Jingled By Daddies (Kissmass Daddies #2)

Chapter 1

NOELLE

The drive home feels both familiar and strange after spending months away.

Every curve of the road is imprinted in me. It’s the same bends I took as a teenager when I was too eager to be anywhere but here.

The gas station on the corner still flickers its old neon sign, and the old barn past the first turn into town still leans at the same angle it did the day I left.

Yet there’s something foreign about it all too, like looking at an old photograph where the colors have shifted with time.

The winter sky looms above me, pale and heavy, promising snow that hasn’t yet decided to fall.

It stretches endless across the horizon, the kind of muted gray that feels both comforting and ominous.

My tires hum against the pavement, the heater rattling faintly as it pushes warm air into the cabin. The smell of coffee clings around me, a last remnant of my stop two towns back.

Nostalgia presses at me. Not in the sweeping, romantic kind of way like I’d expected, but in small pinpricks that have me shivering under my winter coat.

I grip the wheel tighter and exhale, steadying myself for whatever version of “home” is waiting for me once I reach it.

By the time I turn down the last familiar street, my fingers ache from clutching around the wheel too tight.

Oddly, the houses look different than I remember.

Each porch light is a muted, stubborn little flame cutting against the gray backdrop of the sky.

Some of them haven’t changed at all—the same rickety staircases leading up to their worn front doors.

Others have been spruced up, painted colors that don’t quite fit in with the memory I carried with me before I left for college.

The closer I get to Dad’s place, the more my chest tightens.

For a moment, I picture myself at seven years old, brown curls untamed and my legs too short to pump my bike pedals properly, my dad’s steady hand on the back of my seat, propelling me forward.

He never told me when he’d let go, and it wasn’t until I had been halfway down the street that I realized I’d left him behind.

Kind of funny how eventually that would happen for real.

That memory still makes my throat ache just thinking about it.

Finally when the house comes into view, I ease my foot off the gas.

The siding could use a fresh coat of paint, and the shutters are hanging crooked from the last big rainstorm that hit our sleepy little town, but other than that it’s the same place I remember.

Same roof that sheltered me all my growing-up years, the same windows that glowed warm when Mom was still alive and the world felt contained in our small little bubble.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days, to simpler times when life felt easier.

I park in the driveway and cut the engine.

For a second, I just sit there, staring at the front door. Everything looks the same, just as it always does each Christmas I come home.

But sitting here now with my hands still gripping the steering wheel, these past few years might as well have been a lifetime.

There had never been a real reason I wanted to leave my hometown.

I didn’t come from a broken home, and there were no suffocating secrets locked away in my family’s closet.

For me, college had just been the logical next step for my life.

A simple enough choice, yet I can still remember the way Dad’s face tightened as those acceptance letters and scholarship offers began to arrive one by one.

He never said “don’t go,” never even tried to sway me into staying here after I graduated, but he also didn’t bother to hide the heartbreak that shadowed his eyes each time he asked me which school I thought I’d choose, knowing full well they were all states away.

I told myself I was chasing an opportunity, a future that couldn’t be found in a small town like this one.

But now I wonder if all I had really wanted was distance.

Not from him, never from him, but from myself.

Maybe from the version of me that never quite belonged to this place, and to every memory of my old life that still clings to me.

The air bites hard when I eventually open the car door. I breathe in deeply, pulling in the woodsmoke peppering the air from the neighbor’s chimney next door.

Grabbing my single duffle, I let out a soft grunt as I haul it over my shoulder.

The weight tugs uneven against my back, a reminder of how much I’ve whittled down my life to fit into one bag.

My hip bumps the car door shut, the metallic thud echoing slightly. Shoes scuffing against the sidewalk, I make the slow walk up to the front steps.

Warmth greets me when I step inside.

After setting my duffle down by the door, I go back for a small load of groceries, baking supplies I know Dad won’t have, then hurry inside.

I kick off my shoes and let the door swing closed behind me.

The living room unfolds ahead, dim in the faded light.

The recliner sits at the same angle it always has pointed toward the TV.

The crocheted blanket Mom made before I was born, edges fraying from years of use, is still draped neatly over the back of the couch.

On the coffee table, there’s a ring from a forgotten mug, and scatterings of unopened mail with Dad’s reading glasses perched on top of a half-finished crossword.

“Dad?” I call out.

The only thing that greets me is silence.

I imagine him here, filling the house with his low voice and slippered footsteps, maybe already setting a pot of chili on the stove the way he always did after school on Friday nights. Instead, the quiet stretches around me.

For a split second, I feel like an intruder in my own childhood home.

My phone buzzes from my pocket, startling me.

Pulling it out, I glance at the screen, smiling a little at the caller ID.

My thumb swipes over the screen quickly.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, kiddo.” His voice comes through the other end warmly, but there’s a ragged edge to it that I don’t like. “Settle in okay?”

I glance around the living room again, to the empty recliner and the untouched kitchen beyond. “Where are you? I just walked in and saw you weren’t here. Thought I’d be walking into a welcome banner and everything.”

He exhales, and I catch the faint crackle of radio chatter in the background.

“I wanted to be there, believe me. Got a call right as I was heading to the grocery store a little while ago. Apartment building caught fire downtown, whole crew’s been called in.

I can’t leave until my guys come back. Someone’s gotta be here to man the station while they’re out. ”

I can picture him moving around that station with the same confidence he’s always had over the years—barking orders, double-checking gear, answering incoming calls while the sirens wail.

He’s supposed to be three years into retirement already, but he’s never been able to stay away from that place for long.

It doesn’t matter that he has the plaque, the pension, or the recognition.

The station is still his heartbeat.

He’s still got his police scanner at home—the one I used to complain about when it kept me up at night screeching into the early morning hours—which means he knows everything that happens in this town before most people do.

Which also means when a bad call comes in, he’s already up and heading out the door like he never left.

Being a former fire chief has made it impossible for him to let go.

Part of me thinks ever since I left for school, he’s needed something steady, something that doesn’t change or leave for bigger and brighter things.

The job is the only constant he knows how to hold onto, the only thing that fills the space Mom and I left behind.

Normally, I don’t say anything.

I wouldn’t want to cage him in, not after all the years he spent running into burning buildings while the rest of us stayed safe outside.

And god knows I’d hate for him to be stuck in this house with nothing but the ghosts of old photographs to keep him company.

But times like this are when I wish he would finally hand over the reins, pass the torch, and live the retirement he’s earned instead of chasing the calls that keep pulling him back in.

Still, I bite my tongue.

What good would it do to nag him?

Instead, we chat for a bit. I tell him about the drive back, how the heater in my car only half-works unless I smack it—something he offers to fix the moment he gets home.

I tell him about the endless finals week I barely crawled out of, and the gas station cashier who tried to sell me three bags of suspicious looking turkey jerky “for the low, low price of two” like it was the deal of the century.

Dad laughs with that deep, gruff sound that always used to echo through the house when I was little, and for a moment I feel lighter.

When I ask how he’s been, he answers with that same casual tone that always means he’s trying to downplay something.

“Some of my old buddies are in town for the weekend. Came down for my birthday to celebrate me turning the big 4-5. They’re staying at that hotel by the interstate. You know, the one with that half broken sunset sign out front.”

I sit up straighter, surprised. “Oh yeah? How’s that going?”

He snorts. “Terrible. Guess the place is a total dump. First room had dirty sheets, second room’s water heater broke. They’re making the best of it, but it’s not exactly five-star service.”

I shake my head. “Why didn’t you just tell them to stay here? We’ve got, what…three guest rooms? Unless you’ve been secretly renting out of the house without telling me.”

“Ha,” he says flatly, but I hear the smile in it. “I didn’t want to crowd you, kiddo. Thought you might want a little space before you go back to school. Didn’t want a couple of strangers making you feel out of sorts in your own home.”

My chest warms, equal parts touched and exasperated.

That’s my dad: always putting everyone else first, even when it means he’s left putting his buddies up in some rundown motel instead of just letting them pile into the house like family.