A Navesink Bank Christmas

by Jessica Gadziala

  "The poor fuck?" I asked, taking a deep breath, breathing him in.

  "He's so far gone," he told me, stopping to grab my jacket in the entryway, draping it on me before we moved outside where he, thankfully, had a car running and warm, not his bike which I had been half-expecting and a bit dreading since it was cold and I had just woken up.

  "I think it will all shake out eventually."

  "Of course you do," he said with a smile as he opened my door for me.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked when he climbed into his seat.

  "It means you want to see Malcolm happy. And, clearly, this woman is who would make him that."

  "He thinks she's too young for him."

  "He'll get over it," Cash declared, confidently, as he was inclined to do. "Are you ready for your surprise? I'll have you know it took me over an hour to set it up."

  Oh, I was ready alright.

  Was there anything more exciting than gift exchanges with new partners? It let you know exactly how well they knew you. And I was maybe curious about what Cash thought I would like.

  Was he going to get me a new gun?

  Jewelry?

  A trip somewhere?

  There was no telling.

  And, honestly, anything would be welcome.

  I wasn't hard to please.

  I just needed to know.

  So as he led me up the path, insisting I close my eyes as he did so, I felt like my insides were bouncing, a sensation I was sure I hadn't felt since childhood.

  The door closed with a click behind me as Cash led me past the living room where the smell of pine was still strong on our pretty gold and silver decorated tree, and, oddly, stopped beside what must have been the dining room table, except the chair wasn't where it would usually be.

  "Keep 'em closed," he declared, letting go of me to, I imagined, move to a better position, so he could watch me see whatever it was that he had prepared for me. "Okay, open," he declared, sounding as excited as I felt.

  My eyes drifted open to find, well, a tree.

  There were twinkle lights and a tree shape.

  But it wasn't pine or even that plastic crap.

  Oh, no.

  It was a tree made entirely of books.

  I felt my lips falling open as I moved in closer, inspecting it better, and realizing it wasn't just a tree made entirely of any kind of books.

  Nope.

  Not my man.

  My man knew me way better than that.

  It was a tree made entirely of romance novels.

  Half naked hunks on the cover and everything.

  Because there was no shame in Cash's game.

  "I checked them against that spreadsheet you keep in your purse so you don't buy repeats by accident," he told me as my hand reached out to stroke over one of the spines.

  "No way," I said, looking over at him, watching the way the white lights were putting a bit of a glow around him. Which seemed fitting somehow, even if he was some badass biker guy.

  "Yes way," he said, smile wide, all white teeth and charm. He knew he did good. And he was proud of himself. "And you got a little bit of everything. Got some romantic suspense, some PNR, some straight-up smut... which I expect you to share with me," he added with an eyebrow wiggle.

  He liked doing that.

  When I was clearly getting into a sex scene in a book, he would let me finish, then recreate it. It was our thing. He really appreciated my penchant for romance novels. It led to an out of this world sex life.

  "Of course," I agreed, letting my hand fall from the stack of books even if a huge part of me wanted me to dismantle the tree to see what made up the whole thing. I moved across to him, sliding my hands up his solid belly and chest, going around to loop around the back of his neck. "This is perfect."

  "I figured... how many guns does one woman need?" he said, arms sliding down my back to the lowest point of my hips.

  "The answer to that is As many as she wants," I said, giving him small eyes. "But this is way better than guns. Or jewelry. Or a vacuum cleaner."

  "The fuck would I get you a vacuum cleaner for? I'm the one who does the cleaning."

  He wasn't exactly wrong about that. My schedule was a little more demanding than his, meaning I would often have to rush out after dinner when the sink was still full. And would crawl back into bed late in the morning after finding he had already dealt with the dishes.

  He was good that way.

  But he had also been living his life long before I came into the picture, keeping his place clean when no one else was around to pitch in. So he just kept on keeping on in that way. And when I had free time, I got my scrub on as well. Last time he was out on a run, I had re-grouted the bathroom.

  We had a lot of balance.

  It worked.

  We worked.

  God.

  It was so amazing, so out of this world unbelievable to me, even after many months to let it sink in, that I had this. That I hadn't wasted my life reading romances that never took place in real life.

  Because they did.

  They so, so did.

  Cash and I were living proof of that fact.

  And, let me tell you, the real deal was leaps and bounds better than the fiction.

  It wasn't new or novel for me to have a man who I could lean on, who I could go to for advice, or just to be a sounding board. Hailstorm had long-since gotten me over my trust issues with men.

  But it was something completely different - and wonderful - to have the lightness Cash gave me. The sweet. The fun. The, well, love.

  It hit me all the time still. I could be in the middle of target practice, and some stray thought of Cash would move through me, and I would get the delicious wobble in my belly. Or I could read a text from him - just his typical boyish, charming text - when he was on the road, and my heart would flutter.

  I had a feeling that it would never go away, the wonder of it all.

  And as Cash pulled me in for a kiss, the music was playing from a speaker somewhere in the living room, words that had never felt truer in my life before.

  Love and joy come to you.

  Wolf & Janie

  Wolf

  &

  Janie

  --

  "Repeat the Sounding Joy"

  Janie

  So the cabin maybe looked like a blind three-year-old decorated it.

  What can I say, I had never been in charge of something like holiday decorations before. What decorating that was done at Hailstorm was generally done by Lo and Ashley and the other women who had experience on the right amount of garland and tinsel so that it looked classy instead of gaudy.

  I honestly didn't even have any plans to decorate.

  But early this morning, Wolf had clamored out of bed, sinking his feet into his clunky snow boots, and slipping on a giant lumberjack plaid jacket, and disappeared out into his woods.

  It was a thing he did.

  He disappeared into the woods.

  Like sometimes I stayed up all night reading or obsessively looking for some wrong to right.

  We had our things.

  The woods was his.

  Sometimes, he came back after just a few hours, his hellbeasts barking happily like maybe they had just taken a nice walk.

  Other times, he would be gone most of the day and would come back with a deer to dress.

  Now, I knew it was hypocritical of me since I ate meat, but the hunting thing bothered me. It was one thing to know your food came from slaughter - though at least I always ensured that mine came from pasture-raised organic farms so the animals at least had a nice life first - and it was a complete other to see such a beautiful animal dead right in front of you, knowing you were going to consume it.

  "Her leg is shattered," he told me the first time he brought a doe home, her big eyes maybe just possibly making my eyes well up - an emotion that would have horrified me if anyone other than Wolf was witnessing it. "She wouldn't have made it," he added as my
eyes moved over her long, spindly legs, seeing the gnarly way one was twisted and swollen. He was right; she would have been a goner. But it would have been a long, drawn-out death. "Mercy kill," he finished with, before taking her out to the shed to dress her.

  I could never bring myself to eat venison, so Wolf made some jerky, and some treats for the dogs. The fur was used to make a heavy blanket that he dropped to the homeless guy who lived outside the local convenience store when the cops didn't rush him off.

  He was a firm believer in using every bit of an animal, which was something I respected.

  Even though the whole time he was gone, I was silently hoping that he didn't come home with a cute dead animal on Christmas Eve.

  So when he came stomping up the path around noon, my heart was pitter-pattering as he stopped outside the door.

  Then it burst open.

  And he didn't have a dead animal.

  He had a fucking giant Christmas tree.

  It was easily three feet taller than me and two times as wide as Wolf.

  "Um, what is that?" I asked, cradling my mug between my hands

  "Christmas tree," he rumbled as he dragged the thing inside, a bit of snow leaving wet marks across the floor.

  "I think there was a mixup," I told him, watching as he turned to me, brow raised, waiting for an explanation. "That thing was clearly meant to be shipped off to Rockefeller Center." He gave me a small lip twitch to that, but kept dragging the thing in, then hauling it up into what happened to be a tree stand near the wall - something I wasn't sure I would have recognized even if I had noticed it sitting there. When he was done, it sat proudly, taking up way too much of the already too-small space, but filling the room with what I had to admit was a refreshing fresh pine smell. "Okay. So, we have a tree."

  "Gotta decorate it," he said, looking at me somewhat expectantly, and I got the distinct feeling that he was every bit as in the dark as to how to do such a thing as I was. I very much doubted he dragged giant Christmas trees into his cabin every year to admire alone.

  Which meant he did it for me.

  For us.

  There was a heart-squeeze sensation in my chest, something that never failed to take my breath somewhat away when it happened. I secretly hoped it never would stop. I liked it more than I ever could have known I would.

  "Do you have decorations?" I asked, looking around. When he looked a little lost at that, I felt a smile pull at my lips. He was such a man. Great big ideas with not too much forethought. "Okay. Go get decorations. I will make a pot of coffee. Then we can ah, what is the term, trim the tree together."

  "Sounds good."

  So then he lumbered off to the store, coming back with six bags full of Christmas crap and two cylinders of pre-made cookie dough that, apparently, I only had to slice and put on cookie sheets. A task even clueless-in-the-kitchen me could handle.

  And then I got to see a side of Wolf I never could have anticipated before, a side of him I tried hard - nobly, honestly - not to laugh at.

  Wolf was anal about Christmas lights.

  Full-on over-the-top silly-Christmas-movie type ridiculous.

  No, they could not all be solid.

  But the twinkling ones could not twinkle that fast or that slow or that in-between.

  There was grunting, growling, and cursing involved.

  I may or may not have discreetly captured a short video to show Lo in case she didn't believe me when I told her.

  An hour into this obsessive shit, I grabbed a book and waited it out for him to finish so I could help him with the ornaments.

  I also promptly burned the cookies during this time which I didn't realize until the room started getting smoky. Rushing over to the stove to free them, then jacking open a window to air the place out, all I got from Wolf was a brow raise and a lip twitch followed by a small head shake. He knew I wasn't Susie Homemaker when he shacked up with me. And, luckily, he found my complete and utter lack of housewifery skills at least somewhat charming.

  "Woman," he called about six chapters later, dragging me out of a really nail-biting cat-and-mouse scene, making me let out a little grumble even though I knew I was supposed to be doing the decorating thing, not reading.

  I forced myself to slip the bookmark in between the pages, and looked up to find the tree alive with light. Most were solid, pretty little petite colored lights, but there were several slowly blinking strands as well, making the whole thing more festive.

  I guess Wolf had reason to be anal about the lights.

  "Good?" he asked as I watched it, my lips turned up, my heart filling with something that I didn't immediately place as Christmas spirit, it being such a foreign thing to me. My gaze shifted to him, seeing a bit of something there that I rarely ever saw - a bit of insecurity, a need for approval.

  I shook my head, moving to stand. "No. Not good. Fucking amazing. It's perfect," I told him, walking up, my hands sliding up his stomach and chest to rest just barely at his shoulders - as high as I could reach.

  "Not yet," he said, shaking his head as his hands folded around my back. "But soon."

  The kiss was short and firm, promising more, but letting me know not to get my hopes - or libido - up because he had other plans right now.

  Namely, putting all the pretty bulbs on the tree.

  It wasn't until the whole thing seemed like it couldn't hold one more thing that Wolf turned away and came back with a single box, holding it out to me a bit sheepishly.

  Wolf? Sheepish?

  I had to see what was in this box.

  My hands were almost frantic, tearing off the pretty paper and bow that he clearly had taken the time to have gift wrapped and surely deserved more appreciation than I was showing it.

  Lifting the lid, I found a simple white ceramic ornament nestled in a bed of red crinkly paper. In the center in green font in the shape of a tree with a small heart on top was what had him shifting a bit from foot to foot.

  Because it was cheesy.

  Sappy.

  Sentimental.

  Things that pretty much no one would ever call him, this man who broke open rib cages and ripped out hearts with his bare hands.

  But they didn't know Wolf the way I did. They didn't know the man who pulled me close at night and cuddled me up when I was lost in bad memories. They didn't know the person who always made sure I had fresh coffee in the morning, even if he was long gone before I woke up. They didn't know how there was a never-ending stack of new books on a table inside the door because whenever he went shopping, he grabbed me a book in case I was unable to sleep and needed something to reach for to get lost in.

  They didn't know that man.

  So they didn't know just how sweet he could be.

  Me, I did.

  So even though a small part of me was embarrassed by the heart-squeeze I felt at seeing it, the other part was stupidly, ridiculously, all-consumingly endeared by it.

  Our first Christmas together.

  Wolf & Janie.

  Not only had this amazing, thoughtful man remembered to pick up something to commemorate the date, but he had braved the mall to do so, since that was the only place around to get something personalized like that.

  Any man who braved the mall for you was a keeper in my opinion. Hell, I never even braved the mall.

  "Good?" he asked, making me realize I had been staring down at the ornament for way too long. And, in looking up, realized my fucking eyes were a little misty.

  Damn him.

  No one else managed to get to me.

  I mean, I emoted. I was good at showing my anger, frustration, exasperation, and disgust.

  But the warm and gooey stuff? Yeah, that was all still so new to me. I was convinced that was why I so easily teared up with him. It was new. I didn't have any defenses against the onslaught of them.

  A part of me said I would get there.

  The other part said that maybe, possibly, I shouldn't even try; I should let myself be that kind of vulnerable with
him.

  "Perfect," I countered, giving him a small smile as I turned to place it right in the front of the tree where we could easily see it.

  "You're up," he declared, handing me the wreaths and bows and various Christmas stuff. "Gotta make cookies."

  So that was what he did.

  Perfectly, I might add.

  Not even a hint of char.

  The bastard.

  Always showing me up with his baking skills.

  I set to using up all the stuff he had picked up at the store. Which was all hung somewhat unevenly, and looked like a child did it.

  But it was still pretty.

  And it was ours.

  That was what mattered.

  "Woman," Wolf growled, making me turn to find him sitting on the floor in front of the tree with two steaming mugs and a plate of cookies. "Come on," he added when I didn't immediately move toward him.

  Normally, being ordered around like a dog wasn't my thing. But there was just something about the way Wolf did it that worked for me every time.

  So my feet moved across the floor.

  But when I moved to sit beside him, his giant hands sank into my hips, dragging me across the floor, then settling me between his legs, my back resting back against his chest, his beard tickling over my forehead as he reached to hand me a mug.

  "What is this?" I asked, looking down at the liquid that was clearly not coffee.

  "Hot chocolate," he explained, reaching for his own.

  "So you're telling me that big, badass biker dudes drink hot chocolate?" I asked dubiously.

  "On Christmas," he clarified.

  "Right. Because any other time would just be silly. I'm telling your brothers about this," I told him as I took a sip, feeling his chest move as he swallowed some of his own. "Expect nonstop ribbing from here until eternity."

  "Mmhm," he agreed, not the least bit worried about the idea. Likely because no one would ever make fun of him, and he knew that.

  "I love our tree, Wolf," I told him after a long silence, something he was completely comfortable with, but I could never seem to shake the urge to fill the gaps.