Chapter 34
Caleb
Soft snowflakes fall from the sky as I close up my café, a gust of ice-cold wind sending a shiver down my spine.
Lauren is still at my place, having tasked Kieran with feeding her cats for the evening as she continues to ice gingerbread hearts and stars for the Christmas market. I’m about to head home, order pizza for us, and help her package everything up.
I pull the key from the lock, quickly slipping it into my pocket and keeping my bare hand in there for warmth. As I turn onto the sidewalk, I almost run into a smaller, scarfed-up figure.
“Sorry,” I mumble and take a step back.
Dawn’s wide, shocked eyes dart to me. “Sorry, I…” she stutters, eyes darting like she’s scouring an escape route.
“I don’t bite,” I tell her, but she’s still completely rigid. Her cheeks move as if she’s opening her mouth under her scarf to say something.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. My hands are getting cold, and I’m treading in place to keep my feet from freezing.
The fabric of her scarf muffles her words. She quickly pulls it down.
She seems so small and lost. A sharp pain shoots through my chest because, for a moment, I see myself in her. Which feels ridiculous. She’s a stranger. Yet, for a second, there are only similarities. Dejection. Rejection. Disappointment.
“We shouldn’t have ambushed you. Hell, maybe we shouldn’t have come here at all.
” Her words tumble over each other. “Mom always used to tell me about you growing up, and I was really excited to meet my big brother,” she continues, her eyes dropping to the ground.
I blink once. Twice. My heart aches for her.
“I don’t know. I think I hoped you’d be happy to have a little sister. ”
She clears her throat and shrugs. “I’m sorry. I was caught up in my own excitement and didn’t stop to consider the implications for you or Mom.” Tears shimmer in her eyes.
“It’s not that easy,” I say roughly, then nod for her to walk with me, though I turn for a round around the main square instead of my place. “Come on, let’s walk. I’m freezing.”
Wayward Hollow is completely deserted. Scattered snowflakes dance in the warm light by the street lanterns, and there’s the occasional silhouette in warmly lit windows.
“I have to apologize too. My first reaction was unfair to you.”
“I get it though,” she mumbles, and from the corner of my eye I watch her gaze drop to the ground again. I take a deep breath.
“Two things can be true simultaneously. I can think it’s kind of cool to have a sister—” Her head whips around and she stares at me with wide eyes, mouth agape.
“—but I can also be sad that you had our mom growing up, and I didn’t.
” I clear my throat. “I understand this is not your fault, but that knowledge alone doesn’t make it easier for me to deal with this… resentment.”
“But do you think that maybe one day you could work past that resentment?” Her voice breaks, as if she doesn’t quite have the courage to ask but pushes herself to do it, anyway.
That is the real question, isn’t it? As much as I want to tell her that, of course I will get past it, there’s simply no way of knowing.
Anger is still ever-present when I think about letting her and my mother into my life.
A small flame, occasionally reignited with gasoline.
I don’t think it will ever completely extinguish, but I might be able to get it to tea light-sized.
“Only time can tell, I guess.” I take a deep breath, coughing when the cold air stings in my lungs. “It could take a long time, though.”
She kicks a pile of snow. “Do you think that maybe during that time we could still stay in touch?” Her voice is full of careful hope.
“I think that I won’t know until I try.”
She stops in her tracks, and when I turn my head to her, her face lights up.
“We’ll go at your pace,” she declares, nodding eagerly. “I promise.” She pulls her phone out of her pocket and hands it to me. “Can I have your number? I promise I won’t be annoying.”
“You don’t need to walk on eggshells. As long as you don’t catch me as off guard as last time.”
“Okay.” She grins, and I can see all the hopes she had for our encounter in the way her face lights up brighter than Lauren's house. I take the phone from her, put in my contact details with trembling fingers, and hand it back.
“Thank you.” She puts it back in her pocket and, before I realize what’s happening, throws her arms around me. Before I can react, she lets me go again.
“Okay?” I mutter, confused, my entire body stiff as a board.
“Thank you, Caleb. God, this is exciting!”
“Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got to—” I motion towards Henry’s clinic.
“Of course, of course. Have a good evening.”
“You too.”
I watch her walk off with a spring in her step that makes me fear for her ankles on the icy ground.
When I open the door to my flat, I freeze stop right in the frame.
“Holy hell,” I sputter, eyes darting around the room.
Gingerbread covers every surface in my apartment.
It’s lying on my couch; it has conquered all of my tables, even the windowsills, even my bed is covered in baking sheets and cookies.
The ending notes of a Pentatonix Christmas song are blasting through the room.
“There you are!” Lauren darts around the kitchen counter.
“It looks like a gingerbread bomb exploded in here,” I tell her. She’s got icing smeared all over her sweatshirt, with some specks even in her hair. A flake falls off as she softly shakes her head.
“Listen, it might seem as if I got a lot done already, but for some reason, the mountain of yet-to-be-iced gingerbread is not shrinking.”
Before I can even think more about gingerbread, I cup her face and lean down for a quick kiss. She melts against me, pulling off my beanie to thread her fingers through my hair.
“You taste sweet,” I mumble after breaking the kiss.
“And you taste like coffee and emotional turmoil.” She arches an eyebrow, then runs her fingertip over my forehead to smooth out the crease between my brows. “Is everything alright?”
“I ran into Dawn.”
She reaches for my hand and pulls me over to the table.
“Do you want to pipe the borders while you tell me about it?”
“There's not really much to tell,” I say, sitting down, reaching for the piping bag and a yet-to-be-iced gingerbread heart. “She apologized for the ambush. I told her it would take some time to get accustomed to the realization that I have a little sister, gave her my phone number, and I guess I’ll take it one step at a time.”
“That’s great.” Her whole face lights up. I press down on the icing bag and start piping.
“I still don’t know about Emilia, though.
” I shake my head and turn the heart in my hands.
“It’s one hell of a lot easier to give someone a chance who isn’t directly responsible for this clusterfuck of a situation.
My mother had all those years to reach out to me and just never did beyond that one time my dad sent her off.
And now I’m supposed to let her into my life with the snap of a finger.
” I look up from the cookie, finding her staring at me with a soft expression.
“I understand the feeling. Kind of,” she whispers with a small laugh. “But the snap-of-a-finger thing makes you want to do the opposite on principle, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” I resume piping. “I believe her in that she’s sorry, but what is stopping her from disappearing again? It would take ages to regain even a sliver of trust, and I wonder if that would even be worth it.”
“That’s for your mother to decide though, isn’t it? If she wants to put in that work?”
I set down the heart with a freshly piped border, and Lauren’s eyes widen, her jaw dropping.
“What the hell? I’ve been at it all day, perfecting my technique, and my borders aren’t anywhere near this clean. How did you do that?”
“In case you forgot, I kind of own a café,” I chuckle and reach for a bag holding white and red marbled icing. “I’ve iced many cupcakes and regular cakes.”
“Okay, then now you do the borders, I’ll do the writing,” she says with a pout.
“Fine with me.” I reach for a star-shaped gingerbread. “Let’s do this until the pizza arrives. We’ll need some space to eat that at.”
“Then you better get piping.”