I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Lori Wilde

  She was whole and complete exactly as she was. There was nothing more she needed to do. It was all here. Inside her. The world.

  He entered her wet, willing body. Filling her up.

  Together, they were one being, flowing together. Changing. Transforming. Becoming. Breaking down all barriers. There was no separation. No isolation. No loss. No boundaries between them.

  Connected.

  Joined.

  United.

  At her core, she was and had always been love.

  Supreme.

  Absolute.

  Union.

  It was the most sovereign of all gifts. And Gabi was profoundly changed.

  This, her snow globe moment, was a moment of true grace, when she was fully and utterly alive for the first time in her life.

  The sound of a rooster crowing woke her the second time. Gabi opened her eyes to find Joe looking down at her, a smile on his face.

  “It’s dawn,” she mumbled. “Time to feed the critters.”

  “Taken care of,” he said.

  “You already got up and fed the animals?”

  “Nope. I asked Lee, the guy who is helping me out with the tree farm, to drop by and tend that for us.”

  “When do you have time to do that?”

  “For a split second last night when I texted him to come unharness and curry out the horses.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a nice surprise. We can stay in bed as long as you want.”

  “Until Belinda calls that she’s bringing Casey home. So if there’s something X-rated you want to do, then chop, chop.”

  “You know,” she said. “There’s a position I’ve always wanted to try …”

  “Name it,” he said,

  “I’d rather show you.” Then she took his hand and showed him exactly what she wanted.

  Twenty minutes later, Gabi wondered if she had enough energy left in her to stand, until Joe said, “I’m cooking breakfast. Do you want it in bed or at the kitchen table?”

  “I’m too hungry to wait. I’ll help and make it go faster.”

  “We did skip dinner last night.”

  “At the time, I didn’t mind, but now I’m ravenous.”

  “This way.”

  “I’m naked.”

  “Just the way I like you, but if you insist on clothing …” He tossed her one of his blue flannel shirts that was folded on top of the dresser.

  “How many of these shirts do you own?”

  “I buy them by the dozen.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t like to have to think about what I’m going to wear,” he said. “It’s an ADHD thing for me.”

  “Oh. That’s not a bad quirk. You look good in blue.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He grinned. “That’s why I wear it.”

  She buttoned up his shirt, the hem hit her mid-thigh and Joe playfully swatted her butt as she started for the kitchen ahead of him.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said, “but the time never seemed right and I guess I just needed to process it, but Gramps will be moving in with my parents tomorrow until there’s an opening in the assisted living center on the lake. My folks would let him stay with them permanently, but Gramps says he needs his space.” Joe chuckled at that, but she could tell the change was weighing on him.

  “I’m sorry to hear he’s not coming home,” Gabi said. “But I’m glad he’s getting out of the hospital.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

  “So what does this mean for the farm?” she asked, her heart skipping oddly. “For you?”

  His eyelids lowered halfway and he gazed at her for a beat before he said, “He wanted to deed the farm over to me, but I’m going to insist I buy it from him. It’s the only fair thing to do. I don’t want anyone in my family getting upset over it and I want to make sure Gramps has the money he needs to live out the rest of his life in comfort.”

  “So.” She smiled brightly despite the strange tug pulling her belly downward. “The rolling stone is gathering some moss.”

  “Yeah, I never expected to stay in one place.”

  “It’s good though, right? For you and Casey both. You feel good about it?”

  “I do,” he said, his voice firm with conviction, but his eyes turned sad for a flicker of a moment. Letting go of the Joe he used to be?

  They made breakfast standing side by side in his kitchen and it was going totally awesome until they sat down at the kitchen table together and it fully hit Gabi what she would be leaving behind. She raised a bite of egg into her mouth, but then put her fork down, food untouched.

  “What’s wrong?” Joe said. “Did I put too much salt in the eggs?”

  She shook her head, tried to smile, but it just wouldn’t take.

  “Gabi?” He got up, left his breakfast, and came over to pull her chair around to face him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I … this …” She swept a hand at him, at the food, at herself in his shirt. “It’s too much.”

  “Too much good or too much bad?”

  “Both.” She dropped her head.

  He hooked two fingers under her chin, forced her face up, and in a gentle voice said, “Talk to me.”

  “I can’t trust these feelings I’m having for you.”

  “It’s scary,” he said.

  “This was just supposed to be casual. I’ve done casual before. It’s always worked, but with you …”

  “What?”

  “You’re …” She nibbled her bottom lip. “Different.”

  “It’s different for me too. From the moment our eyes met in the coffee shop I knew you were special.”

  “But how can that be? It’s simply too fast.”

  “It’s fast, yeah.” His tone held the resonant purity of a Tibetan singing bowl, clear and certain. “But it feels right.”

  “We barely know each other,” she protested.

  “You’re going to sit here and tell me that after last night?” His voice deepened, thickened.

  “I’m not talking about knowing each other physically.” She ducked her head.

  He took her hand. “Look at me, Gabi.”

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze to meet his.

  “I know you get the hiccups when you get nervous. I know you worry about people’s feelings more than your own. I know you make awesome lasagna and have a killer singing voice. I know you get cold easily and that you have a helluva talent for guessing how many ornaments are on a Christmas tree. I know you can knit and that you have a way with kids, and I know that everyone who meets you adores you.”

  “Mmm,” she said, a little stunned by that declaration. “Or maybe it’s because you give me orgasms. That’s probably it.”

  “You’re driving me crazy with this. It’s so simple. Just let it be.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She pushed her hair back off her forehead. How could she explain this so he would understand? “I told you the reason I’d never had a long-term romantic relationship was because I was too busy with law school, but that’s not entirely true.”

  “Okay.” He leaned in, his full attention focused on her. It freaked her out a bit. She wasn’t a fan of the limelight. Another reason she would have made a shitty trial lawyer.

  “I have trouble connecting with people.”

  “What do you mean, you’re awesome at it. You connected with Tatum, you connected with Casey, you connected with my aunt Belinda and Sam and Emma and … me.”

  “That is my problem,” she said. “Whenever I’m with someone I have this tendency to fully merge with them to the point where I don’t have any boundaries. Keeping romantic relationships casual kept me safe. It was working …” she said. “Until it didn’t.”

  “I’m trying to understand,” he said. “Help me understand what’s got you so twisted up.”

  “I’m a people pleaser. I have to be. It’s the very reason I exist.”

 
; “Is it, Gabi? Or is that just some head game you’ve bought into? Believe me, with my ADHD, I understand about head games. It’s easy to get caught in them. Hard to see your way to clarity, but it is just a misguided belief. You can decide not to believe in it anymore.”

  “No, Joe, it’s not. Remember I told you about my older brother, Derrick?”

  “The one who gave you the snow globe and died on Christmas Day?”

  She nodded, had to swallow twice to get the lump in her throat to go down. “He was sick my entire life. I’d never known him when he wasn’t sick because my parents gave birth to me as a bid to save his life.”

  “What?” His forehead furrowed in a frown as he processed this.

  “There was a case in the news. They even made a movie about it. The Anissa Ayala story. Anissa’s parents gave birth to another child in order to save their daughter’s life and it worked. It happened about the same time Derrick was diagnosed with the same form of cancer. Anissa’s story gave my parents the idea.”

  Joe knelt in front of her, took her hand, squeezed it gently.

  “They only wanted me so I could donate bone marrow to Derrick. He was their pride and joy. He was supposed to follow in their footsteps. Be a great lawyer like they were.”

  He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.

  “They took my bone marrow and for a while they thought it was going to work, but then the cancer came back. I went through the procedure again. It looked like Derrick had beaten it …” She paused, expelled all the air from her body to get through the story without crying. “It came back a third time. I was born to save his life, Joe, and I couldn’t save him.”

  Joe wrapped his arms around her, pulled her from the chair, sat her on his knees, held her close, and kissed the top of her head. “Shh, shh, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

  “But I didn’t save him.” The tears she’d been trying so hard to hold back spilled over. “I failed.”

  “No, you didn’t fail.” He used the hem of his shirt to dab her tears away. “Derrick was very sick. He was going to die anyway. How old were you when he died?”

  “Six.”

  “You gave him six more years than he would have had without you.”

  “It wasn’t enough. I could tell by the way my parents looked at me that I disappointed them. Always. No matter what I did it wasn’t good enough. I could never be the person that Derrick would have been.”

  “It wasn’t fair of your parents to treat you that way.” He growled against her ear. “Not fair at all.”

  “Derrick understood,” she said. “He was the one person who did. He wasn’t any more comfortable that they’d had me to save his life than I was. Probably less so. I wanted to save him so badly. I loved him so much. We made plans to celebrate Christmas in a big way in a town like Twilight. That’s what I’ve really been doing here. Living out our dream.”

  She pressed her face against Joe’s chest, smelled his Christmassy scent, and he held her like that for a long time until she was finally able to go on.

  “My parents were devastated when Derrick died, and on Christmas … It ruined the holiday. They never decorated. Never participated in Christmas activities. That’s why this place, your family, the way you guys celebrate Christmas means so much to me.”

  “Your folks didn’t celebrate Christmas at all?” He looked stunned.

  “They’d give me presents, but no tree, no parties, no traditions. To handle their grief, they worked all the time. I was basically raised by a string of nannies.”

  “I can’t imagine what that was like.” He hitched her closer to him. She could hear the strong, steady beat of his heart.

  “The best way for me to keep harmony in the family was to become like the wallpaper. I strove never to get in the way or hurt anyone’s feelings or upstage anybody. I learned that if I was a low-maintenance child I could protect myself while at the same time calming them down. They are both fiery personalities and I was never strong enough to stand up to them.”

  “You’re plenty strong, Gabi. In your own special way. You helped Tatum get into rehab. You swapped houses, and lives, with my sister. Sight unseen. And you lived in a yurt. You learned to feed livestock and go to sleep listening to the sound of coyotes howling when you were scared of coyotes. Don’t you dare sell yourself short. You’re as strong as they come. It’s just a gentle strength, a kind strength. And that’s better than all the brute force and iron will out there because it means you have compassion.”

  Gabi had never heard him string so many words together at a time and it surprised her that he considered such small things strengths.

  “My parents simply assumed I would go to law school because that was their expectation for Derrick. They never even asked me what I wanted, but it was okay because all I wanted was for them to love me. If it took going to law school to make that happen, then I was going to go to law school.”

  “That sucks,” he said through gritted teeth. “Really, really sucks.”

  She opened her eyes and peeked at him. His gaze was dark, angry. She’d never seen him look like that. Not even when he was irritated with Tatum. His muscles were tensed tight, his jaw clenched. His eyes edgy. But she wasn’t scared of his anger, nor did she feel a need to calm him like she normally would.

  He wasn’t angry at her. He was angry for her. And she thrilled to it. Someone on her side. Finally. “I know they’re your folks and they lost a child, but they treated you like an afterthought and that is wrong on so many levels.”

  It wasn’t until he said them that she knew they were words she badly needed to hear. She clung to him, squeezed him so tightly she thought her arms were going to fall off, but he took the force of her embrace without moving. Letting her do what she needed to do.

  “You twisted yourself into a pretzel for them,” he said, “but then you butted up against the reality of what being a lawyer was going to be like. You dropped out and ran away. The first step back to Gabi.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Because of my unconventional conception and the way I was raised, I was afraid I wouldn’t be loved if I rocked the boat, so I didn’t develop much of a personality.”

  “Bullshit,” he said vehemently. “You have plenty of personality. You’re kind and loving and considerate …”

  “And boring.”

  “Do boring people swap houses with strangers?”

  “No, but I was desperate to get out of town.”

  “And you did it. Tons of people might want to do it, but you did it.” He gently poked a finger at her chest. “You.”

  He made her feel so good, but therein lay the danger and she was trying to explain it to him so he could understand where she was coming from.

  “Whenever I’m close to someone I have trouble knowing what I want. I go along with their wants and desires because it’s easier. Eventually, it got to where I didn’t know what I wanted. As long as things were calm, that’s all I wanted.”

  “That’s what you tell yourself.”

  “Even my best friend, Bailey, likes me because she always gets her way with me. We eat where she wants to eat. Shop where she wants to shop. It’s the reason I didn’t tell her when I quit law school and came out here. I didn’t want her to try and talk me out of it.”

  “Hey, at least you’re insightful about it. That’s half the way to a solution.”

  “I wasn’t insightful until that mock trial, but that’s when I knew something had to give or any scrap of spunk I had would disappear forever.”

  “You are spunky, Gabi. I see it in you.”

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s there. Keep looking.”

  “I don’t know how to be a new person.”

  “You don’t have to be a new person, Gabi. Be you. Authentically you. I had to learn that with my ADHD. That it was okay to be the way I was. That I wasn’t broken or something was wrong with me, I just needed to learn how to be me in a way that fit into society. That’s not saying I don’t
still have challenges, but I’m me.”

  “But that’s the problem. The real me merges with other people in order to avoid conflict.”

  “Your ability to connect with people is not a problem, Gabi. It’s a gift.” He looked like he wanted to span the gap she’d created between them when she moved back to the chair, but he didn’t cross the line. Did he guess she needed that divide right now or she’d just meld right into him?

  “No it’s not, Joe. Don’t you see? I can’t tell if what I’m feeling for you is real—and let’s face it, we’ve known each other such a short time, really, how can it be—or if it’s just because I need to be connected with someone so badly and you’re the first hot guy I brushed up against, it had to be you.”

  He looked hurt. “That’s what you think?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. How can I know?”

  He stood up, looked down at her with the saddest expression on his face. “I can’t answer that question for you, babe.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Christmas … is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.

  —Freya Stark

  It had been the best night of his life, bar none, but Joe couldn’t help feeling like he was losing her. The story she told him about her brother was unbelievable. He couldn’t begin to imagine what that must have been like for her. To believe you were responsible for not saving your brother’s life. What a tremendous burden. It made him resent her parents.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he loved her, the words bursting to explode. But the last thing he wanted to do was add to her confusion.

  His heart ached for her. For the reason she’d been brought into this world. For the burden she carried about the loss of her brother. For the cavalier way her parents had treated her.

  And until she faced her parents and made peace with them, she wasn’t ready for him. Wasn’t ready to fully accept the love he had to give her.

  Not telling her he loved her was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Every cell in his body hummed with the words “I love you,” and yet he could not say them. Not yet. Not until she found her way back to him.