Chapter 19 #2
He tilted his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “I hate that you’re right.”
“Then don’t argue,” I said. “Come here.”
He scooted over until he was tucked against my side, his head finding that familiar hollow under my shoulder. My arm went around him automatically. He let out a long breath that felt like it had been trapped in him for years.
We didn’t talk for a while.
The fire popped occasionally. The wind rattled softly against the eaves. Somewhere in the distance, a snowplow grumbled down the road.
Rudy’s fingers traced idle patterns on my thigh—circles, lines, little loops. Not restless. Just… there.
“You know,” he said eventually, voice quiet, “I used to hate Christmas.”
I looked down at him. His gaze was on the fire, lashes casting small shadows on his cheeks.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Why?”
He huffed a laugh that didn’t have much humor in it. “Besides birthdays, it was my least favorite time of year. All the commercials and lights and songs about joy and families. It always felt like… like a party the whole world was invited to except me.”
My hand tightened on his shoulder. I stayed quiet.
“In most of the houses I lived in,” he said, “Christmas meant more fighting. More stress. A couple of times it meant nothing at all—no lights, no special food, just another day where everyone was tired and sharp and I tried to stay out of the way.”
He paused. Swallowed. The fire reflected in his eyes.
“When I got older,” he went on, “I told myself I didn’t care. That I was above it. ‘Oh, Christmas is commercialized nonsense anyway.’” He mimicked his younger self with a wry little twist of his mouth. “But it still hurt. Even when you tell yourself you don’t want something, you know?”
I did know.
He picked at a loose thread on my sweater.
“Mrs. Davis was the first person who made Christmas feel… like something I got to participate in. We didn’t have much.
But she baked cookies. We had a slightly crooked little tree with lopsided ornaments.
She made hot chocolate from scratch. She asked me what I wanted to do that would feel special.
For a while, it felt like I’d finally gotten into the party.
” His voice softened. “When she died, it felt like getting uninvited all over again.”
“Rudy,” I murmured.
He shook his head. “This isn’t a pity party.
I just…” He hesitated, then looked up at me, eyes bright in a way that made my chest ache.
“This is the first Christmas since her that I’ve felt like I belonged somewhere.
Like I wasn’t just looking in through the window while everyone else had fun inside. ”
My throat burned.
He shifted onto his side, facing me fully now, one knee tucked up on the couch, the firelight painting his face in shades of gold and shadow.
“Thank you,” he said. Simple. Bare. “For letting me be me. For not flinching when I went soft. For… building a whole little nest for me in the back of the shop.” He smiled, that small, shaky smile that wrecked me. “For being solid when everything else in my life felt like slush under my feet.”
Emotion rose so fast it left me almost dizzy. I swallowed hard, searching for words big enough to hold what I felt, and knowing I wasn’t going to find them.
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said, but my voice came out rough. “You deserved that. You’ve always deserved that.”
He laughed quietly. “Maybe. But wanting something and having it are two very different things.”
I cupped his cheek, thumb brushing the faint pink there. “You are young,” I said. “That doesn’t mean you’re fragile. It means you have time. Time to be seen properly. Time to be loved without conditions. Don’t let anyone convince you that you have to make yourself smaller to earn that.”
His breath hitched. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s hard as hell. But—” I leaned down to press my forehead to his. “You’ve already done the hardest part.”
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“You walked away from someone who asked you to carve off pieces of yourself to fit their comfort,” I said. “You chose you. That’s brave, Rudy. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it isn’t.”
His eyes shone, lashes wet. “You make me feel…” He broke off, searching for the word. “Whole,” he said finally. “Not too much or broken. Just… me. And somehow that’s okay.”
I closed my eyes for a second, breathing him in. The smell of his shampoo. The hint of woodsmoke on his clothes. The faint sweetness of syrup still on his skin.
“You are more than okay,” I said. “You are—” I stopped myself before the word that wanted to spill out got loose. “You are extraordinary. And I am… so damn grateful I got to know you. To care for you. To see you.”
His fingers curled in the front of my sweater. “You make me feel younger,” he said. “Not little—you do that too, but that’s different. I mean… less tired. Less like I’ve burned out all my joy reserves. Being here feels like hitting reset.”
I huffed a soft laugh. “You’ve done the same for me, you know.”
He blinked up at me, surprised. “Yeah?”
“I’ve lived in this town my whole life,” I said. “I love it. I love Holly & Pine. I love these people. But I’d made a quiet sort of peace with my life being… this.” I gestured vaguely. “Good. Stable. Loved. But… settled.”
“Boring?” he teased gently.
“Comfortable,” I corrected. “Maybe too comfortable.”
His smile softened. “And then I walked in and broke all your routines.”
“You walked in and reminded me there were parts of me I’d put on a shelf and dusted around instead of using,” I said. “You let me slip into being Daddy in a way that felt… good. Right. Like I wasn’t just taking care of a town or a store, but of someone who let me in all the way.”
He was quiet for a long beat. Then he whispered, “It really was the opportunity of a lifetime, wasn’t it?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “It was for me,” I said. “Is.”
He took a shaky breath. “I don’t know what happens next,” he admitted.
“I don’t know if this is just a beautiful, impossible two-week bubble that pops as soon as I get back to Chicago.
Or if… if there’s something else we can build from it.
But I know I’m going to be better because of this. Because of you.”
My heart thudded, slow and heavy. I brushed his hair back from his forehead, letting my fingertips linger.
“I don’t have answers either,” I said honestly.
“I don’t know what long-distance looks like.
I don’t know what you’ll want or need once you’re back in your world.
But I know this—” I tapped my chest gently, over my heart.
“You’ve made a difference here. And that doesn’t vanish just because you drive away. ”
His expression crumpled slightly, like he was trying not to cry and almost losing the battle.
“Don’t let anyone steal your joy, Rudy,” I said, voice low. “Not a partner. Not family. Not fear. You have every right to softness and silliness and light. To your little space. To your grown-up ambitions. To all of it.”
“Even when the world says I’m weird?” he asked, a hint of humor cutting through the ache.
“Especially then,” I said. “The world needs more of your weird.”
He gave a little choked laugh that turned into a breath, then into something like a sigh of relief. He tipped forward, resting his forehead against my collarbone, and I wrapped my arms around him, tucking him in like I could shield him from all the sharp edges waiting outside this town.
We stayed like that for a long time.
At some point he shifted, softer against me, his voice losing its adult edges.
“Daddy?” he murmured.
My chest went warm. “Yeah, sweetheart.”
“Can we just… sit? Like this? For a bit?”
“As long as you want.”
He didn’t go all the way under. No paci or coloring books. Just that in-between space—looser, quieter, the part of him that let his shoulders drop and his thoughts drift because he trusted me to hold the weight for a while.
I was happy to carry it.
As the afternoon slid toward evening, we roused enough to make something simple for dinner—reheated leftovers from Tom and Cynthia, a salad, bread. We ate on the couch, plates balanced on our knees, movie playing low in the background more for company than attention.
The sky outside darkened, blue fading to indigo, then to soft black with snow catching the porch light. The house felt wrapped, cocooned.
Later, when the plates were in the sink and the fire had been fed, Rudy stood at the living room window, arms wrapped around himself, watching the snow fall.
His reflection in the glass looked a little ghostly—hair haloed by the lamp behind him, face soft, eyes distant.
I came up behind him and slid my arms around his waist, pulling him back against my chest.
“Tell me what’s in your head,” I said quietly.
He exhaled. “Too many things.”
“Pick one.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “I keep trying to focus on how lucky I am,” he said. “To have had this. To have met you. To have had a Christmas that didn’t hurt.” He swallowed. “And then another part of me keeps whispering, ‘You only get this once.’”
I pressed my lips to the side of his neck. “That part of you doesn’t know the future any more than I do,” I said.
“It’s very loud, though,” he said with a weak laugh.
“I know.” I turned him gently so he was facing me instead of the snow.
His eyes shone, reflecting the firelight.
“How about this,” I said. “Tonight, we don’t make promises we’re not ready to keep.
We don’t pretend we know exactly what comes next.
We just… make this night count. You and me. Here. Now.”
He searched my face, checking for any hint of doubt. Whatever he saw must’ve satisfied him because his shoulders eased, just a little.
“Okay,” he whispered. “One night at a time.”
“One night at a time,” I echoed.
He lifted his hands to my face, fingertips tracing my jaw like he was learning it by heart. There was no rush in his touch. No urgency. Just a quiet, determined kind of reverence.
I kissed him like goodbye wasn’t hanging in the air. Like we had all the time in the world.
Slow.
Lingering.
Every slide of lips, every brush of tongue, every small sound he made mapped itself into me like something I’d need later when the house was quiet and the snow fell and the couch felt too big.
When I finally led him down the hallway to my bedroom, it wasn’t with the hunger of the first time or the desperate edge of a quick stolen moment. It was with the weight of everything we’d shared and everything we might never get again.
He watched me with wide eyes as I undressed him, piece by piece. I took my time. Not to tease. To honor. To memorize.
The way his breath caught when I palmed his shoulder.
The way his chest rose and fell a little faster when I skimmed my fingers along his ribs.
The way color bloomed in his cheeks when I told him he was beautiful, and meant it all the way down.
We made love slowly, like a conversation we weren’t ready to end.
Nothing frantic. Nothing showy. Just the steady, rising wave of connection—the quiet sounds he made when my hands found the right places, the way he held onto me like he needed the feel of my shoulders under his fingers to stay anchored.
I lost myself in him. Not the way you lose control. The way you lose the edges of where you end and someone else begins.
When he came, it wasn’t with a loud cry. It was with a shudder, a whispered “Graeme,” and a look on his face that cracked me wide open.
I followed not long after, burying my face in his neck, my body shaking with the force of it—not just the physical release, but the flood of emotion that came with it. Gratitude. Fear. Wonder. Something that felt dangerously close to three words I wanted to shout from the rooftops.
After, I cleaned us up as best I could without letting go of him for long. Then he curled against my chest, leg slung over mine, hand resting over my heart where it thudded too hard, too fast.
The room was dark except for the spill of light from the hallway and the faint glow from the snow outside.
“Thank you,” he murmured, voice slurred with sleep. “For… all of this.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He made a soft, contented sound and nuzzled closer. His breathing evened out. His hand went lax.
I lay awake longer.
Listening to the wind.
Feeling the weight of him against me.
Counting the beats of my heart like they might tell me something useful.
At some point, exhaustion dragged me under too.
We’d woken up and made love two more times. Each time more incredible than the time before. Then we’d grab a shower and tumbled back into bed.
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the cold.
Not in the room—the radiator still hummed, the faint heat from the furnace reaching through the floor—but on the sheets next to me.
The space where Rudy should have been was cool.
My hand slid over it automatically, searching for warmth, for the familiar dip of his body.
Nothing.
The clock on the bedside table read 7:12. The gray light of early morning seeped around the edges of the curtains, turning the room soft and indistinct.
For a heartbeat, I told myself he was in the bathroom.
That he’d come back in a minute, sheepish and sleepy, crawling under the covers with cold feet and a muttered apology.
But the house was too quiet.
No soft clatter in the bathroom.
No off-key humming.
No presence.
A slow, heavy weight settled in my stomach.
I sat up, the floor cold under my feet as I stood. I pulled on sweatpants and moved through the house on instinct.
Guest bedroom.
Bathroom.
Kitchen
Porch.
Empty, empty, empty, empty.
The mugs we’d used for cocoa last night sat rinsed in the drying rack. The blanket we’d had on the couch was folded—neatly, carefully, like he’d wanted to leave it the way he’d found it.
On the hook by the door, his coat was gone.
My breath caught.
I stepped closer. Something white waited on the small table by the entryway, propped against the bowl where I kept my keys. My name in his handwriting on the front.
Graeme.
I didn’t open it right away.
I stood there, fingers pressed to the envelope, letting the reality sink in.
He’d left.
Of course he had. He had a long drive ahead of him and a life back in Chicago. Leaving early made sense. Avoid the worst traffic. Avoid the possibility of a goodbye that would rip both of us raw.
I understood.
It still landed like a punch.
Sunlight spilled in through the front door window, painting the floor in pale rectangles. Somewhere, the day was starting—the neighbor to my right shoveling her driveway, someone starting a car that didn’t want to start.
In here, time felt paused.
I finally slid a thumb under the edge of the envelope and opened it.
His handwriting slanted across the page, familiar now in a way that made my throat tighten. I took a breath and started to read.
Whatever words he’d left me, whatever thanks, whatever hopes, whatever small, brave bits of honesty he’d decided to put down instead of saying them out loud—they blurred for a second as my eyes stung.
I blinked hard, then read them again, slower.
A quiet certainty settled under the ache.
Whatever this had been—two weeks, a holiday bubble, a queer kid’s dream of Christmas in a town built by love—it mattered. It had changed something fundamental in both of us.
I pressed the letter against my chest for a moment, then folded it carefully and slipped it into my pocket.
Outside, the snow kept falling.
Inside, the house felt too big and too quiet and still, somehow, full of him.
I let myself stand there in the doorway, bare feet on the cold floor, heart sore and full and uncertain, and whispered into the empty room, just once, the words I hadn’t given voice to when he was here.
Then I turned toward the kitchen to make cocoa.