Harry jolted upright in bed, sweating, his heart hammering.
No, no, no.
No.
He couldn’t . . . he just couldn’t. Not her. Never her.
He had to . . .
But no, she wouldn’t believe him. Why would she?
But she had to.
She had to.
Because he couldn’t lose her.
He couldn’t.
His life was nothing without her in it. She was everything to him.
And he wasn’t going to lose her.
He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
It was way past time he took risks and won Felicity back.
Before he lost her for good.
EIGHT
FELICITY DID NOT have a good night’s sleep. The whole night she tossed and turned, and she had the strangest dream where Harry had ended up marrying some adorable woman who wore glasses, and they ended up having a Brady Bunch family of glasses-wearing kids. And the ache of what could have been hers still hurt—even though it was only a dream. Or more like a nightmare.
The remnants of the dream clung to her, like stale cigarette smoke, and she needed to wash it away.
She made her way to the ensuite, still groggy and feeling just out of it, so she set the shower temperature to scalding and brushed her teeth while she waited for the water to heat up.
It was a dream, she reminded herself. But it wouldn’t shake away, that awful feeling that life could go that way if one of them didn’t smarten up and do something about it.
You would destroy me.
She frowned. She didn’t want it to have to be her to make the first step. Oh, she knew she should just be an adult about it and make amends, but why was it always her? Why couldn’t it be Harry who made the first move? Why did she always have to put her heart out there and get flayed alive? Why did she have to be the one who always took the risk? Who always cannonballed?
Why did she always have to reach out before anyone else? Why, why, why? Her freaking new mantra of the morning.
In the past, she would have been the first to brush things aside. To smooth the hurt or anger, to find a compromise . . . she could never stay angry for long, nor did she like to hold onto such negative energy, it would eat away at her. And, right now, part of her wanted to reach out to Harry and make everything better. To stuff her hurt away and pretend it didn’t matter to her.
But she couldn’t pretend. Not anymore.
He had hurt her, and she didn’t feel like being the one to forgive first, be the one big enough to smooth things over this time. She had put it all on the line, and he had totally seemed onboard, and then he had whip-lashed her by rejecting her. The scars were still too new, too fresh, and her heart heavy and weary from obsessing over the fight.
Steam rose in the small, enclosed bathroom. She adjusted the temperature of the water so it wouldn’t strip her skin raw, and stepped in. She reached for the shampoo bottle, lathered her hair, and tilted her head back to rinse. She started to squeeze her eyes shut, but right as she was about to do so a movement in the upper right-hand corner caught her attention.
Her gaze flew there.
A big, nasty black spider. Waiting for her. Planning to kill her.
And then it started to move.
She screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed some more.
She scrambled out of the shower, keeping her eye on the Spider of Death, and took the shower curtain with her. Her legs tangled with the fabric, and oh my God, what if there were more spiders on the shower curtain? What if they were climbing on her body right now and laying spider eggs everywhere?
She screamed again, trying furiously to twist the curtain from her body, and shampoo was sliding down her face, and it was going to get in her eyes and mouth, and then she was going to die from poisoning and spider bites, and—
“Felicity!” Harry barged into the bathroom, holding a book in his right hand.
“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!” She grabbed at his sleeve and furiously pointed to where the spider was. Or had been. It was no longer in that spot. “Where did it go? Harry!”
He looked at her, confused. “Where did what go?”
“The fucking spider!”
Harry blinked. “A spider? I thought something horrible happened.”
She glanced around the bathroom, looking for the Spider of Death, and found it making its way down from the ceiling to the painted blue walls. “It’s coming after me.”
“Holy sh—”
“Kill it! Burn it!”
“Felic—”
“Hurry! Before it kills me dead!” she wailed. “Just kill it already. Throw something at it. Get a flame torch. Burn everything! Just do something!”
Harry looked at the book and sighed. “I guess I can use this.”
“Yes! Do it! Now! Swing, Harry!”
Harry strode to the wall, took the book, and hit the spider with a resounding thud. Only when the spider had been flushed to its watery grave did Felicity breathe a sigh of relief and look at the book that had brought about the death to the Spider of Death.
“You Nicholas Sparked it.”
Harry smiled at her, laughter in his eyes. “I guess I did.”
MUCH LATER, AFTER she had finally cleaned up and slightly recovered from the Spiderpocalypse, she started to make her way downstairs. Harry had saved her life, and he was her best friend, so there needed to be a way to move past . . . this.
She swallowed. She guessed she would have to make the first move, after all. Because . . .
Felicity stopped at the top of the stairs, not believing what she saw.
The downstairs area had been transformed into a winter wonderland. Colored lights were strung along the top of the walls, and garland wrapped around the stair’s railing, white fairy lights twinkling amongst the strands. Christmas music played from the record player, and two stockings hung from the fireplace.
And then there was the tree.
It wasn’t a gigantic thing, not even an average-sized one. It was skinny and spindly, but it was the most gorgeous Christmas tree she’d ever seen. Ornaments, silver tinsel, and even more lights covered the tree. A sparkly gold star sat on top, and there were even a few presents underneath. She turned to find Harry pulling out a fresh batch of cookies from the oven.
“What . . .” Her mind stalled, and she struggled to find words. “What is all this?”
“Christmas decorations.”
“But . . . but I thought you didn’t care for decorations. You never decorate your apartment.”
“But you like it.”
“I do.” She loved doing decorations for all the holidays. It was fun, and it got her into the festive mood.
Christmas was perhaps her favorite holiday. It always seemed somehow magical to her. All those times as a kid when she tried to stay up all night so she could see Santa. All those times when she would wake up early in the morning to race downstairs with her younger sister to open presents and discover the plate of cookies and glass of milk left out gone. All those times where magic seemed real and possible and attainable.
She slowly turned in a circle, taking it all in. He had done this for her. She couldn’t believe it.
“Why?” she asked. “Why?”
“Just . . . come here,” he said, pointing to the tree. He grabbed a medium, square-shaped box and handed it to her. “Open this.”
“Open it? Now? But Christmas is three days away.”
“It’s an early Christmas present.”
She eyed the box in her hand. “Well . . . okay.”
She untied the big red bow and ripped off the wrapping paper to reveal a plain white box. She held it up and shook it.
Harry laughed. “You’re not going to guess what it is, Felicity.”
“I could try,” she said, taking the lid off the box. Inside was a . . . “You gave me a pen? Does it . . . does it do anything?”
Because as far as she could
tell, the pen was just a pen.
“‘You gave me your heart, and all you got was a pen,’” he quoted from her favorite movie.
“Harry,” she began.
“Felicity, I fucked up.”
“Harry,” she said again, a strangled sort of laugh mixed with a sob escaping her.
“I fucked up,” he repeated firmly. “I really fucked up, and I know that. And I realized—”
“Because of Deux ex Spider?”
“No,” he said heavily, “Not because I Sparked a spider. And I should say something. I need to say a lot of things, but the biggest thing is this: I love you, Felicity. I always have. And the only one capable of destroying things is me. I . . . I hate risks, as you know, but not taking a risk on you would be the stupidest, dumbest, most ridiculous thing I ever did.”
Her heart pounded so loud in her ears that she couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. It was everything that she had wanted to hear, but . . . “How can I believe you? One minute you seem all gung-ho, then another you’re not.”
“Because we were hardly talking to each other for”—Harry didn’t even glance at his watch—“thirty-three and a half hours, and I hated every single second of it. It wasn’t like any of our normal fights. But this one . . . this one . . . those thirty plus hours were torture, Felicity. I could see my whole life without you in it, and I—I hated it.”
“So are you saying all this because it’s about you?”
“No,” he said, grabbing her hand, his fingers sliding over the pen she held. “It’s not about me. It’s not even about you. It’s about us. I want there to be an ‘us.’ And I know you just don’t worry so much about . . .”
“I worry. Of course I worry, but I choose to not obsess over it. You know how it was when I opened Fat Lady Sweets,” she reminded him.
He had the good grace to blush. “Of course. That wasn’t fair of me. It just feels like sometimes you’re a goddess while I’m a mere mortal.”
“Harry,” she breathed out, her stomach dropping out of her. “Do you really think that? I’m not a goddess. I’m flesh and bone. A mere mortal, too. Don’t put me on any pedestals, Harry. Don’t require me to live up to out of this world expectations. Don’t do that to me. I’m just me. I can’t be anyone but me.”
“I know that, and I can’t be anyone but me.” He dropped her hand and clenched his at his sides. “I’m just me. Awkward in every singular way. Shy. And it’s hard for me to open up . . . to really trust someone.”
“And you think it’s easy for me? I don’t share everything about me to strangers, or even to my parents or my younger sister. Or you, for that matter. But, still, I trust you more than anyone I know and will ever know. And as scary as that is to open myself up like that and risk—”
“You’re scared?” He blinked behind his glasses, almost as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “But . . . but . . . you never said.”
“We haven’t said a lot of things to each other, Harry. And we’re supposedly best friends.” She looked at him, seeing him in a whole new light. “Why is that? Shouldn’t we trust each other? We say we do, but our actions say otherwise.”
“I think it’s normal,” Harry said after a long moment. “I would bet there are long married couples who are still discovering truths about their spouses that they didn’t know about until this very moment. I think we all have our secrets, the things we consider insignificant, or perhaps, too significant that we just don’t speak of. Sometimes when you talk about a hidden dream, a secret need or want, or just a truth about yourself . . . it’s . . . odd to let that go to another person. To share that thing you kept to yourself for so long with another. Will that person hold it close, or will that person crush it to smithereens?”
She rolled the pen in between her hands. “You were the first person I told about Fat Lady Sweets, way before it even had a name. When the whole idea of owning a candy store was a kernel of a dream within me. Do you know how long I carried the hope of Fat Lady Sweets around?”
Harry shook his head no.
“Forever,” she said. “It felt like forever to me. Even when I was young and baking alongside one of my moms, something clicked in me. A sense of right. But it wasn’t until I first made candy where I thought, Aha, so this is it! This is belonging. This is home. But realizing that and going after it are . . . well, you know.”
“It’s scary.”
“But it was my dream. A dream that never seemed possible. How would I even do it? How could I? It wasn’t like I had grown up in a family of chefs or cooking types. I didn’t know the first thing about what I had to do . . . or if I could do it. If I could even take that risk. But I told you, remember?”
“I could never forget that night.” Him and her, at eighteen, side by side on top of his parents’ roof on a warm summer night right before college. They’d spotted a shooting star and both made a wish. And then she’d looked at him and told him, in a hushed voice, almost as if she’d been scared of his reaction, that she had this dream—a silly one, she had even said—but that she had to tell him. And she did, and it had made perfect sense to him, since Felicity was always creating some new candy.
“And do you remember what you said to me?”
“I told you it wasn’t a silly dream.”
“Not only that. Don’t you remember? I told you I was scared of the risk and that I would fail, and you said . . .”
“I said you wouldn’t know until you tried.” Harry smiled ruefully. “It’s always easier to say it, of course. I know that. And, yes, I haven’t taken many risks in my life. I haven’t really opened up as I would like to. That’s just who I am, but I want to try. I want to take this risk with you, whatever may come. But I want you—not because you make me happy, although that’s a super awesome bonus, and I hope that, at some point, I can make you happy as well—”
“You do make me happy.”
“But, Felicity, I want to be with you and see what happens in this life with you because whatever comes our way, I just . . . I think we can make it. I will fight every day so we can make it, because I don’t want to lose us. And I want to not call you just my best friend. I want to call you my girlfriend, my partner in crime, my heart, my lover, my everything.”
“We really don’t know everything about each other,” Felicity said. “Romantic relationships are different.”
“They are. I have my hang ups. You have yours. But I . . .” Harry strode to her, taking her face in his hands, his blue eyes serious and steady on hers. “I love you, Felicity Anne Evans. I always have. I always will.”
Her heart grew too huge for her chest. “Oh, Harry, I love you, too.”
“We’ll take it slow,” he said. “We’ll date. We’ll get to know each other on a more intimate level—open up to each other. I’m not quite ready to have sex just yet.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to be. I’m not ready to get married right away, or even have kids in the near future. We’ll just take it one day at a time.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So let’s start with a kiss.”
EPILOGUE
Thirty-five years later
THE PHONE RINGING late at night usually meant bad news, but Harry was prepared.
“We’ll be there,” he said, hanging up, and looked over toward his wife, already rolling out of bed. “Felicity, that was Ben.”
“I know,” Felicity said, hurriedly pulling on a pair of jeans. “What did he say? Is Nora doing okay?”
“Cursing up a storm,” he said. “Much like her mother did one mid-September night and then again two years later in early October, and a last time in late July.”
“That’s right. I gave birth three times, and what happened each of those three times? You felt dizzy.”
“I needed a moment,” Harry said, as they rushed downstairs to their car. “Births are not a pretty thing.”
“Poor Nora,” Felicity sighed. “She’s never been good with pain. Did we turn the stove off?”
/>
“It never was on.”
“Lock all the doors?”
“Yup.”
“What about Captain?”
Captain was their twelve-year-old pit bull. “Captain is sound asleep.”
“Do you think she’s okay?” Felicity didn’t wait as she tugged out her cell. “I need to call Annie and Teddy.”
Harry knew better than to remind his wife that Annie was off learning under some chocolate chef in Paris to broaden Fat Lady Sweets even more, and Teddy was on the other side of the world in Australia doing God knows what a twenty-two-year-old did nowadays.
“Oh, poor Nora,” Felicity said, once more, after getting off the phone. “And poor Ben.”
“This is going to be our first, Felicity.”
“I know,” she said. “I don’t feel much like a grandma. Do you?”
“I don’t feel much like a grandma, either.”
“Ha, ha. Your humor continues to miss the mark.”
He pulled into the hospital parking lot and found a spot rather easily. Thank God. “You don’t think they’ll let us in the birthing room, will they?”
“I don’t think Nora would even want us in there if they did. Don’t worry,” she said, patting his arm. “You won’t get dizzy again.”
He opened his mouth to make a retort but was stopped as they entered the hospital and made their way upstairs to the appropriate floor. Ben’s parents were there and had green balloons.
“Harry, we need balloons, too! And a gigantic teddy bear!”
“We’ll get them . . . after the baby is born and we know if it’s a he or a she.”
“It’s definitely a she,” Felicity said confidently.
“I think it’s a he.”
Felicity looked at him. “Let’s take a bet. Five dollars?”
“Done.”
The wait seemed like forever. Harry paced the floor of the maternity ward. He made trips to the coffee machine. He did everything he could think of so that he wouldn’t worry so much about his first baby having a baby. Nora had been so tiny when she had been born, a red, scrunched up face with a mighty pair of lungs, and she had fit perfectly in the crook of his arms. She would fall asleep against his heartbeat, and she looked so much like Felicity but was her own person too.
Holiday for Two (a duet of Christmas novellas) Page 14
