Chapter Twelve
Jorja
N ORMALLY, THE QUIET in the bookstore would have been comforting to me, but right now, it felt like a weight crushing my shoulders down.
I couldn’t believe it. This was going to be my last Christmas in the store. Not a single person had come in all day today. No, I guessed they were all busy battening down the hatches for the blizzard that was due in a couple of days’ time. I should have been doing the same thing, but I wanted to make the most of the time I had left here while I still could.
Because, I was sure, this was to be the end of an era.
There was no way we would be able to hold the book fair, and even if we did, nobody would come attend it. Wharton had gotten what he wanted. I wouldn’t be able to keep the store and my house. If I had just agreed to give him what he had asked for in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have been in this mess, but I had turned him down, and now, I was sure he was going to make me pay for it.
I made my way around the store, peering down at the sweet little Christmas village that was still sitting there in the window. In that Christmas village, I was sure, shady businessmen didn’t try to steal away beautiful little bookstores. Down there, nobody had to worry about paying the bills, or blizzards, or... any of it, really.
I would have to clear the place out, move as much as I could back to the house. I had always complained that it was too big for just me, so I guessed I would have to fill it out with all the books here. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving them all away, though I knew I likely should have. I needed to stop being so emotional about all of this. I had to think logically, even though it was so clouded by the pain of losing everything my grandmother had worked so hard for.
This felt like the last tie I had to my family, too. Losing it would be letting that slip through my fingers, and I didn’t know if I could live with that. My parents had passed when I was so young, I hardly had any memories of them, but my grandmother, at least, had left me this place, somewhere I would always feel connected to her. What would she have thought if she had seen what was happening to it now?
I could remember, one Christmas, where it had been blizzarding. When I was young, maybe six or seven, and the snow had piled up outside the window. She had paced back and forth in the living room, so worried that something was going to happen to the store. She had tried her best to hide her worry from me, but I had been able to tell. She loved this place. She was proud of it. And I was about to let it slip through my fingers. Ugh, I couldn’t have hated this more...
I picked up her music box and turned the handle, and the soft, slow rendition of “Silent Night” filled the air around me. Instead of comforting me, like it usually did, it sent a pang along my chest. This might be the last time I got to hear this song in this place. Everything I did felt like it had more significance now, knowing that there might not be a chance to do it again.
The door opened, and I glanced up to see Seth stepping inside, dusting snow off his shoulders. I couldn’t help but smile. No matter how much of a mess things were, having him in my life had made them a little easier to bear. I appreciated beyond words all his efforts to keep this place alive, and I didn’t know what I would have done without him.
“What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the music box in my hands as he made his way toward me.
“It’s just my grandmother’s music box,” I replied, replacing it on the windowsill. “Sorry. I know the music is kind of sad.”
“No, it’s beautiful,” he replied, flashing me a smile. He ran a hand over the wood carefully, his fingers eventually coming to rest on the small compartment that had been jammed all this time.
“What’s in here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s been jammed as long as I can remember.”
“Let me see if I can just...” he murmured, as he stooped down to get a better look at it. He reached out to run his fingers along the compartment, gently trying to ease it open. But it still wasn’t moving. I knew there was no way he would get it to shift. I had been trying for years now, and I still hadn’t managed to pull it off.
“I could try and pry it open, but I’d be worried about breaking it.” He sighed, shaking his head, as he straightened up again. “Best to leave it for now.”
“Yeah, I need to move it back to the house anyway,” I replied.
He frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, there’s no point leaving everything in this store,” I replied gesturing around. “Not now that Wharton is going to own it.”
Just saying those words out loud made my breath hitch at the back of my throat. I couldn’t believe I was even having to contend with that reality, but what other choice did I have? He was going to have this place in his slimy little hands soon enough, and there would be nothing at all I could do about it. I didn’t know what chance I stood of actually stopping him. I could still remember, all too clearly, the anger in his eyes when he had threatened me the day before. He wasn’t going to forget that anytime soon. If anything, he would go even harder, just to make an example of me and make certain nobody else would dare stand up against him.
“You don’t have to talk like that,” he assured me. “We’ll find a way to keep this place, I promise.”
“I just don’t see how,” I replied. “I mean, with the blizzard coming in, it’s not as though anyone is going to be in a rush to come out here and get books, is it?”
“Maybe not, but there have to be other ways we can go about it,” he pointed out. “You don’t have to be defeated. Not yet.”
I stared down at the music box as it finished up playing the song. The last notes lingered in the air for a moment. Normally, they would have filled me with a flood of Christmas spirit, but today, they just felt sad.
“Do you have a Christmas tree up at your place yet?” he asked suddenly.
I frowned, glancing up at him. “What do you mean?” I replied, nonplussed.
“I mean, maybe you need a break from this place,” he replied, gesturing around. “Let me get you a tree.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t, I want to,” he replied. “There’s still time to get one before the blizzard comes in. Is there a Christmas tree farm around here somewhere?”
“A few miles east of town,” I told him. “But—”
“No more buts,” he replied, pointing to his car. “We’re going. Come on.”
I locked up the store and let him drive me to the Christmas tree farm just outside of town. I didn’t know what I was doing, what I intended to achieve with this, but he had sounded so certain, I wasn’t going to argue with him.
And the sweetness of this moment wasn’t lost on me. That he was going out of his way to get me this tree, when he didn’t have to, but he was insistent on doing something for me, something to lift my Christmas spirit. I wasn’t sure what I would have been doing if it hadn’t been for Seth. Sitting around at home, waiting for Wharton to roll in, I guess?
“I’ve never had a real tree before,” I admitted as we stepped out of the car at the Christmas tree farm. The air was filled with the spicy scent of pine, and the snow sparkled on the ground below us. It was chilly, with the blizzard coming in, but it wasn’t so bad yet that you couldn’t enjoy the cold.
“Really?” he replied, raising his eyebrows, as he approached the owner.
“No, my grandmother always said they were way too hard to clean up,” I confessed.
“Well, they might be, but Christmas isn’t about convenience, is it?” he shot back with a grin.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s easy for you to say, when you’re not going to have to clean up after it!” I protested.
“Oh, I’ll stick around,” he replied. “If you’ll let me. Hey, excuse me, can you show me your biggest tree?”
The owner of the place showed us a few trees. The biggest one wouldn’t even have fit through my front door, but the next one down seemed a better fit for me. I didn’t know how I felt about him paying for it, but he insisted.
“I can’t fit one in my apartment this year,” he replied. “So you should have it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m certain.”
I helped him get the tree back to his car, and we had to bind it to the top with the help of the guy who ran the store. The cold nipped at my fingers, but the scent of pine and the feel of the spines made it impossible to care. I knew my grandmother would be tutting about me bringing something that big into the house that we wouldn’t even be able to keep, but maybe it was time to start some new Christmas traditions.
Some traditions with him and I.
We arrived back home, and I steered him through the front door with the tree. Mia was practically leaping around when we got in, so curious as to what was going on and where this giant thing had come from.
“Okay, okay, just prop it up there,” I told him, gesturing to the spot close to the living room window, right next to my reading chair. The thought of being curled up on there, book in hand, hot chocolate in the other, was enough to bring a smile to my face already.
He stepped back, planting his hands on his hips and catching his breath as he looked up at the tree.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. A few flakes of snow from outside were still clinging to the pine needles, and it looked like something out of a storybook.
“It’s a good start,” he agreed.
I frowned. “A good start?”
“It needs decorating,” he replied. “You have anything we could use to spice it up a little?”
“Oh, I have some decorations upstairs!” I exclaimed. “Let me just grab them.”
I brought down a box of decorations that I had had since I was a kid. There were little ornaments I had made when I had been in kindergarten, stars with chipped paint that had been in there for the better part of two decades now, along with some tinsel and fairy lights.
But it seemed to be enough for him, and he set to work draping tinsel around the top of the tree, wrapping it from the tip right down to the branches at the bottom. Mia wound in and out of our legs as we worked, curious at the new addition to the house.
And I couldn’t stop myself staring at him as he worked. The light of the tinsel caught the silver streaks in his eyes, and I could have sworn that he himself was lit from within, too. There was something about the smile on his face, the way he carried himself, that softened something in me. For all I had been so, so certain that it was all going to go so wrong for me, there was something about being here, with him, in this moment, that made me believe that maybe, just maybe, there was a way through all of this.
“Okay, let me put the star on the top,” he suggested. “I saw what happened the last time you did it.”
“Hey, not cool!” I protested, laughing, but I didn’t stop him. I watched as he planted the star on top of the tree, leaving it gleaming there at the very tip, nestled in a bunch of pine needles.
As he stepped down again, he caught my eye. I supposed he must have seen the look on my face, because, almost at once, he seemed to sense that there was something different about me.
“What is it?” he murmured, as he gazed at me.
I could hardly think straight as I looked back at him. I didn’t know what to say, what to do—hat to even think right now. I could almost have forgotten about everything happening outside of these four walls, all of the stress and tension that was piling up on me thanks to Wharton and the store and everything else. No, when he looked at me like that, none of it mattered. None of it could come close to mattering.
“I’m just... really glad you’re here,” I confessed softly. “I don’t know what I’d be doing without you. It feels like... like you’re the Christmas spirit I’ve been waiting for.”
Damn, had I really said that out loud? I couldn’t believe those words had just crossed my lips.
I glanced away from him, shaking my head. “Sorry, I don’t know—”
“Hey.”
He stopped me in my tracks, catching my face in his hand and guiding it around to meet his gaze. I stared into his eyes, my heart thrumming in my chest. Damn, he was so gorgeous, it was almost too much being this close to him.
“You don’t have to apologize,” he assured me. He brushed his thumb across my cheek, and it left a streak of tingles on my skin where he had touched me.
I tilted my head into his hand. I didn’t want this moment to end. I wished the weight of the world wasn’t weighing down on me quite as heavily as it was right now. I wished there was some way out of this, some way for me to escape the pressure outside this house.
“Do the book fair with me, Jorja.”
“What?” I replied.
“Do the book fair,” he replied, letting his hand drop from my face to indicate how serious he was. “I know the blizzard is supposed to be coming in, but the weather people aren’t always right. And besides, who knows? You might get a few people coming out, looking for somewhere cozy to spend the day. You should try, at least. Before you give up on this for good.”
Taking a deep breath, I found myself nodding before I could stop myself. I didn’t know if this was going to work, but when he was looking at me like that, I knew I couldn’t say no.
He made me feel as though I was capable of things I could never have imagined. And perhaps, just perhaps, he was actually right.
Maybe there was still hope for me and the store.