“So, will you?” I pressed, changing the subject, resting my head in her shoulder.
“Will I what?”
“Go get my things from his place?” I watched her serious resting-bitch-face expression melt into a fit of giggles. One so obnoxious she couldn’t seem to control it as tears rolled down her face. I, on the other hand, wasn’t amused.
“I’m serious,” I mumbled, and I swear her laughter rang louder. I fell back and rested my head on the throw pillow that matched my mood. It read, I like my coffee black. To match my soul.
“Where did you even find this?” I muttered.
“You’re just envious of my unique style.”
“Unique is definitely a way to describe it,” I said under my breath because I was asking her to do me a favor, after all.
“You seriously just left him standing there?”
“He let me leave for a reason, Jo.”
“Well, when you come in contact with a lunatic, you usually do.”
“Jo,” I groaned. “Please.” I whined.
I was pathetic. I was a thirty-something-year-old woman, not a hopeless teenaged romantic. I knew how childishly I was acting, but it was allowed when it was with your sister. And honestly, I couldn’t help it. Rolly had taken my heart and soul, and the idea of it being over cut so deep it was a surprise my insides hadn’t made a trail from the zoo to Jo’s place.
“Ronnie, I love you. Talking seriously right now, you know I would do anything for you.” She stroked the top of my head, and I knew in my gut I wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “I’ll help you move everything after you talk it out with him.”
“Joey,” I groaned.
“I’m sorry, Rons, but I think we both know it’s important. Plus, just leaving him like that, you know that wasn’t cool. I wouldn’t even do that.”
“He let me leave,” I complained, fully knowing she was right. I hated when my baby sister was right.
“Christmas is right around the corner,” Jo pointed out, and I nodded. “You can stay in the spare room until the new year if you’re right and he was going to break up with you. Looking for a place right now would be a headache you don’t need. I’ll even ask Dean if we can borrow his truck.” Dean? Interesting.
“You guys good?” I asked, trying not to sound like I wanted to know all the details. My beautiful sister held back a lot.
“I haven’t left him standing in the middle of a zoo, so you know, I can’t complain.” She winked, and I coughed away a laugh. Joanna was always good for a laugh. She was amazing and sweet and funny.
“I love you, kid,” I sapped, my eyes stinging all over again. No wonder Rolly didn’t think I was for him. He was the epitome of holding every emotion and feeling inside while I wore my heart on my sleeve.
“You don’t have to talk to him today.” She sighed. “You can borrow some of my clothes and crash here tonight. Just don’t stretch out my socks with your big feet,” she joked before she hugged me. “How about takeout and a gory, nasty slasher movie?” she teased as she stood up from her bed. I squished my face. I was a lot of things, but gory slasher movies weren’t for me.
“Hallmark movie?” I suggested, just like she knew I would. Instead of arguing, she made a show of rolling her eyes before she winked and smiled.
“You’re such a marshmallow. How are we related?”
“That’s so mean, Jojo. You know you have a secret marshmallow side.”
“Whatever. Fine, sappy Hallmark movies it is. Get up, go shower, and get dressed.”
“Jo?” I called out before she walked out of her room.
“Yeah?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Why are you so sure he wasn’t going to break up with me?”
“The same way I know you love him.” She shrugged. “He loves you.”
“He doesn’t really believe in love.”
“Ronnie, that might have been true… before you.”
“I don’t know about that,” I mumbled as I stood up.
“You honestly haven’t seen the way he looks at you?” she asked with a sound of wonder in her voice that was so clear I stilled and looked her way.
“What do you mean?” I dared asking, my heart picking up speed in my chest.
“Veronica, Roland looks at you like you hung the stars.”
Roland
“What happened, man?” Travis patted my back before he sat down on the couch across from me. I watched his shaggy blond hair fall back as he tossed a throw pillow behind his head.
A throw pillow Veronica had added to the couch.
I glanced around. Her stamp was everywhere. She’d made my house a home.
And I’d screwed it up.
“She broke it off,” I muttered before drinking what was left of my second beer. “Or I think she did.” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what the fuck had happened.
One moment, we were in line, and the next she was walking away from me. All I knew for sure was, I was an idiot for having let her go.
“You think?” Travis asked, raising a heavy brow. Fuck, I’d said the last out loud.
“Travis,” I warned, very well knowing where my best friend was going with this.
“I told you.” He shook his head and sighed, drinking his water.
“Shut up,” I grunted, widening my legs and resting my elbows on my knees.
“You’re right,” I muttered. “You told me to tell her. To be open. And I…” A groan escaped. “I fucked it up, didn’t I?” I looked at my life-long friend, who knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.
“You just need to talk to her,” he said, like it was an easy fix. I could swear the asshole was ready to smile. But he didn’t see her. He didn’t see how cut she was. Devasted. Hurt. I’d done that.
“She’s the one, huh?” Travis asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Yes.” Without a doubt, she was the one. More than I could have ever imagined. More than Minnie.
“Look, I know shit with Minnie was … Well, it was what it was. But Veronica isn’t Minnie.”
“I know that.” I did.
Veronica had her head on straight and not hiding a big secret that led SWAT busting down our door in the middle of the night. I’d found out my wife wasn’t actually an accountant working from home. She’d kept the books, alright, to her fucking suburban drug empire.
“I think you know what you have to do, Rolls.” He stood up and patted my shoulder. “You need my help, you got my number, okay?”
“Yeah,” I grunted before adding, “Thanks.”
“You know I got you,” he called as he reached the front door. “Big gesture time, man. Balls out.”
“Balls out,” I repeated as the door closed, and I looked around my home.
Our home.
That’s what she had made it. A home. A house that was more than a place to lay our heads at the end of the day. I looked around. The thick beer stains on the shelves she’d picked up because it would keep my beer cooler. Picture frames of us together. Not only us, but with friends and family. Throw blankets tossed over the couch for me to throw over us when we cuddled and she got a chill.
In less than two months of living under the same roof, she’d made it our home.
But it wouldn’t be if I didn’t get her back. The question was how?
With that in mind, at that very moment, the TV changed from the game to something else. Veronica must have scheduled something to watch tonight. As I grabbed the control from the coffee table, my eye caught the Hallmark channel logo. Of course, she’d scheduled this. I took my seat and found myself not immediately changing the channel. Her little sister, Joanna, had texted Veronica was with her, and I wondered if she was watching this. The idea of doing the same thing even if we were apart made me breathe a little easier. Minutes rolled by with the cheesy but predictable storyline, and I kept watching. I found myself intrigued by the holiday movie.
Sometimes you just need the cheese, Rolly, she’d whispered into
my ear two nights before. I’d wanted to roll her over and pound her into a happily ever after but instead shrugged and crossed my hands over my chest.
How could I have been so stupid?
Veronica loved this shit. It made her smile, so I pretended to sit and watch it with her. My mind filled with so much stuff. How could I want her so much, want to do the things I wanted to her, and have her be my forever? Shouldn’t I treat her with kid gloves? Like precious glass that could break? Because to me, she was treasure.
The movie continued, and the more I watched, the more I got it. Which was funny considering the couple in love didn’t do more than kiss on film. The girl in the movie loved Christmas, and the guy didn’t. She was trying to show him the spirit of the holiday, and he wasn’t convinced.
But I got it.
I also figured out how to get my girl back.
At that thought, I hopped off the couch with a flurry of excitement running through me. Big gesture. Balls out. This would do it! Without a doubt! Grabbing my phone, I went to my computer and searched while I texted my two accomplices.
Veronica was more than a dream. She was a wish my heart had made, and she wasn’t make-believe. She was the woman of my dreams, and it was fucking time she knew it. After tomorrow, she would never doubt again how I feel about her.
With everyone in on my plans and everything ordered online, I went to our room and grinned.
All I needed now was mistletoe.
Chapter Three
Veronica
MY FINGERS TAPPED AGAINST the soft gray joggers I’d borrowed from Jo as I looked at the doorknob in front of me. Stop being a baby and go in! a very confident voice inside my head urged. I stood there looking at it like it was going to burn me.
What if I went in there and Rolly said the very words I was dreading? What if he doesn’t? a small voice hushed.
“Stop being an idiot,” I whispered as I put the key in and turned it, opening the door, and my eyes went wide.
The living room looked like a real-life winter wonderland. A variety of trees, trimmed and decked out, stood all over the place. Judging by the smell in the air, some of them were real trees. Fluffy, fake snow pads graced the countertops, little houses and trinkets floated atop, and when I walked in, closing the door behind me, I noticed fluffy white bits covered the hardwood floors.
Fake snow.
Everywhere.
The dark hardwood was hardly visible because the fake snowy bits covered it so heavily.
“Oh my god!” I quietly said, covering my mouth with my hands. The living room looked like something from a dream it was so beautiful.
“You like it?” Rolly’s deep voice said, making me jump out of my skin as I turned to see him standing in the doorway.
My hands shook as I took in the sight of him, and damn, what a sight it was. Rolly was always handsome, and today, almost a full twenty-four hours after I’d walked away from him, as his olive-green tee stretched at his shoulders and chest and dark denim jeans covered his long legs he was even more so.
“Rolly…” I was confused. I didn’t know what to say because I had no fucking clue what was going on. He would hate this. He hated over-the-top kitschy decorations. He hated anything on the hardwood floors. Rolly was all about being tidy. He was anal about it. “You hate messes.”
“Do you like it?” he asked again, taking a couple of steps closer to me.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a simple question. Do you like it?” he said, now finally right in front of me. The cedar scent of his aftershave tickled my nose.
“It’s beautiful. It’s like something out of a movie,” I quietly admired, daring to take my eyes off him for a moment as I looked around. “But how or why? I mean, you hate messy and holiday—”
“I love you.” He placed a finger over my lips, and my eyes stung. “I love you. I know I said a bunch of shit when we first met I wish I could take back.”
“Rolly.” My lips trembled. He loves me.
“Please, let me say this,” he asked, and I nodded, biting my lower lip as I looked up at him.
His brow was heavy and lined like it was when he was trying to figure out just the right thing to say, so I stayed quiet.
“I told you I didn’t believe in love and marriage and label, but that was because I didn’t know you existed. It was what I knew and believed in up until I met you,” he shared. My knees felt a little weak.
“And now?” I dared asking. My heart felt like it was about to explode.
“Now I want it all. With you. Only you.”
“But you’ve been so distant and cold and—”
“Stuck in my head,” he answered for me before he shook his head. Rolly wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me in closer. I looked up at him. “I was stuck in my head figuring out a way to tell you I love you. I didn’t want to mess up and just say it out of nowhere. I wanted it to be special because you deserve special.”
“Special,” I repeated as a tear escaped. Before it could slide down my face, he wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. “But what about the sex?” I blurted out.
“What?” He stilled, and worry hit my gut.
“You’ve been different. Softer. Sweeter.”
“And this is bad?”
“It’s always good, but it just felt like you’ve been… I don’t know…”
“What?”
“Holding back. Like I didn’t do it for you,” I said honestly and watched his inquisitive face melt into laughter.
“That you…” His deep bark of laughter kept on going, and I was tempted to roll my eyes. “You didn’t do it for me?” he asked before his hands slid up my body and a warm shiver ran down my spine. This was the Rolly I knew. The one who touched my body with fierce purpose and intense need. “Do you have any idea what you do to me, Veronica?” His voice dropped an octave, and I licked my lips, trying to focus and not give in to the moment. I needed to be clear about what had happened.
“Obviously not,” I muttered even though the room was suddenly warmer. “I thought you met someone else and were trying to figure out a way to kick me out.”
“Kick you out.” The amusement washed away as his face turned to stone. “Baby, there could never be anyone else but you for me. Ever.” I let out the breath I had been holding as a weight shifted off my shoulders.
“I’m sorry about yesterday.” I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“I’m sorry for being a jackass who doesn’t know how to say how he feels,” he said, pulling me into his chest. I took a deep breath, inhaling of his scent. My lungs filled with cedar and home. He was my home. “You coming into my life threw me for a loop,” he said, and when I tried to look up at him, he held on to me tighter.
“Rolly—”
“A good one. A really fucking good loop, babe. You made me see exactly what I was missing. How fucking wrong I was to think the shit I did. That shit I had with Minnie, that wasn’t love. That was wrong on so many different aspects. What I found with you was so damn eye opening, and fuck,” he groaned. “What can I say? I’ve never been good with change. I’m sorry it took me so long to get everything I needed to say to you.” His embrace lightened, and I looked up at him.
“You really mean that?” There was no way I could stop or control the tears at this point.
“With my entire being, Veronica. I promise I will work tooth and nail to make being such a stupid asshole these last couple of weeks up to you.”
“And you still want me?”
“Only you,” he responded deeply, then his head lowered and our lips met. The kiss was sweet and short before he pulled away. Rolly tilted his head, silently requesting for me to follow him. His hand in mine, our fingers intertwined, we went to the bright jewel-colored decorated Christmas tree.
“What do you think?” he asked. I stared at it. It was bright with happy colors. From top to bottom, it was filled with ornaments that glittered and shined.
“It’s beautif
ul.”
“It’s you.”
“What?” I turned my attention away from the tree and all the happy ornaments only to see Rolly’s hand held out for mine
“This one I did thinking of you. Everything about it represents you.”
“Rolly, that is seriously sweet.” I sighed, seeing him in a new light. As I glanced over my shoulder toward the tree, my nose stung. “Is this really how you see me?” I asked in awe.
“If I could fit another ten strands of lights, I would have.” he shared, and I had to take a sharp breath because he was killing me. I was bright and shiny and happy in his eyes.
“I—” The words died as I looked at him now kneeling in front of me. My heart froze mid-beat.
“The tree behind me was me before you,” he said, and I peeked over at the tall, thin tree that had one sad stand of lights. “I was empty. Just living to live, Ronnie. No purpose or direction. Not any that really mattered, at least.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I’m man enough to say it. Sure, I had a great business and friends, but what you bring to the table… Veronica, you brought life to me,” he said, kissing the top of my hand. My breath stuttered with the tears that fell.
“I don’t think I can handle this much sweetness, baby.”
“Marry me.”
“What?” Sure, he was on his knee, obviously making a grand gesture, but I honestly didn’t expect him to ask that. Not that the tone he said it in sounded like a question; it was more of an order.
“Marry me,” he repeated. I tried to read him. Is he being serious right now?
“Are you playing right now?”
“Marry me.” He shifted to get something from his pocket and took it out. I was surprised my eyes didn’t pop out of their sockets. In his hand he held a rose gold ring with a cushion cut pink diamond set in the center.
“It’s pink.”
“It’s you,” he responded confidently, and I pressed my lips together, muffling a cry and laugh at the same time. “Those tears kill me.”
“I can’t help it. I’m just so happy,” I mumbled.
“You’re killing me, Ronnie. Tell me you’ll take me as your forever.”
Mistletoe Wishes: a holiday standalone Page 2
