CHAPTER TWELVE Killjoy
CHAPTER TWELVE
Killjoy
What was he doing to me?!
I couldn’t figure it out.
Danny had been dropped in my life like a damn bomb, exploded all over my solitude, and somehow had started to bring me out of my shell.
And the fucked-up thing was, I didn’t hate it. I didn’t know what to do with it, clearly, but I didn’t hate it. I wasn’t ready for it to stop. That said, I didn’t have the first clue where to go from here.
I thought I’d been reading the signals right. I wanted to kiss him, and I was damn sure he wouldn’t have minded if I’d done it. But then he stopped me, and in a teasing way, hit pause on the whole thing. I’d never been edged for a kiss before, but fuck if I didn’t kinda like it.
There was hope…
Hope that by the end of the night, I might have a chance to get this right. Hope that his lips would be as sweet as I imagined. Hope that I would find out… eventually.
A bell chimed when he pushed in the door to the small bookshop.
I was instantly hit with warmth and the smell of ink on paper, along with wood burning and dried orange peels. I didn’t hate it, but at the same time, it wasn’t something I’d want to constantly smell.
No, I was jonesing for the scent of… sugar and fresh-baked cookies.
I rolled my eyes at myself. I couldn’t imagine where I’d gotten that craving from.
“This place is so adorable,” Danny said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Oh my god, look at all the candles.”
He rushed over to the wall with the shelves that were floor-to-ceiling full of candles. There were a ton of different scents, if the pictures on the front were anything to go by.
It took over twenty minutes, but he smelled every damn one of them.
There were a few he thrust in my direction, holding them up as if he wanted me to smell.
By the faces he’d been making through the whole process, I knew those were the ones he thought were the good scents.
I gave in and sniffed a few. It wasn’t my thing.
I much preferred the scent of my cabin. The icy wetness from the flurries followed me inside when I came into the house.
The lingering scent of smoking wood. Whatever I’d cooked earlier.
In the bathroom, I liked smelling the steam and my body wash.
I just thought that was the way things should be.
It was my house, and those were the scents of me living in it. What wasn’t to like about that?
It took him another five or so minutes after that to decide on which one he was getting. I noticed he held two in his hand, lifting one up and then the other, as if he were literally weighing the decision.
I wouldn’t ever admit it, but I found it cute.
In the end, he put one back with much hesitation.
And when he’d turned his back to me and wandered off to look at some homemade ornaments for sale, I snatched up the other candle and discreetly bought it. Good thing my jacket had deep pockets. Oh, and that he’d grabbed it for me before chasing my dumb ass down the street.
Was it okay to buy a gift for someone and put a stipulation on it? Like… say, no burning it in my house?
Yeah, that would have been an asshole thing to do, considering he was kind of stuck.
“Look! It’s a little elf,” he said, turning to me with a face full of excitement.
He held up the ornament, and the thing was not cute.
Not even a little. But I could appreciate that someone had taken the time to make it…
and clearly, Danny thought it was somethin’.
“And they also have a miniature cabin that looks like yours.”
Now, that did look like mine. Not that it was a hard thing to do, since my cabin wasn’t anything special.
“It’s even got smoke coming out of the chimney.” It seemed like that alone made him giddy.
“That it does,” I replied, sounding like I didn’t care. It wasn’t that, I just didn’t have a damn clue what to say. “You should, um, get them.”
“What’s the point? I didn’t bring a tree with me,” he said, a tinge of sadness in his tone as he turned around and hung the ornaments back on the display.
“You could take ’em with you. Use them later. Maybe the cabin could always remind you of this year.”
Did I want that? Did I want Danny walking away with a stupid decoration that he’d hang on trees year after year? Trees that I had nothing to do with. Trees that weren’t in my cabin, all while he celebrated holidays that weren’t with me?
Fuck, what was that?
I shouldn’t care.
I didn’t know him. I shouldn’t care about it. None of it should matter.
His smile was tight as he looked at me. With a shrug, he moved on to something else.
And what did I do? Snatched those two fuckin’ ornaments right up and paid for them behind his back, too. An idea popped in my head that went along with the fuckin’ ornaments. And as I gave in to it, I was starting to wonder if I was going crazy.
I never in a million years would have thought I’d entertain such a damn idea, let alone be one hundred percent sure I was gonna go through with it.
I was practically crawling out of my skin as he looked around, taking everything in for far too long.
When he finally shuffled up to the register to pay for his candle, I was about ready to grab his hand and drag him out of there.
Not because I was done shoppin’, though I kinda was, but because I was ready to move on to the next thing.
Which, believe it or not, had nothing to do with getting him back home so I could finally know what it was like to kiss him. Might have been high hopes, but he’d been teasing it something fierce, and I had a feeling that he wouldn’t leave me hanging for too long.
“Thanks,” he said after he climbed into the cab of my truck and got himself buckled in.
“Don’t mention it,” I said.
“This town is cute,” he said. “Have you lived here long?”
“All my life,” I told him, and that was about as far as I wanted to go down memory lane. But I knew in my gut that wouldn’t satisfy Danny.
“Really?” While he didn’t press, it was obvious he was leaving it open for me to tell more.
I sighed heavily.
“Yeah. My dad had a rundown house on the outskirts… the other outskirts.”
“The other outskirts?”
“Straight on the other side of town is the part that people like to forget about. Which, yeah, included my dad, me, and my siblings. Also, anyone associated with my dad.” I took one hand off the wheel and tugged at my beard.
I wasn’t good with talking about things.
“Dad was a piece of shit. Left me to take care of everything. If he wasn’t bringing home some floozie and knocking her up, he was out gambling his money away. Since I was the oldest—”
“You were left to take care of your siblings,” he rushed to finish for me.
I hated the sympathy in his voice. I was about to tell him I didn’t need that shit when his hand landed on my thigh.
That… well, I didn’t hate. He turned his attention out the window and just let me be for a minute.
This was my chance. I had to ask him something back. Not only was it the nice thing to do, but it would also take the heat off of me for a minute. I might not have known much about him, but one thing I had figured out by now was that if I got him talking, he’d more than likely continue on his own.
Alright, and maybe I wanted to know more about him, too.
The thing was, I didn’t know where to start. By the time the sign came into view and I was pulling over to park, I still didn’t have anything.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He was practically shaking with excitement, his hand already on the pull for the door.
I let out a long sigh before I said the words that let him know I was giving in.
“I’m getting you a damn tree.”
Seeing him speechless at the idea made my chest feel a little warm.