Santa's on His Way

by Lisa Jackson

“No. Why?”

  “You look awful. You didn’t shave, which isn’t like you. And you haven’t stolen one cookie.” She reached out and placed the back of her hand against his forehead.

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Then what’s wrong?” She moved her palm to press to his cheek.

  “Nothing a few cookies can’t cure.”

  Her frown dug deeper. “That’s a lie.”

  “What do you need me to do for today?” he asked, because he couldn’t get into Lindsay with Sarah and he couldn’t dump on her when she felt like she had everything riding on this. When she deserved a happy, uplifting Christmas.

  It’d probably be their last full Christmas together. She’d get married, and even if Bill did move into this house with them, he and Sarah would spend at least some time with his family. And Cal would be truly alone.

  Which was probably how it should be.

  “I told you I’d take care of everything, well, except building the platform, but that was all I needed. I’ve got today handled. I’ll take care of the women up here, Mrs. Tyler’s in charge of the men and pastor and getting them set up down at the site. Bill’s doing his chairs and heaters and handling any tree stragglers. The bridesmaids are going to use their trucks to get down to the site, and I’m going to drive the bride down in the old Ford.”

  “So . . .”

  “You can do whatever ranch stuff you want to do, or you can take the afternoon off. I’ve got it all covered.”

  “There aren’t . . . lights you need stringing or chairs to—I could handle the Christmas tree crowd.”

  “Bill and I have it covered.” She gave him a hug as if that weren’t like shoving him clear through with a meat cleaver. “You get to relax. When was the last time you did that?”

  Technically, last night. Sex was very relaxing for as long as it lasted.

  It was all the mental rigmarole after that wasn’t relaxing. And not working meant thinking more about it. Meant constantly beating back that little flicker of hope things could be different.

  He would literally never learn.

  “You don’t even have to be here if you don’t want,” she said carefully, not meeting his gaze and nibbling on a cookie delicately.

  “Not be . . . Where would I go?”

  She shrugged, still looking at the cookies instead of him. “Wherever you wanted. A drive. Into Benson. You could go to a movie!”

  “Alone?”

  Her gaze slid to his, something like hurt in her pitying gaze. Because alone was what he’d always be, and she knew that as well as him.

  She swallowed her bite of cookie and took a deep breath. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve . . . You’ve made yourself alone. I figured you either liked it, or you’d eventually snap out of it, grow out of it, and sometimes I think you have, but Christmas comes and you always turn into this.” She gestured at him as if he knew what she was referring to. “Gruff and a little self-pitying, though Lindsay being here has brought that to a lot of self-pitying this year. And I get it, I do, I’ve felt some pity for myself, too, but . . . you can’t keep at it.”

  “I’m struggling to see how I’m not supposed to take this the wrong way.”

  “The wrong way is thinking I’m accusing you of doing something wrong, or bad, or that I don’t understand. I do understand. I think I was in that cycle myself for a while, but Bill—”

  “You’re in love and getting married, to a guy you didn’t want to introduce me to but now want living under my roof—”

  “Our roof,” Sarah interrupted, suddenly looking closer to tears. “You always said it was ours. I don’t want that to change. Did you?”

  “No, I don’t want it to change,” he managed, though his throat felt tight and all that panic from this morning was clutching at his throat. Didn’t this just prove his point? “This is just who I am. The guy who says the wrong thing and makes you cry. No one wants this,” he said, mirroring her move and gesturing toward himself. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

  “I would.” She hit him on the chest. Hard. “You are kind and generous to a fault and I know you’d die for me, Cal Barton. This isn’t about who you are. It’s about how you see yourself. And how you’ve let . . . Mom and Dad don’t define who you are, Cal. Not their shit and not their leaving. Lindsay doesn’t define who you are. You’ve let your grief over those things define yourself to yourself, but no one else sees you the way you do. What does that tell you?”

  “That you’re all too softhearted.”

  “You know, Bill asked me out five times before I said yes.”

  “Sounds like a stalker.”

  She hit him again. “Finally I said, ‘Why do you keep asking me out? What could you possibly see in me that makes you so damn persistent?’ And you know what he said?”

  “No, but I don’t think I want to know.”

  “He said, ‘What don’t I see in you, Sarah?’”

  She left that there as if it was some amazing thing and Cal tried to rearrange his face to somehow look receptive and understanding instead of what he felt—which was baffled.

  She sighed and shook her head and Cal could only hope he’d be dismissed and this horrible delving into personal matters could be over—because they took care of each other, but they didn’t have heart-to-hearts. Cal didn’t do heart-to-hearts.

  “Do you love me, Cal?”

  He winced—both at the fact this wasn’t over and the fact she could even ask. “You know I do.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then don’t presume people loving you is stupid. I love you with my whole heart, and I am not stupid. I am not wrong.”

  “Okay,” he returned, figuring agreeing with her would end it. But she only fisted her hands on her hips looking more irritated.

  “It’s not okay until you get it through your head that these things you think you are—unlovable, insufferable, whatever—are things we all are at some point or another. They can either define you, become your day-to-day, hour-to-hour, or they can just be low points you have every now and again.”

  He still didn’t know what she wanted from him. Maybe the belief he was okay. That he could take care of himself, because she wanted out. That had to be it. She didn’t want Bill to move in here with him. She wanted Cal to be okay so she could leave.

  He wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be, but he’d die before he let her know that. “You don’t have to worry about me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay here for me. I want you to go wherever you want to go, do whatever with Bill that would make you happy. I don’t want my shit to be the thing keeping you here. I’ll be okay. Once Christmas is over, I’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t want to leave, dumbass. The thing keeping me here isn’t your shit. It’s you. It’s the Christmas trees and having weddings here, which has been so cool. It’s the fact this is my home and I’ve always loved it and taken great solace in its existence no matter who came or went. I don’t want to leave, Cal. Not everyone does.”

  The doorbell sounded from the front of the house and Sarah hefted out a sigh. “This conversation isn’t over,” she said on her way to answer the door.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, to an empty room, his own stupidity echoing back at him.

  * * *

  Lindsay wasn’t exactly thrilled to be getting ready for this wedding in Cal’s house. She wasn’t exactly thrilled, period. She was gritty eyed and exhausted.

  But her big brother was getting married today, to a woman he adored, a woman the whole Tyler clan adored. It was a good day even if she was a little raw from last night. Memories of being a teenager in this house, of watching Cal valiantly trying to shield Sarah from their awful stepmother or their drunk father.

  In this house she remembered too much of the good man she’d left. It wasn’t that she regretted leaving. It was just . . .

  As an adult, she could look back and see how she might have handl
ed things differently. How she might have found a compromise between leaving everything behind and never finding herself the way she had.

  But she couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t let herself dwell on old mistakes. Not today. Today was about Shane and Cora and happy beginnings for people who truly deserved them.

  Cal deserves one, too.

  She rolled her eyes at herself. Today was not the day to obsess about Cal or anything. Today was for Shane and Cora.

  Cora, who looked so giddily nervous as the hairdresser worked on her hair. Molly and Lilly were oohing and aahing over the bouquets Lou had dropped off. Lindsay looked around desperately trying to find something, anything, to lift her out of this crappy mood.

  Cookies. Christmas cookies solved everything, she was pretty sure. And Sarah was a fine baker. She sidled over to the table where Sarah had set out piles of delicious cookies and went to town.

  Sarah entered from the kitchen, carrying another pitcher of lemonade. “Everything going good?” she asked cheerfully.

  Lindsay nodded through a mouthful of cookie. Sarah narrowed her eyes at her, studying her face with a weird kind of suspicion. Lindsay forced herself to smile. “What?”

  “You look about as with it as Cal does.”

  It was awful to hope he was miserable, too. Of course he was miserable. He’d decided to be, hadn’t he? Lindsay cleared her throat. “What about Cal?” she asked, trying for clueless innocence.

  “Did . . . Something happened, didn’t it?”

  Lindsay shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth, buying some time to think while she chewed. “Oh, you know. I just . . . helped him with his Christmas wrapping.” And had hot, sweaty sex in the stable room, confessed all of my feelings, was rejected in the worst possible way. The kind you couldn’t fight.

  Sarah pulled a face. “That’s not a euphemism, is it?”

  Lindsay’s face heated against her will. “I mean, I did wrap your gifts.”

  “Oh God, you guys—”

  Lindsay slapped a hand over Sarah’s mouth, glancing back at where her sister and just-about-to-be sister-in-law stood with Cora’s sister. She could not let Molly get wind of it. Not yet. Lindsay just wasn’t emotionally stable enough to listen to her older sister’s lectures. Not yet.

  Sarah pulled Lindsay’s hand away. “But you did?” she whispered.

  “I shouldn’t be discussing this with you,” Lindsay whispered back, still keeping an eagle eye on her sister.

  “But you did?”

  “Stop asking me that!”

  “So, you did.”

  “Sarah.”

  Sarah sighed, looking more than a little miserable herself. “I just want him to be happy.”

  “Me too.” Lindsay swallowed and reached out to squeeze Sarah’s hand. “But he has to choose it, or he’s never going to be it. I can’t—We can’t make that choice for him.”

  “I know. I know. But something has to push him, doesn’t it? Someone?”

  “I’ve done my fair share of pushing, Sarah. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “You do?”

  “You don’t give up,” Sarah said firmly, so much nineteen-year-old surety shining in her eyes.

  It was Lindsay’s turn to sigh. “I hurt him. Then and now. It all hurts to him. I think giving up is the . . . it’s the generous thing to do.”

  “No, it’s the cowardly thing to do. If you love him. If you want to make it work this time. And you do, don’t you? You wouldn’t have . . . Well, you know, if you didn’t want him. You’re not cruel. You love him.”

  “Yes.” Lindsay turned away from her family, because if they even glanced at her they’d see all the emotion on her face. The sadness and the hurt and the despair, and that didn’t belong here today. She’d have plenty of other non-wedding days to feel sad over it and him. “I do love him. I’ll never stop, I don’t think. It’s been this long. But I can’t force him to accept that love. I can’t make him believe he deserves it.”

  “But we can keep loving him until he does.”

  Lindsay couldn’t bear to voice her greatest fear, though it lingered there in the silence.

  What if he never did?

  CHAPTER 9

  Cal couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not after his conversation with Sarah this morning. She wanted to stay because she loved him, and she loved this place, so maybe he wanted to help for the same reasons.

  Damn it.

  He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and headed over to Bill, who had some strange-looking contraption that seemed to make sure the chairs were all lined up perfectly.

  “You, uh, need any help?”

  Bill didn’t look up from his chairs. “Got it. Thanks, though. I just put up the Closed sign, so we shouldn’t have any more tree customers.”

  We. Cal was going to have to get used to that and not wince at it. “Yeah. Gre—”

  “Bill, it looks perfect. I swear to Pete if you measure one more time I’m going to beat you with the tape measure.”

  Cal swallowed at Mrs. Tyler’s voice. Lindsay’s mom had been such a part of his life growing up and then . . .

  Maybe it was Sarah’s words, or maybe it was Bill’s from the day before. Maybe it was all the words and all the people poking holes in all the barricades he’d built around himself in the aftermath of all that abandonment, but he could see something with a startling clarity he hadn’t before.

  He’d pushed Mrs. Tyler away after Lindsay had left. Made clear in no uncertain terms she wasn’t his mother and he didn’t want her help or her support. Because he’d been afraid. Afraid of support. The very same panic he’d felt this morning.

  He hadn’t understood it at nineteen, and he wasn’t sure he understood it now, but he was beginning to fully comprehend it was him. Not his parents. Not Lindsay. Not anyone’s betrayal or disappearance, but his reaction to it.

  Because Mrs. Tyler had never really disappeared. She’d given him space, but there’d always been gestures. Hugs when she bought her Christmas tree. She’d taken Sarah shopping on occasion. He hadn’t let her be a mother to him, but she’d been a presence no matter how much of a petulant asshole he’d been.

  “Hi, Mrs. Tyler.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and studied him. “I think we need to have a little talk, boy.”

  She’d said those exact same words to him after Lindsay had confessed to her they’d had sex for the first time. Then she’d proceeded to give him the safe sex talk his father had never bothered to bestow. And even then, in the miserable embarrassment of his girlfriend’s mother offering to demonstrate condom usage on a banana (he’d refused, politely), he’d known that was something she was doing because she cared.

  “I’m not really a boy anymore, Mrs. T.”

  “Aren’t you just, though.”

  Slightly insulted, he straightened and frowned down at her.

  “When you get to be my age, twenty-five is still pretty young, sweetheart.” Then she smiled at him and sighed. “What are you doing to my baby girl?”

  “I’m not—” He glanced at Bill, who seemed so lost in chairs he wasn’t even listening. Cal stepped forward trying to create some space. He spoke quietly. “I was minding my own business. Whatever happened, happened because she wasn’t minding hers.”

  Mrs. Tyler laughed, that big, booming laugh she had that always put him at ease, gave him a few seconds of forgetting he didn’t really belong.

  He’d never let himself.

  “Tylers minding their own business? When has that ever happened?”

  The smile was inevitable, but it came with a crushing weight of regret. For once it wasn’t someone else’s actions causing that regret. It was his own.

  It was easy to blame Lindsay for everything that had happened. She had left. It was easy to blame his parents. They were assholes, no question. But Mrs. Tyler . . . what had she ever done to him?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, before he could think bett
er of it.

  Mrs. Tyler looked at him quizzically. “For what?”

  “I know you wanted to be there for us, and I wasn’t kind or grateful about it. But I am grateful. You were always good to Sarah.”

  “And I always will be. She’s a sweet girl. But I also knew she was in good hands with you.”

  “A surly asshole?”

  “A kind, loving, sacrificing older brother. Who’s a little bit of a surly asshole, yes. But not to her. Never to her.”

  Cal didn’t know what to say to that. He looked uncomfortably over at Bill, but he’d moved to the top of a far-off hill and seemed to be analyzing the chairs from way over there. Cal shook his head.

  “You could talk to me.”

  He looked at Mrs. Tyler dolefully. “About your daughter? I don’t think—”

  “I didn’t say I’d give you advice or solve your problems or take your side. I only said you could talk to me if you needed to talk to someone. It isn’t any good, you know, bottling it all up. Believe it or not, I’ve been there myself. After Lindsay’s father died, my amazing mother was smart enough to tell me to let it out on occasion. So, what I’m saying is, let it out. You won’t on Sarah. You won’t on Lindsay. So.” She gestured at herself.

  “Your son is about to get married.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I have a full hour before I have to go get dressed.” She situated herself on one of Bill’s chairs and pointed to the one next to her.

  He knew Mrs. Tyler well enough to know that there was no refusing or turning away. She wanted you to sit, you sat. So he did, uncomfortably.

  “Get it out, boy.”

  “I just . . .” He thought about last night. About saying “I love you” and knowing it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t get over what had happened. It was hardly Lindsay’s fault, but that made it worse. He didn’t know how to fix it. It felt foolish to talk about an unfixable problem. Especially with Lindsay’s mother, but she was looking at him expectantly.

  She was right, too. He couldn’t unload on anyone else. Mrs. Tyler might not be an unbiased party, but she’d listen. He hadn’t thought he wanted anyone to listen until right this second.

  “I love her. I’ll always love her. And maybe she feels the same way.” Maybe. He kept trying to convince himself of that maybe, but he’d never doubted Lindsay had loved him before and he wasn’t certain he doubted it now. After all, he felt it this deeply. Why shouldn’t she? But love wasn’t the issue.