this morning, and I thought, if you’re getting a cold, soup is good.”
“That’s so sweet. Thank you.” Her smile just about makes my heart stop. “You can take some cookies,” she adds. “I mean, since you’re here.”
I lean my elbows on the counter. “What are you doing on Christmas Day?”
Her eyebrows knit together. I try not to look at the pink scar on her forehead because it throws me into an instant inner rage when I do.
“Um… I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.” She pushes her hair back. “Usually I’m just home.”
I was right. She stays home with the cat.
Not that I’m any better. Every year after I have dinner with Aunt Suzy and Uncle Al, I go home and hang out with my dog.
“Aunt Suzy and Uncle Al want you to come for Christmas dinner. With me.”
Her mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. She opens the bag and pulls out the small container of soup and plastic spoon. “Wow. That’s really nice. Do you want me to go?”
“Yeah. I want you to come with me.”
Her top teeth edge into her lower lip, as if she’s trying to bite back a smile, but it slowly wins, tipping her mouth up. Big, bright-blue eyes steal a glance at me as she stirs the soup.
“Then I’d love to go,” she says.
