Chapter Twenty
Devlin had promised Annabelle that she’d be at the snowman building contest to help decorate for The Bee, but she just wanted to curl into the fetal position and sleep for a week. She was sure that Annabelle would let her off the hook for the day, especially after what had happened last night at Finnegan’s, however she’d spent so long hiding from Gabe that she wouldn’t do it anymore, so she bundled up and went to the town square.
She’d run from her problems all her life, hell, she’d moved cities when the last one was too much to bear, and she was tired. Bone tired of running and fighting. Or, rather, fighting then running. Even if she didn’t end up with Gabe, that cycle needed to break.
Amber Falls was home—more of a home to her than Boston had ever been, and the friends she’d made here were closer to her than family. That was one of the reasons she left her loft when she would’ve been happy working or deep cleaning or doing any other menial task. Annabelle was family, and she wouldn’t let her down.
The contest was in full swing as Devlin made her way across the open space. So many different kinds of snowmen were being built—some she would call snow sculptures, since they were more intricate than three large balls of snow and decorations with variations that included a sasquatch, a dragon and a bear. Annabelle was still rolling out her second ball, the middle section, when Devlin walked up.
“Finally, Dev! Where have you been?” She accepted a cup of coffee from Devlin’s outstretched hand.
“I’m just a few minutes late, you started early.”
“I suppose I did. I either had to start moving or freeze my butt off.”
“Where is everyone else? Sebastian isn’t here?”
“The Duke called me just as I got here to tell me he’d forgotten he had a spa weekend booked that was a gift from a sponsor and it would be bad etiquette to not go. He was just about to get a hot stone massage, that bastard.”
“That’s low, knowing you’d be out here freezing.”
“I told him that and he just laughed and hung up, but I’m determined that I’m going to win this thing without him.”
“Mrs. Crenshaw isn’t participating, is she?”
“She would somehow figure out a way to outshine us all, if she was, like building a kitchen with a wood stove and whipping up a prize-winning dish.”
Devlin bent over and helped Annabelle heave the middle ball into place, packing additional snow around to stabilize it.
“I like a lot of the snowmen, but I’m surprised that so many people are making sculptures instead.”
“They won’t win, the rules are clear that it has to be a snowman, but they still do it to show off.”
“Did you know there’s a World Snow Sculpting Championship?” Devlin asked.
“No shit. Now that must be some miserable people. What Scandinavian nation came up with that?”
“It’s held in Minnesota, believe it or not.”
“I believe it. Those people are about as Scandinavian as they come.”
“You ever been there?”
“No, but I’ve watched Fargo and I’m sure that’s an accurate portrayal.”
“You betcha,” Devlin joked. “Where are the accessories, or should we have brought our own?”
Annabelle pointed to some large boxes in the gazebo. “We can take whatever we need out of there.”
“I’ll go get some stuff while you finish rolling that.”
Devlin wandered through the maze of snowmen until she reached the accessories. She was bent over one box sorting through the items when she heard a shuffle on the step.
“It’ll just be a sec, there’s plenty of other boxes for you to look at until I’m done.”
“I’m not here to decorate,” Gabe’s voice came from behind her.
She shot up. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see if Annabelle needed any help. Sebastian decided he was being clever to use the spa weekend to get out of having to build a snowman outside, so I thought I’d stop over.”
Devlin crouched again and started sifting through a box marked ‘gloves’. “We’ve got it, thanks for the offer.”
She thought he’d walked away and was grateful for it until he spoke again.
“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
Anger surged through Devlin at these words, words that erased his involvement in the issue and placed the blame only on her. She stood and whirled around, her face heated, and she was sure her cheeks were mottled red. The words poured out of her.
“How could you do this? Submit your proposal when I was ready to give everything up for just the possibility that you and I could be more than fuck buddies,” she sputtered.
“We’re more than that, Devlin, and you know it. This isn’t a passing fling for me. It hasn’t been a passing thing since Boston, but you were the one that hid yourself from me. I’ve just been playing catch-up with you from day one.”
Devlin didn’t know what to say to this. She did know that she had to admit some culpability for this situation. All of it a voice whispered, since she was the one at the cabin who’d said they had to be honest about what would happen, but she didn’t want to listen to this voice. This voice had gotten her into trouble one too many times to decide now was a good time to heed its advice—case in point, not submitting her proposal.
“Why are we doing this, Gabe? Why didn’t we stick to the plan at the cabin that it would be for one night. It would’ve been so easy to end it then.”
“Easy? Ending this was impossible, that’s why we didn’t. Whether you like it or not, one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. Life works like that.”
“No, it doesn’t. Life isn’t that cut and dried, Gabe.”
“How is it not? I see no nuance in this, nothing that tells me we can figure it out as we go, even though that’s what we said at the cabin. There will be resentment on one or possibly both of our ends. You for blaming me for not submitting your proposal, and me for submitting before we could start to figure things out.”
“So, you admit you submitting the proposal was premature.”
Gabe threw his hands into the air. “I don’t want to keep going over this, Dev.”
“I’ll make it easy for you. I’m going to submit my proposal before this afternoon’s deadline. If you insist there must be a winner and a loser, let’s make it a real battle.”
“I don’t want to battle you.”
“You already started it when we got back. You’ve made my choice very easy. I’m not going to lose.”
She picked up her snowman accessories and stormed past him, bumping his shoulder on her way out of the gazebo.
Gabe followed her back to where Annabelle was standing, and her smile fell off her face when it became apparent that the two of them hadn’t had a harmonious reunion.
“Hey,” she ventured. “How’s it going?”
“Devlin decided to submit her proposal,” Gabe shot out. “I’m glad she’s doing it, but the rest of this? She’s clearly angry about something and taking it out on me.”
“That’s it!” Devlin yelled, dropping her belongings and scooping up some snow. She made quick work of the icy substance, forming it into a little, neat snowball. “No man is going to tell me what to do!”
And with those words, she hurled the snowball at Gabe, hitting him square in the chest. Her eyes widened and Gabe’s narrowed. She backed up, almost bumping the snowman behind her over.
“Guys,” Annabelle started, as Gabe made his own snowball. “Let’s not get crazy here.”
“Crazy?” Gabe asked. “She hits me with a snowball, and you want to caution us both to not be crazy?” He lobbed a soft throw and it appeared to go in slow motion, all three of them watching until it landed right on Devlin’s head.
“When in Rome.” Annabelle resigned herself to the battle and started to make a pile of snowballs as Devlin sputtered and tore her hat off, knocking the snow back onto the ground.
The rest happened so quick. Devlin was sure it would go down in town lore that no one quite knew who started the great snowball fight, but that everyone had a blast. Everyone, that is, but she and Gabe.
They both had a singular focus, throwing snowballs as fast as they could make them. Gabe had just fumbled on his latest one, he wasn’t wearing gloves, and Devlin could tell his hands were red with cold.
“Always bring gloves to a snowball fight,” she yelled as he charged her. She ducked behind a Bigfoot sculpture, thankful for its increased girth, but didn’t notice that Gabe had come around the other side until he tackled her, both tumbling to the ground, Gabe on top of Devlin.
Their breaths came out fast, the condensation of the air mingling, their lips millimeters away from each other.
“Get off me,” Devlin whispered.
“It wasn’t anything personal, Devlin,” Gabe whispered back.
“You can’t tell me what’s personal and what’s not.”
“That’s not how any of this was supposed to happen.”
Devlin lay motionless until a shout from the distance brought her back to reality. She shoved as hard as she could and pushed Gabe off her. Her life up until this point had been about restraint. Appeasing others—parents, boyfriends, teachers—anyone that she felt she needed to please.
She’d broken herself out of that cycle the night she’d met Gabe. That night had been just for her. Look where that had led her? Here, to this moment, where she was going to take what she wanted and to not be ashamed of it.
Standing up, she was tempted to reach out, an olive branch of sorts, to help Gabe up, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
“I’ll see you Monday,” was all she said before she walked away.