9. Noel
9
NOEL
M y throat burns from screaming for Luke for so long, and my hands and fingers ache from pounding on the door and trying to unlock the deadbolt he used to imprison me in here.
There was some trick to getting the thing unstuck, but it’s been eight years since I’ve been in this place. And while some memories remain painfully crystal clear, the secret to getting the old metal to slide free isn’t one of them.
Admitting defeat, I step back from the door, release a heavy, annoyed sigh, and tug off my hat and jacket, tossing them onto the couch with the mitten not already shoved in my pocket as I scan the place where I once spent so much time with him.
I barely recognize it.
Stark.
Empty of anything but the basic necessities.
Lifeless.
Not at all the way his home was when we were together—especially this time of year.
Luke always went overboard with his decorations, decking out the entire cabin with garland, tinsel, holly, wreaths, lights, and always with the most beautiful tree he could find on the property.
He always joked that it was the one perk of being the owners’ son—he got the pick of the lot. But I was never to tell Dad that because it would have become a competition between them to get the best tree.
That version of Luke had a holiday spirit that rivaled my own.
Now…there isn’t a hint of Christmas anywhere to be found. Just like the man I loved in these walls has disappeared, replaced by one who would throw me over his shoulder and lock me in here simply to prove a point.
Another blast of wind rattles the old windows.
I move over to one that faces the front of the cabin and squint outside, the light from the single bulb above the door reflecting off the snow blowing almost horizontally.
Shit.
My hands curl into fists, and I slam them against the window frame, unleashing some of the building frustration.
I hate to admit it, but Luke may have been right.
It was stupid for me to drive in this.
Even if it is only two miles down the road, I likely never would have made it home if they had taken the time to strap a tree to the car. With the weight on it, coupled with the lack of snow tires or four-wheel drive, that mountain incline would have won.
And I might have ended up wrapped around a tree instead of putting one up in Dad’s memory.
“Goddamn him.”
As if called by my curse, Luke’s dark form materializes through the snow, still decked out in a Santa hat and a barely there cutoff shirt, despite the subzero temperatures and blizzard enveloping him .
“And he calls me insane…”
It’s freezing outside, and it never seems to bother him. But he’ll have something else to worry about when he gets in here—a very angry me.
I move to the door to greet him—but definitely not the way I used to. There will be no throwing my arms around him and getting him naked to warm him up. For a brief moment, I eye the axe he left, but the lock flips open, stalling any revenge plans for the blade.
He pushes the door in, and I cross my arms over my chest, tapping my foot as I glare at him the second he steps through the jamb.
The evergreen eyes as deep and fathomless as the forest surrounding us stare back at me, now more grinchy than the stunningly beautiful I always found them before. He slams the door behind him and throws the deadbolt again, securing us inside.
Snow melts on his warm skin, water dripping down across his bulging biceps, pecs, and abs.
He reaches up and swipes it off his face.
“Where the hell did you go?”
Scowling, he tugs the hat off his head and tosses it unceremoniously against the wall near the door. “To close up the lot and call your mother.”
My anger at him evaporates at the mere mention of her, replaced instantly by the heavy guilt of knowing I’ve left her to spend Christmas alone.
“You called my mom?”
He offers an annoyed glare, wiping away more of the melting snow from his body. “Of course I did. Did you really think I was going to let her worry about you?”
“Well, no, I…”
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about what he might have stalked off to do.
I was so angry at his caveman antics that I hadn’t even considered how I would get in touch with Mom since cell phones don’t work on the property.
He runs a hand through his hair, rubbing at the back of his neck where I dug my nails into him as hard as I could. “She knows you’re here and that you’re safe.”
At least from the storm.
Being stuck in this small cabin with this man feels very, very unsafe at the moment.
“Did you tell her you kidnapped me?”
He snorts, letting his hand fall to his side. “I did not kidnap you.”
“Really?” I raise a challenging brow. “And what would you call refusing to let me leave, throwing me over your shoulder, and locking me in here with no means of escape?”
Luke studies me for a moment, his gaze drifting from my soaked boots that are tracking water all over his wood floors, up my now-wet leggings, and over the ugly sweater Mom knitted for me, finally settling on my face. “Doing what you couldn’t for yourself—keeping you safe. Your judgment was—”
“Was what ?”
He drops his head back, staring at the high ceiling of the A-frame for a second before he returns his gaze to me. “You couldn’t be objective about this.” That hardness in his eyes breaks slightly, the tiniest hint of something resembling what I used to see there peeking through. “Not when it’s tied to your father’s memory.”
Anger heats my blood as I take a step toward him. “What would you know about my father’s memory? You couldn’t even be bothered to come to the funeral.”
His jaw tightens, a muscle there ticcing violently. He fists his hands at his sides—opening and closing them a half dozen times as he examines me as if he’s contemplating offering a response.
But I don’t know what he could possibly say.
We were together romantically for six years.
Beyond that, he’s known my father since the day he was born, and he couldn’t put aside his grumpy, reclusive, asshole-ish behavior to come say his goodbyes and pay his respects. To offer any hint of concern for Mom or me. To show at all that he ever cared.
Finally, he releases a long sigh. “I was there, Noel…”
“Where?”
“I was at the funeral.”
“No”—I shake my head, running through every single minute of that day in my head—“you weren’t.”
I may have been in a haze of despair, but I most certainly would have remembered Luke Crisp being there.
It would have been impossible to forget.
“Yes, I was , Noel.” He shakes his head, his broad shoulders rising and falling. “But I didn’t know if you wanted me there. I didn’t want to upset you further. So, I stayed up on the hill behind the old oak near the mausoleum, watched from there, and I took off before you could see me.”
My heart stutters in my chest as he continues.
“I loved your father, too, Noel.” He swallows thickly. “I wanted to say goodbye to him—”
“But you couldn’t to me ?”
The question comes out on a sob I can’t keep down anymore. Eight damn years of anguish finally boiling over—impossible to keep bottled up anymore. Not now that we’ve been placed in this pressure cooker.
He flinches, squeezing his eyes closed.
“You never actually said those words, Luke. You never said goodbye, just dumped me like I meant nothing. Like we were just a ‘thing’ that you had outgrown and were over.”
I toss his words from yesterday back at him like a poisoned arrow, hoping it hits the mark and that it hurts him as much as it did me.
When he reopens his eyes, his brows draw low, but it isn’t pain that darkens the green to an almost black. It’s confusion. “What do you mean, when I broke up with you ? You broke up with me .”
I gape at him, my mind spinning. “I most certainly did not.”
Luke takes a step toward me, his huge body trembling enough to be visible.
Apparently, we’re going to do this now.
Right here.
When we have nowhere to run and no way to get away from each other.
We’re finally going to hash it out and say what we should have a long fucking time ago.
“I did not end things with you, Noel. You left .” He motions backward, vaguely in the direction of the highway. “You drove away and didn’t look back, started your new life in a new fucking country without me.”
I snort and throw up my hands. “You say that like I moved to Bali. It’s Toronto. Canada is closer to Wisconsin than most of the rest of the United States is.”
He grits his teeth, as if biting back words he doesn’t want to say. But he clearly has some crazy, warped recollection of what happened that day because nothing he is saying is making any sense.
“And I didn’t just drive away, Luke. I begged you to come with me, and you said no.”
He throws up his hands this time and shrugs. “What was I supposed to do there, Noel, in a massive city like Toronto, while you were at work every day? Sit around and twiddle my thumbs?” His arms spread wide. “ This is my life. This farm, Mistletoe, helping Mom and Dad. And you wanted me to walk away from all of it, to go sit there and do nothing .”
“It was my dream job, Luke. It still is my dream job—”
“You could work PR anywhere.”
Frustration boils over, and I stomp my still-booted foot. “Not for an NHL team! You knew how much I loved hockey. How I always dreamed of working for one of the teams. I can’t believe you expected me to give up that opportunity.”
“Oh, no…” He holds up a hand, shaking his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t put that on me. I didn’t expect anything. I wanted you to choose me, to understand how important the legacy of this farm is to my parents and to me. I’ve never done anything else, Noel. All I know how to do is grow trees and swing an axe.” He scoffs. “Seriously, how did you imagine that going? Me in Toronto with you?”
I open my mouth to respond, but I don’t have an answer to that question.
“Exactly.” He scowls. “You have no idea.”
My lips quiver, all the pain of our breakup rushing back like a tidal wave that threatens to drown me. “We would’ve figured it out. That’s what I told you then, too. We could have made it work. You wouldn’t even try . That’s all I was asking. I was asking you to choose us. ”
I didn’t intentionally use his own words to make my point, but they seem to hit the mark.
His shoulders sag slightly, his whole body softening with a resignation that I have felt for years—the realization that it was a fruitless effort.
He sighs and bends down to untie his boots, remove them, and place them beside the door before turning back to me. “And we’re right back where we were that night, aren’t we? In the same fucking spot, having the same argument that has no resolution.”
It certainly appears that way.
Same positions.
Same argument.
But nothing about this place where we’re having it looks like it did back then.
I scan the cabin—not because I haven’t already examined almost every inch since he locked me in but because continuing to stare at Luke is making it harder to regain control over my emotions. “I love what you’ve done with the place. So festive.”
He stalks past me to the kitchen, opens a cabinet, and pulls out a bottle of bourbon and a glass.
“It seems a lot has changed. You certainly have.”
Turning slightly, he glances over his shoulder at me. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
I have been…but this isn’t just a little shift. Not natural growth or changing preferences.
This is like someone else who merely looks like the Luke Crisp I knew my entire life snuck in during the night and replaced that one, took over his life without regard for anything he once cared about, and did everything he could to push those people away and destroy anything tangible.
“The Luke I knew loved Christmas, loved working the lot with his parents and tending to the trees. But you, you don’t even have one in here.” I glance at the Santa hat on the floor near the door. “And my guess is that hat and mistletoe on your jeans were your mom’s doing…an insistence that you show some holiday spirit if you were potentially coming in contact with customers on the lot, rather than anything you wanted to do.”
He pours a drink and downs it, hissing slightly before he sets the glass on the counter. “You’re right, Noel. A lot has changed.” Pushing off the butcher block, he turns to face me fully. “You don’t have the right to come in here and criticize me anymore, to question how I live my life. You gave up that right when you left.”
“And you gave up the right to toss me over your shoulder like a fucking caveman and treat me like a child you need to protect when you didn’t come after me.”
Something flashes in his gaze, and he smacks his palm on the counter, making me flinch. “Come after you?” A sardonic laugh slips from his lips, and he shakes his head. “Oh, God, Noel, you have no fucking idea.”
“I have no idea what?”
Muttering something under his breath, he pours himself another drink and glances back at me, trepidation filling his gaze more now than anger. “I did come after you.”
My back stiffens, his words taking a minute to really register. “What? No, you didn’t. I left the next day, and I never heard from you or saw you again until yesterday.”
He sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “You didn’t see me, but I saw you.”
What the hell is he talking about?
Nothing is making any sense, and the more he talks, the more twisted my head becomes around the memories I have and the things he’s saying that seem so impossible and wrong.
“What do you mean?”
His hand tightens around his glass. “I came to Toronto.”
My gut twists. “When?”
“A week or so after you left, right before New Year’s, after I had helped Mom and Dad take down the sales lot.”
I stand speechless, staring at him, waiting for some sort of explanation.
“I got your address from your mom, and I showed up at your place up there.” He lifts his glass and takes a drink, staring into the amber liquid rather than looking at me. “And I saw you coming out of the building as my cab pulled up outside.”
“Why didn’t you stop me, let me know you were there?”
Luke peers up and offers a tight smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Because I saw how happy you were to be there. You were laughing and smiling, talking with somebody on the phone.” His shoulders rise and fall again. “I came up there to try to convince you to come home, but once I saw you like that, I knew I was going to fail. You didn’t seem at all affected by the fact that we had broken up, or fought, or whatever the hell we did. And I knew in that moment that I’d already lost you.”
A single tear slips from my eye and travels down my cheek, and I reach up with a trembling hand to swipe it away. “I…”—I release a heavy breath—“I had no idea.”
“Why would you?” He takes a long pull from his glass, leaning back against the counter and watching me process what he just told me. “You never would’ve come back. There was no point in telling you.”
“But my mom and dad didn’t say anything, either.”
“Probably for the same reason.”
His gaze meets mine, and I choke on the inevitable question, struggling to get it out.
“Would…would you have stayed? If you had gotten out of the cab, if we had spoken, if I had asked you to, would you have stayed in Toronto with me?”
Luke squeezes his eyes closed, his grip on the rocks glass tightening so much that his knuckles whiten. He remains like that for so long that my legs begin trembling hard enough for me to grip the back of the couch for support.
When he opens his eyes again, I know what his answer will be before he even says it, but it still doesn’t prepare me for the single word that destroys me all over again.
“No.”