“What I want, more than anything, is to feel that close to you again. So I went to that party. Hoping you would be there. Hoping you would see me in this stupid dress—”
“Hey now, I like that dress.”
“I wanted you to see me in it and I wanted you to want me.”
“Mission accomplished.”
She sucked in a breath, blood pounding in her cheeks.
“But then, when everything happened with your mom, all I could think about was how hard this would be for you and I couldn’t stand the idea of you being here all alone.”
“You didn’t want my mother to be alone.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone.” A tear slipped from her eyes and she didn’t brush it away. She was done hiding from him. “I’m here for you. For my friend. Because you’ve always been there for me.”
He grabbed her hands in his, squeezing them so hard they nearly hurt. Her breath shuddered. The look on his face…she’d never seen him so intense.
“I don’t want to be your friend,” he said.
“What?” she breathed, pain rippling through her.
“It’s not enough. Not anymore.”
She swallowed. The strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder. “That was what I was scared of. Because it’s not enough for me either. It’s not nearly enough.”
With shaking hands, they stroked back each other’s hair. And she felt impossibly open to him. Like she’d been unzipped somehow and was standing in front of him with everything showing. And it was the same for her with him.
She’d always seen him so clearly. The vulnerability he guarded with jokes. That physical ease that hid an emotional want that never got answered. Never got fulfilled.
And she’d been a part of that. She’d hurt him. With her own fear. Her own vulnerability. Probably in ways she didn’t even know about.
I’m sorry, she thought again.
But instead of saying it, she slipped her hands across his cheeks. Holding him still. Looking him right in the eyes, she didn’t hide. Or look away.
This is me, she thought. All of me. Wanting all of you.
He sighed, said something soft she didn’t hear or understand, and his hands gripped her waist, the strange fabric of her dress sliding between them, amplifying every touch, broadcasting it all over her body.
Hey! Dean is touching me now!
She rose up on her toes. He bent down. They met halfway.
His lips were dry. He smelled like pencil lead. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as hard as she could. For as long as she could.
I won’t let you go. Not again. Never again.
“Let’s go check on your mom,” she said.
“And then what?”
“Will you come with me?” she asked, pulling away from the kiss.
His eyes, his touch, everything about him said yes.
“Where?”
“To my house.”
“I’ve never been to your house.”
She wrapped her arm through his, pulling them into motion. “Well, you are in for a very short, very boring tour.”
“What are we going to do there?” he asked.
“Talk,” she said.
He booed.
“I think we have a lot we need to say,” she said. “I know there’s a lot I want to tell you. About how sorry I am and how much I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I remember when we were kids and you said that this place would poison us. That our parents would.”
“I remember.”
“They almost did, Dean. They almost took all this away from us, and I think we need to get out all the poison.”
“Okay. Get out poison. Then what?”
“Well, then I imagine we’re going to be so emotionally wrung out and exhausted that we’ll fall asleep.” Now she was just having fun with him. And she wanted to keep having fun with him forever. She wanted it to never end.
“Nap. Got it. And then?”
“Monkey sex, Dean. Then monkey sex.”
“Excellent!”
“We got time, boy. We got plenty of time.”
He stopped and pulled her in close, breathing kisses across her face. “Merry Christmas, Trina,” he said.
“Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered back.
They stepped back into Marion’s tiny little hospital room and were both brought up short by the sight of Eugene, in a big black overcoat, leaning over Marion’s bed, pressing kisses to her forehead.
She felt Dean’s entire body tense up. And she wanted, badly, to get him out of here before something happened between Dean and his father.
“Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but the two adults jumped back as if they’d been caught necking.
“Trina,” Eugene said in his deep voice. “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“It’s no problem. None at all. Let me just get our stuff.”
Dean stepped out of the shadows with her and Eugene’s eyes beneath the bushy white eyebrows went wide.
“Dad,” Dean said with a short nod of his head while he grabbed his jacket off the bed.
“Dean.”
Trina nearly rolled her eyes. The testosterone was so thick she could barely see.
“Glad to see you could make it to your wife’s hospital bed,” Dean said while shrugging into his coat. “Had to finish that last cigar, I suppose.”
“Your mother asked me to stay at the party,” he said.
“Because that’s what Mom does,” he said. “Mom says that kind of thing.”
“And I mean it,” Marion said. “Stop, Dean.”
Trina had her feet wedged into her shoes and her coat and purse over her arm. She went back to Dean and put a hand against his chest. “Let’s just go, Dean,” she whispered.
Dean’s eyes went from his mother to Trina and she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. And she had that strange sensation of knowing him both really well and not at all. Not really. And instead of making her daunted or worried, the thought was a happy one. An exciting one. Getting to know all the parts of this man would be happy work. That would make for happy days.
He touched her hair, pushed it behind her ear. “Maybe I need to do some work to deserve you,” he whispered for her ears alone.
“Is there something happening between you two?” Eugene asked, pointing a finger at Trina and Dean.
“If it is, I can only say it’s about damn time,” Marion said, holding his hand. “Wish them a merry Christmas and let them go back to their evening.”
Eugene seemed slightly baffled, as if he’d walked into the wrong room.
“Merry Christmas, Dean. Trina,” he said with a sort of head bow.
“Merry Christmas, Dad,” Dean said, then wrapped his arm around Trina’s shoulder and led her out of the room.
“That was strange,” she said. “Did you think that was strange?”
“Things are always strange with my dad,” Dean said. “I’ll drive. We can come back to get your car in the morning.”
“But that was stranger than usual, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. We didn’t fight.”
“Right,” she said, with a smile. “You didn’t fight.”
“It’s a Christmas miracle.”
“Wait,” she said as they stepped into the elevator. “Why are you driving?”
He pushed her back into the corner of the elevator, pressed his body full length against hers. Hips to chest. His arms around her waist. “Because I want to make out in my car,” he said into her mouth. “Because I don’t want to let you go for as long as it takes to drive to your house.”
“I like the sound of that.”
In the end they had hot monkey sex. In the truck. And on her couch.
Then they talked. They talked until the sun came up.
And it was Christmas Day.
Chapter Six
December 24, 2013
6:32 PM
All right, Dean thought,
staring at the red wreath made out of beads on Trina’s front door. This is not going to be easy. I need a plan. Maybe a speech. A speech would be good.
He didn’t have a speech.
He took a few minutes out on the porch before opening the door to try and think of a speech.
But he had nothing.
Just the mad stupid pounding of his heart and few song lyrics he couldn’t get out of his head.
The front door was pulled open and there was Trina, her face rosy. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail that fell down over her shoulder.
“Why are you standing out here?” she asked, glancing around their front porch. “You hiding presents?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“Thinking? You do that better in the snow, do you?”
“Not really.”
“You are so weird.” She pressed her warm lips to his cold ones and pulled him in at the same time.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, smiling against her mouth, kicking the door shut behind them.
“Just a little.”
He kissed her again, slipping his tongue into her mouth, and she moaned, melting against him in an instant. That’s what Trina did, she melted against him. She just went boneless.
He loved it. Hard.
“Maybe more than a little,” she whispered.
“Drunk Trina is kind of my favorite Trina.”
“You only say that because she’s easy.”
“Shhh, that’s my drunk girlfriend you’re talking about.”
He kissed her again. Wrapping his arms around her as if he could absorb her through the leather of his coat, the shearling beneath that. His stupid suit and his skin beneath that. Into his blood, that’s where he’d absorb her if he could. Right into the heart of him.
That’s where he’d carry her.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I know, I missed you too. Four days is too long, isn’t it?”
“The fourth day was the worst,” he agreed. “I almost drove to the Canadian border to meet you.”
“I would have liked that.”
She kissed him, slipped her arms around his waist, under his coat, resting her hands on the top of his butt.
“Hey.” He broke the kiss, though that was the last thing he wanted. But they had some serious ground to cover tonight. And that wouldn’t happen with her hand on his butt. Nothing would happen with her copping a feel.
“There’s something…” He got distracted by the sight of an open cooler on the kitchen island between the living room and the kitchen. “What did you do?”
She clapped and spun, and he ducked back to avoid getting sliced by the end of her ponytail. “I tried to recreate the ice sculpture at your parents’ party.”
“Are those snowballs?”
“They are!”
“How many did you use?”
“Thirty-two. Artfully arranged. And there’s a flashlight in there somewhere that will probably short-circuit at some point. Not quite as good as the tree falling over, but it should prove to be exciting.”
“Everything with you is exciting.” He stroked back the ponytail so it was flat between her shoulder blades. “I like your T-shirt.” It was Santa and Rudolph wearing Batman and Robin costumes. He truly didn’t know where she got these things. But over the last year she’d gathered a lot of Christmas stuff. After years of boycotting the holiday, she was all in this year. She was a one-stop Christmas shop.
“You better change,” he said. “Or we’re going to be late for the party.”
“Right,” she said. “About that. I’ve decided we’re not going.”
“Not going?” Part of him, he couldn’t lie, leapt with excitement. He nearly pulled off the damn tie and flung it over his shoulder. “You’ve been talking about this party for weeks. You’re excited about the party.”
“I know, but—”
“We’ve been practicing.” The calluses on his fingers had calluses.
“And that’s been great. So wonderful.”
“Yule log, Trina. Yule. Log.”
“Ah ha, we don’t have to leave the house for a yule log either!”
She slipped her fingers through his and led him into the kitchen. The counters were full of party food. Olives and sausage rolls. Shrimp. Cheese cut into little cubes with toothpicks sticking out of them.
“What is going on?” he asked, snagging a chip as she tugged him past.
Trina opened the fridge with a flourish. “Ta da.”
He ducked down and looked into the old Frigidaire. On the top shelf there was a huge brown lump. “Oh God, Trina, is that—”
“A yule log!” she cried.
Yes. Of course. A yule log.
“That is amazing, but all of this food will be at the party too. And an open bar. Drunk Trina loves an open bar.”
“I’ve got that covered, too.” From the cooler on the kitchen island she grabbed a Bud and twisted off the cap. “For you.”
She grabbed the beer she’d been drinking from the counter and gave his bottle a tap with hers. “Cheers. Merry Christmas, baby.”
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “But why are you doing this?”
“Right. Well, I noticed that every time I talked about how excited I was about the party, you seemed to get less and less excited.”
“That’s not true,” he lied, and she shot him her patented litigator look. “Okay, it’s true. But it’s only because Dad and I are still trying to be civil, and that’s exhausting, and—”
“Your brother is there,” she filled in for him. “And he’s a jerk and you hate ties.”
He slumped, sad that he’d somehow managed to ruin all her excitement. “I do hate ties, but once a year I will suffer a tie for this party because I know you love it.”
“I do.” She whispered a kiss across his cheek. And then the other one. And then his mouth.
He hummed low in his throat, loving her sweetness.
“But I love you more.”
He groaned and set down his beer so he could wrap her up in his arms. “I love you, too. So much.”
“So ditch the tie, babe. You’ve got something here you can change into, don’t you?”
“Are you sure?”
“Totally sure. Now go.”
Dean practically sprinted into the bedroom, where he kept a lot of stuff. He ditched the tie and the suit and slipped into a worn pair of jeans and a long-sleeve henley. He sighed with relief when he kicked off the pinchy dress shoes.
“All right, here’s the deal,” he said, stepping back into the warm living room that glowed with the lights from the tree. “This year we don’t go, but next year…”
He stopped because Trina was standing next to the island, holding out a small box wrapped in red and green paper. A lopsided bow was falling off the top.
“I was going to do this later,” she said. “But I’m so nervous I just want to get it over with.”
“Isn’t gift giving for the morning?” Crap. This was why he needed that damn speech. The gift he’d wanted for her, the real one, he’d been unable to get, and he was worried there was some bad stuff working behind the scenes to keep it from him. From her.
“Please,” she said, shaking it out at him.
“Well, if this is an engagement ring, the answer is yes.”
“You didn’t… It’s not.” She looked utterly stricken.
“Relax, baby.” He kissed her lips. “That’s my job.”
And frankly, he was pretty sure she wasn’t quite ready for that. It had been a slow-moving courtship, but by her birthday, he thought. In the summer. He’d give her his grandmother’s engagement ring. She’d like that.
Which made the fact that he’d failed to get her the gift he wanted to give her even worse.
He tore open the paper and flipped open the small white box. Inside, on a little piece of cotton, was a key.
A house key.
“Move in with me,” she said, and then blushed. “Please.”
>
He could make a joke, tease it out a little bit, but she was so clearly on edge and he didn’t want anything to put a shadow over tonight.
Because what he had to tell her kind of had that shadow thing covered. And it was a freaking shame too, because she’d been excited about this Christmas. The first one in years.
“Come here.” He reeled her in, against his chest. Where she belonged. “Of course I’ll move in. I can’t wait.”
She slumped against him, laughing a little. “I don’t know why I was so nervous,” she said.
Because we’re still sorting through the poison from our fathers.
“I love you,” he said again, because he couldn’t say it enough. “But there’s something we should talk about.”
“Uh oh. I don’t like that voice.” She pulled away from him. She liked distance when they talked about serious stuff, and he liked her right up next to him. It was something they were working on. The compromise was he held her hand and she let him. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a gift I wanted to get you,” he said.
He watched her eyes go wide. “That gift?” she asked, the blind panic in her voice plain to hear. Well, it was good to know he was right about his grandmother’s engagement ring. Now was not quite the time.
“No. Not that gift. The key is the right move for us right now.”
“Because it’s not like I don’t want…that gift. I just… Well, I thought we’d talk about it more. You know? Have a few discussions.”
“A pro/con chart?”
“No. Well, not unless you wanted it.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You have it already, don’t you? You’ve started a pro/con list about getting married.”
“If it makes you feel better it’s mostly pro.”
He kissed her and then leaned away, otherwise it would be another hour before they talked about this. “That’s not the gift I wanted to get you. I wanted to buy you that land, the acreage your dad owns that our parents fought over. The land the oil people were interested in. It’s not much—I mean, we could build a house on it someday, but that’s about it. It’s mostly grazing for your dad’s herd. And the mineral rights are pretty significant. But I wanted you to have it. To know that it was going to be in good hands. To know that it wouldn’t cause any more rifts between our families.”
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