Chapter Six
Gideon
Why can I still taste her on my lips? It makes no sense.
And yet I can. Lucia Reyes’ taste is like a ghost on my tongue, haunting me with the promise of things that can never be.
I’m relieving the moment in my head over and over, from the moment I close my eyes to the moment I wake up.
My dreams are even worse. In my dreams, Lucia doesn’t push me away.
She melts into me and we kiss until it’s not her nieces that laugh on the skating rink but our own children.
In those dreams, she’s mine and I’m hers.
Mated and happy, with a family that laughs and cheers.
The nightmare doesn’t come in my sleep. It comes when I open my eyes and realize I’ve ruined my only chance at happiness.
But it’s too late now. She pushed me away and she was right to do so. I don’t deserve her, even less now than I did back then.
I stride across the town square, my skin burning so hot that snowflakes hiss and steam when they hit my head. The winter market winds down all around me. Vendors pack up their booths, families drift home with shopping bags and sleepy children.
It’s a good thing, because I’m in no shape to be social. Not that I usually am. At least, I finished the invoices that were overdue.
I spot Martha at the Knitters Club booth, surrounded by baskets of colorful yarn and half-folded tables.
"There you are," she says when she sees me approaching, her gray eyes immediately cataloging my appearance. Judging by her expression, I look just as refreshed as I feel. Which is not refreshed at all. I feel like I’ve been run over by a herd of angry reindeer and pulverized by Santa’s sleigh while the jolly man laughed at my misery.
Dramatic, I know.
“I was beginning to wonder if you'd gotten lost between home and the town hall,” Martha teases
"Just busy with the last of this year’s invoices," I mutter, grabbing the nearest folding table with enough force to make the metal legs protest. The physical work feels good, something to do with my hands besides remember the silk of Lucia's hair between my fingers.
Martha doesn't comment on my obvious agitation, but I can feel her watching me as I stack chairs and fold tables with sharp, jerky movements that lack my usual calm.
Ugh. I should know better than to act out in front of her. Martha can read me like a book. She knows something happened. She always knows.
" Bernadette Garrington said they saw quite a commotion by the skating rink," she says conversationally, stuffing balls of yarn into a wicker basket. "Something about a Christmas tree taking a tumble?"
And there she goes. Why can’t anyone in this town ever mind their own business?
Heat floods my face. Of course someone saw my spectacular crash into the decorative spruce. In a town this size, gossip travels faster than wildfire, and my mortifying fall will probably be the talk of the coffee shop by tomorrow morning.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s all they saw. I can still escape the story of how I kissed Lucia Reyes out in the open. Like an idiot.
"Tree was unstable," I grunt, which isn't exactly a lie.
"Hmm." Martha's tone suggests she's not buying my explanation, but she doesn't push. Instead, she launches into a story about Mrs. Patterson's new kitten and how it keeps unraveling her knitting projects, chattering away while we pack up the booth.
It doesn’t mean she doesn’t know about the kiss. It just means she’s giving me space. For all her bad habits of volunteering me around, Martha always knows when I need to process things for myself.
Like I said, she reads me like a book.
I try to focus on her words, on the familiar rhythm of closing down another community event, but my attention keeps drifting across the square. I can't help but scan the remaining vendors, the families loading cars, the volunteers cleaning up decorations.
I don’t need anyone to point out that I’m looking for something. That I’m looking for dark hair and a smile that could light up the winter sky. That I’m looking for her.
And just like a kid who wishes upon a star and gets granted some kind of Christmas miracle, I spot Lucia at the animal shelter's adoption booth.
She's bent over a small wire cage, an orange kitten pressed against her chest, her face soft with the kind of tenderness that makes my throat tighten.
The sight of Lucia being gentle with something small and vulnerable, her guard completely down as she murmurs to the tiny creature, makes my already hot blood runs even hotter.
Her fingers are running over the small creature’s head and it snuggles against her body, tiny and vulnerable and utterly safe in her arms. I swallow through a suddenly closed throat and try to look away, but I’m paralyzed.
Like she senses someone is looking at her, Lucia looks up and around the market, her eyes finally landing on me across the distance.
Shit. Like I wasn’t enough of a creep last time.
Our eyes meet across the market, and I’m hooked from somewhere deep in my guts.
Her beautiful, soft face hardens and her mouth slims to a fine line.
She glares at me, still petting the oblivious kitten.
I’m still staring, my pulse hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape.
Then she pointedly turns her back on me, her shoulders rigid with dismissal.
That fact alone cuts deeper than any words could.
But at last the spell is broken and I look at the yarn my mother piles in great big plastic tubs. So much fucking yarn.
"…and then the little devil got into her yarn stash and made such a mess," Martha continues, oblivious to the silent war happening across the square. "Poor Helen didn't know whether to laugh or cry."
I grunt something that might pass for interest, but my gaze keeps drifting back to Lucia.
It’s like my eyes have a mind of their own and they just won’t obey me.
She's struggling with a heavy folding table now, the kitten returned to its carrier. I can see her mother, Condoleeza, in conversation with another woman a few booths away. After a few minutes of failed attempts, it’s clear she’s never going to be able to lift that table on her own.
She’s still not asking for help.
I wince as she lifts one corner, then puts the table down and holds her wrist in her hands, making a face that’s midway between pain and anger.
That woman is too stubborn for her own good.
My irritation builds, at her stubbornness, at my own weakness for watching her, at the persistent ache in my chest that’s only made worse when she bends down to pick it up again. When she cries out in pain as it drops on her foot, something in me snaps.
Before I can think about what I'm doing, I'm striding across the market.
The distance between us feels like miles and inches at the same time, my boots crunching through the snow as vendors pack up around us.
The scent of cinnamon and woodsmoke from the fire barrels does nothing to calm the storm raging under my skin.
I reach her just as she's wrestling with the heavy wooden surface, and without a word, I grab the far end.
The table feels like cardboard in my hands and she cries out in surprise as I lift it to my side.
She whirls around, her expression of shock turning to fury as she sees me standing there.
Her dark velvet eyes shoot dagger as she braces her hands on her hips.
"I don't need your help," she snaps immediately.
"You clearly do," I growl back, noting the way she's breathing hard, the slight tremor in her grip. "You're going to hurt yourself."
"I'm fine."
"You're being stubborn."
She glares at me in silence for a long moment, then flexes her hands and looks down at her fingers. Her palms are red and she bites down at her lower lip in a way that’s all too familiar.
Tiny Lucia Reyes. Too proud to ask for help.
“Where do you want this?” I ask her, changing the subject.
Lucia grunts, eyes the table, then seems to finally accept that she’s never going to move it by herself.
“Mr. Halrak’s truck is waiting by the entrance,” Lucia finally answers. When she looks up at me again, her gaze is softer. “Thanks, Gideon.”
I nod, then leave to bring the table over to the old man’s truck. As I go, it feels as if I’m walking on clouds. Like some invisible weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I’ve become somehow as light as air.
When I come back, Lucia is already busy with some other task.
"This is ridiculous," she mutters, wrestling with a particularly stubborn tent pole that's clearly stuck. She tugs at it with increasing frustration, her cheeks flushing pink from exertion and cold. "I can do this on my own."
Without a word, I step closer and wrap my hand around the pole just above hers. The metal gives way instantly under my grip, sliding free with a smooth click that makes her stumble backward slightly.
"Sure you can," I say softly, catching the tent as it collapses.
She shoots me a look that could melt steel. " Show-off."
"I like to think of myself as practical."
Despite our argument, we fall into a quiet rhythm.
Lucia sorts and stacks adoption paperwork while I dismantle the heavier display structures, our bodies moving around each other with the unconscious choreography of people who once fit together perfectly.
Every time she leans close to hand me something, my pulse kicks up like a teenager's, but I manage to focus on the work. Barely.
When she reaches for a box of flyers that's clearly too heavy, I intercept it before she can strain herself.
"Watch it," she warns, but her tone has lost some of its sharp edge.
"I've got it."
"You always think you've got everything."
The comment stings because it's not true. I don't have her. And the weight of that loss sits on my chest like a stone.
Her grip slips on the cat carrier in her hands. The carrier rattles as its occupant slides inside with a pathetic meow of protest. Without thinking, I catch the carrier one-handed, holding it steady while she scrambles to regain control of the other end.
The carrier settles with a few more indignant meows from its occupant, but no harm comes to them.
Lucia stares at me, her face flushed from exertion and the cold, her lips slightly parted in surprise. For a moment, we're frozen like that, me holding the carrier, her standing close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
"I had it," she says quietly, but there's no heat in it anymore.
"I know you did," I reply, even though we both know that's not true.
The moment stretches between us and I feel it again. Something deep and desperate claws inside my chest like a vicious little animal trying to escape. My hands slide across the cat carrier and an electric current runs through my stone body the instant my fingers touch hers.
"Why won't you ever just let me help you, Lulu?" The words slip out before I can stop them, rough and quiet enough that only she can hear. “Just let me make things right.”
She exhales and for a moment, the air between us is loaded with the weight of things unsaid.