Chapter Four
Gideon
I need to get her out of my head.
I blink and try to focus on the repairs at Town Hall, but my head isn’t in the game. Not surprising. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Lucia’s face. Lucia’s mouth. Lucia’s dark, velvet stare.
Like the ghost of Christmas past, fucking with me.
But every time I close my eyes, it’s her face I see. It’s the sting of her words I hear. She still has that same feisty attitude she always brought to our fights. That attitude that made me want to bend her over my knee and spank her. Not that I would ever dare.
I still see the look of hurt in her dark-brown eyes. The hurt I put there. That hurt that made me hate myself every day for the past ten years.
She hates me. I know it. It’s better this way. Then why doesn’t it feel better?
I almost lost it after she threw the snowball at my head. I know she was baiting me. Lucia always knew how to push my buttons, and I almost lost control. I almost crushed her to my chest, kissed her, and confessed everything to her. Like a fucking moron.
Standing there, face-to-face with her after ten years, felt like stepping into a furnace.
My skin burned so hot I'm surprised the snow around us didn't start steaming.
Every rational thought scattered the moment those dark-brown eyes locked on mine, and all I could think about was how she still looked like a Goddess, how her cheeks flushed pink in the cold just like they used to when we were kids building snow forts in her backyard.
How the dimples in her cheeks made my guts twist and my mouth go dry.
Ten years gone and still, she can make me feel nineteen again. Stupid and raw and desperate for something I could never have.
Fuck me. I need to finish this job. Then maybe stay inside my home until the holidays are over and Lucia goes back to her glamorous life in the Big Apple.
I shake my head and focus on the work. The mortar repair inside the town hall is finally finished, the crack sealed and smoothed until you'd never know some amateur tried to butcher it last spring. I pack up my tools and do my best not to think of a particular human woman anymore.
When I step outside into the December air, the cold hits my face, sharp enough to cut through the fog in my head. The town square buzzes with activity and volunteers setting up for tonight's carol singing event with strips of white lights being tested along the gazebo.
And there's my mother, working alongside Evelyn Primrose at the temporary skating rink they've set up in the square's center. Smiling and chatting away at everyone. Of course she is.
Martha notices me immediately, her gray eyes crinkling with warmth as she waves me over. She's wearing another one of her hand-knitted sweaters, this one featuring what might be a snowman or possibly a very round penguin. It's hard to tell.
"All finished?" she asks as I approach, gesturing toward the town hall behind me.
"Yeah. The mantel's solid now. Should last another hundred and fifty years." I scan the parking lot and the skaters gliding around the rink. My eyes go from face to face, lingering on every young woman until I catch myself. I’m not looking for her. I’m really not.
"I'm heading home now. Got the Seawater’s estimate to finish and some invoices to send before calling it a day."
"Don't overwork yourself, sweetheart. It's almost Christmas."
I mutter something that sounds like an agreement, but my attention keeps drifting to the families scattered around the square.
Martha notices my wandering gaze and steps closer, lowering her voice.
"You know, you don't have to wait for chance encounters. You know where she is. Go to her."
My jaw tightens. Martha knows me too well. She also knows too much, although we never really sat down to talk about what happened. I always suspected she knew Lucia was my fated mate, but she knew better than to push. Guess some things are better left unsaid.
"I already saw her." I don’t mean to sound so gruff, so I exhale and add, “At the Hallowell Farm. She was there with her family.”
Martha blinks in surprise and smiles so brilliantly at me, it hurts my eyes.
"And how did that go?"
"Not great."
Martha's expression softens with that particular blend of sympathy and stubbornness that means she's about to meddle in my life whether I want her to or not.
"Gideon, you don't have to spend your whole life alone."
“Just drop it.”
Before she can argue, I bend down and heft one of the wooden benches positioned around her volunteer station, the one she asked me to move closer to the ice skating rink. The weight feels good in my hands, solid and manageable, unlike everything else in my life right now.
I carry it to the back of the ice skating rink, where a trio of decorated spruce trees, courtesy of Hallowell Farm, corner a fake reindeer. That’s as good a place as any to set up the bench, so I lower it in the center of the display and turn to leave.
That's when I see her.
Lucia, wobbling onto the ice in borrowed skates from the rental stand, being dragged forward by her nieces like she's learning to walk all over again. Her laugh carries across the rink, bright, self-conscious, familiar enough to punch the air right out of my lungs.
She's wearing a cream-colored wool coat that makes her dark hair shine, and even from here I can see the way her cheeks flush pink in the cold.
The twins skate circles around her with the fearless grace of children, calling out encouragement while her arms are spread eagle in an attempt to keep her balance.
My heart thuds against my ribs, and my skin temperature spikes. Every instinct I have screams at me to disappear before she notices me, but my feet stay planted like I've grown roots.
Ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous.
She waves the twins on, telling them to skate alone while she catches her breath, then starts making her way toward the edge of the rink. Toward where I'm standing like a statue.
Shit. I have maybe a second or two before she sees me.
Panic floods my system. If I walk off now, she'll see me and think I’m running from her again. If I stay, she'll definitely see me and think I was lurking. Because I am lurking, like some pathetic, creepy stalker.
The spruce trees catch my eye. Yeah, that might work. They're positioned against the brick wall of the town hall, part of the holiday decorating committee's efforts to make the square look festive. Dense enough to provide cover.
Before I can think about how utterly insane this plan is, I step backward into the evergreen shelter.
Branches scrape against my shoulders, needles catching on my jacket as I try to make myself invisible, which is quite a feat for a six-foot-eight golem.
The rink boards, the town hall wall, and the trees pin me in like a trap, but at least she won't see me.
I hope.
Heat floods my skin until I'm surprised the ice of the rink doesn't start melting. I feel absurd. A grown man, a golem, hiding like a schoolboy from a girl he has a crush on.
But here I am, crammed between scratchy branches like some kind of Christmas stalker, watching Lucia settle onto the bench with a soft sigh that carries on the cold air. I can’t see her face from where I am, only her profile and her long brown hair.
Her shoulders sag, and she pulls out her phone with movements that look tired, defeated. The cheerful mask she wore while skating with the twins has slipped, leaving something raw and vulnerable in its place.
I should leave. I should absolutely leave right now, before this gets any worse.
But then she starts talking, and her voice cuts through my heart like a blade.
“Derreck, hi. I’m returning your call.” Silence fills the air as she listens to whoever she called. “Well, your calls.”
“Yes, I know I missed the deadline. I just need a little more time—"
Her head bobs up and down as she listens again, then she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
"No, I don’t want to cancel the contract. You know that."
Another pause, tighter this time. Her shoulders draw up toward her ears like she's bracing for a blow.
"So, what? You’re saying they’ll sue me if I can't repay the advance?"
My gut clenches. I don't want to hear this, don't want to spy on her private conversation, but the words lodge like splinters in my chest. The pain in her voice is unmistakable, raw and desperate in a way that makes me want to step out of these damn trees and demand to know who this Derreck asshole is and why he's making her sound like her world is falling apart.
“Yes, I’ll send you the first chapters by New Year’s. I promise.”
She hangs up, lowering the phone into her lap like it weighs a thousand pounds. For a moment, she just sits there, staring at the skaters gliding past in their cheerful oblivion.
Then her shoulders shake once in a silent sob and she hangs her head down in defeat.
The sight hits me like a punch in the throat. I've seen Lucia angry, defiant, hurt, furious, even. But this quiet despair is something new. Something that twists in my chest and makes my hands clench into fists.
I lean forward without thinking, trying to get a better look at her face, and my boot slips on the tree stand. My weight shifts, and I brace my hand against the nearest spruce tree instinctively. The decorative stand wobbles ominously.
Oh shit.
I try to regain my balance, but it's too late.
I feel my body fall victim to gravity as if in slow motion as I fall forward, taking the tree with me.
We topple together in graceless tandem, the tree and me, and land with a sickening crash in the snow beside Lucia's bench in an explosion of branches, needles, and scattered ornaments. I’m sprawled on the ground, half-buried in evergreen chaos, snow burning cold against my overheated skin where it seeps through my jacket.
For a moment, the square goes silent except for the distant sound of skate blades on ice and someone's horrified gasp from across the rink. I twist, half-caught in branches, an ornament stuck to the collar of my shirt.
Then I lock eyes with Lucia.
Her dark velvet brown eyes, rimmed red and puffy from crying, lock on mine with an expression of pure, shocked disbelief. It would be funny if I wasn’t halfway into dissolving in a puddle of shame and lava.
"Gideon," she breathes, her voice trembling with a mixture of hurt and fury that makes my stomach drop. "Were you spying on me?"