Chapter 14
The Christmas Tree
Later, I take my lunch in the window seat, sandwich cut with surgical precision, an apple sliced into thin, nearly translucent fans.
Whitby’s work. It is almost enough to make me forget the aftershocks that still flicker across the surface of my skin.
Almost. My body is tired, but there is a residual voltage in the hands, the mouth, the pulse at my throat.
I wonder, as I chew, if this will last, and if so, if I will ever grow used to it.
I open my book and read the same line eight times before giving up.
The words melt together, unable to hold shape in the heat of my thoughts.
I wonder where Lane is—probably on the grounds, hacking at the storm’s aftermath with the same ruthless focus he brought to me last night.
Larkin is less predictable; he could be napping, or staging a coup, or composing a sonnet about the cruelty of morning light on a lover’s bruised skin.
I try to picture them together, then forcibly erase the thought.
It is too strange, even for this house. Not the idea of two men, but of these two men, so wildly different from each other.
But seeing them together was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever witnessed, so I think I will need to keep seeing it.
Just to get used to it, of course. I finish my apple and press my forehead to the cold windowpane.
I don’t hear Lane approach. One moment, the air is as empty as my plate; the next, there is a presence in the doorway, vast and gravitational.
I look up and there he is, hair still wet from the shower, beard flecked with tiny shards of sunlight, hands knotted behind his back in a posture that is almost repentant.
He stands there for a long time, as if unsure whether to cross the threshold.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, voice barely above the register of the radiator.
“You didn’t,” I reply, closing the book on my thumb. “I was just pretending to read.”
He nods, once, as if he’d expected this answer. I reach for him and he comes to me, grabbing my hand, and holding it as he kisses me. He pulls away just as quickly, though, as if afraid he’ll get caught, by whom I’m not sure.
His gaze travels the length of the library, cataloguing the clutter, the faint footprints left by Whitby’s morning rounds, my lunch tray. He seems different today: less the wounded animal, more the man who, in another life, would have been a general or a martyr or something even less forgiving.
He shifts, clearing his throat. “It’s almost Christmas.”
“Is that so?” I do not bother to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
Lane’s mouth twitches—almost a smile. “If you want a tree, now’s the time.”
“A tree? I hadn’t really thought about it.”
He glances at the window. “It’s a tradition.”
I try to recall the last time I had a real one.
The years collapse together. I’d been using an old fake tree my neighbors gave me instead of throwing away.
Before that, a withered fir from the gas station lot, dead on arrival was a treat.
I didn’t even invest in ornaments. There was never anyone else there to appreciate them.
I say, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Lane shrugs, big shoulders rolling under the flannel. “I’ll show you. If you want.”
The offer is simple, but I feel the charge in it—the unspoken hope that something as ordinary as tree shopping could bridge the impossible gap between the morning’s violent sex and the day’s new silence. I nod, and Lane smiles. Actually smiles.
“Bundle up,” he says, softer now. “It’s colder than it looks.”
I gather my things—book, scarf, the memory of their mouths on my neck—and follow Lane down the hall. The air is charged with the anticipation of the ordinary, and I find myself hoping, irrationally, that nothing will disturb it.
We walk in silence. Lane’s boots are muddy, the laces frayed, but he moves with the confidence of someone who has never once questioned his right to take up space. I try to match his stride, failing, but the effort feels good, like stretching a muscle that has long been dormant.
As we round the curve of the main staircase and into the foyer, I catch the echo of my own voice—higher, more uncertain than I remember—asking, “Does it bother you? What happened this morning?”
Lane stops, just short of the vestibule. He turns, and I am struck again by the violence of his eyes, gray and bright and full of weather.
“I don’t know,” he says, truthfully. “I keep thinking it should.”
“Me too.”
He looks worried, broken. “It doesn’t though?”
I step closer to him and rest my hand on his chest. He puts his on my waist, gripping me as if I’m a lifeline.
“No.”
For a moment, we are suspended in the uncertainty, two bodies trying to reverse-engineer their own damage.
Then Lane lets out a short, mirthless laugh.
“The house makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.
Want things you wouldn’t normally want.” He looks away, as if the words are an affront to the wallpaper.
“It strips you of who you are, and recreates who it wants you to be.”
I want to ask what the house wants me to be, but instead I say, “And what do you want?”
Lane stares at me, then at the window, then at his own hands, not answering the question.
“Well I want more of it. More of you,” I say, and lift my hands up to his face, pulling it down to reach me in a kiss.
If he struggles with it, it’s not for long, because a moment later, he lifts me up and pushes my back against the wall.
My legs wrap around his waist, and he kisses me until I can’t feel my lips.
Eventually, he sets me down, and leads me out of the house as if nothing happened. But I catch the almost-grin hiding behind his beard.
Outside, the world is blinding. The snow has crusted over, hard enough to walk on if you trust it, and the sky is a blue so bright it hurts to look at.
Lane stands at the edge of the porch, surveying the grounds with the expertise of a man who knows every secret buried beneath.
He points to the forest at the far end of the property, the trees huddled together like conspirators.
“Spruce and pine, mostly. Some fir, if you want the needles to stick around longer.”
I say, “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
He shrugs, but there is something close to pride in the set of his jaw. “Every year. Since I was a kid. Old Maeve let everyone set up Christmas in the house.”
We walk together, my boots slipping once or twice, but Lane steadies me without comment. The cold is so total it feels medicinal, scraping the inside of my lungs clean. I steal glances at him, at the square of his jaw, the way his hair darkens at the temples when the sweat freezes there.
I think about last night, about the way he held me on the table, the way he didn’t let go even after it was over. I wonder if it is possible to want two things at once—safety and surrender, closeness and escape. I wonder if the house has already decided for me.
Larkin appears at the garden path, hands in his pockets, head cocked at an angle that reads as both challenge and invitation. He does not call out, but instead lets us come to him, as if he is the gatekeeper to some other, better world and we are only tourists.
Lane’s jaw goes tight. I can see the muscle twitch even through his beard and the wool of his collar.
I try to imagine what it would be like have dealt with Larkin and his attitude for decades, to be that furious and that controlled, all at once.
I decide that Lane is either the most disciplined man alive, or seconds from a murder.
Larkin gives a little bow, the sarcasm obvious even from twenty paces.
“Didn’t want to miss the festive slaughter,” he says, eyes flicking from Lane to me and back again.
His coat is open at the chest, revealing a sweater the color of a cabernet and a pair of gloves that look as if they’ve never once touched a shovel.
Lane grunts, but says nothing. The two of them are electric together, the air between them dense with all the things they won’t say. I try to step between, but they close ranks around me, the tension a live wire.
We trek to the edge of the grounds, the snow deepening with every yard, until the trees rise around us in a cathedral of needles and wind.
The sun filters through in dazzling, brittle beams, the air filled with the chemical tang of sap and the faint, sweet rot of last year’s needles.
Lane surveys the stand with the gravity of a priest at a funeral, measuring each tree for symmetry, height, the likelihood of lasting through Christmas without dropping its entire payload onto the parlor rug.
We reach the forest, and Lane surveys the closest trees with the air of a surveyor.
He circles a few, pausing to run a gloved hand along the trunk, or snap a branch to test for rot.
I try to help, but my knowledge is ornamental at best. I watch him, memorizing the gestures, the efficiency of his movements.
Larkin is no help. He paces the perimeter, touching every trunk as if expecting a password or secret handshake. “You know, in the city, they just paint the trees green if they die early,” he says, kneeling to inspect a lichen-crusted branch. “There’s something to be said for appearances.”
Lane doesn’t dignify this with a response. He stops at a blue spruce, ten feet tall, perfect in its symmetry, needles dusted with powder. “This one,” he says. “What do you think, Nora?”
“it’s perfect.” And it is.
“You want to do the honors?” he asks.
I blink. “I’ve never—”
“It’s just muscle and leverage,” Lane says. “And intent. Just push and pull.” He hands me the saw.
I take it, surprised by its weight. I look at Lane, then at the tree, then back again. He nods, just once, as if to say ‘go on, prove you’re not made of paper.’