Chapter 34
Everything I Ever Hoped For
Paisley
It’s dark. The fir trees around us are gloomy. They sway gently in the middle of the whirling flakes, their every movement melancholic.
Knox is holding my hand. Our steps crunch in the snow. At some point, we reach a cabin. I put my hand onto wood and hear iron sliding upward into a hinge. Knox opens the door, and as I follow him inside and the smell of hay and horses reaches my nose, I realize where we are.
“William’s barn,” I say.
I stay put in the pitch dark for a bit while Knox curses several times as he bumps into various things.
But then I hear the click of a lighter and am able to make out the silhouettes of buckets, pitchforks, and saddle racks, and a few seconds later Knox gives me one of his widest grins in the glow of an old-fashioned lamp.
The flames cast a shadow over his face, an interplay of dark, bright, black, red, shadows, light.
The candle strips Knox down to the skin.
Emotionally vulnerable. It says: Here he is, take a good look, I am showing you who he is, do you like it?
And how. And how.
“What are we doing here?” I ask.
Knox lights a second lantern and hands it to me. “We’re going to ride.”
“Ride?”
“You need me to explain? Well, okay. You sit on the back of a moving horse that carries you along in the process. Ooor you sit on a man’s lap—mine, for example—and start to move while…”
“Finish and I’m going to hold food in front of Sally’s nose without giving it to her so that she’ll back out of her stall while you’re standing there.”
Knox laughs. The lantern scratches the floor as he puts it down and kisses the crown of my head.
“I’d love to be romantic and saddle a horse for you, but, sadly, I am terribly incompetent in such matters.
William gave me a hand.” He points toward two of the horses that are already saddled and tacked up. “You get the Andalusian.”
“I don’t know how to ride.”
There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Oh, how much I’d love to say something just now.”
“Shut it.”
Knox rumples his nose a few times to keep from laughing until he’s got himself under control again.
“It’s a cinch. You just sit on top, and they move.
As long as you can hold the reins and keep in the saddle, all’s good.
They’re constantly carrying squealing tourists around on their backs. They’re used to it.”
“Okay.” My eyes scurry through the stable and stop on the dappled Irish Cob. The mare has buried her face in the feeding trough and is snorting. She sounds angry. “But I’m taking Sally.”
Knox follows my glance while opening the box of a fox-red Andalusian. The horse rubs its head against Knox’s shoulder and then its nostrils across his face. No doubt it’s not his first time here.
Knox pats the horse’s neck, while looking at me with raised eyebrows. “No way. I can’t be responsible for that. I’ve got to ride her.”
“Why?”
“She’s on low-carb.”
I pout. “But, but…”
Knox holds my glance for a few seconds, then curses. “Those damn lips of yours. Fine, take Sally. But if William gets wind of it, it was your idea.”
I grin and get a carrot out of a bucket for her. Her large dark eyes glow with a look of annoyance as she turns her head to the side and ignores the vegetable. With a sigh I toss the carrot back into the bucket. “William wouldn’t say anything.”
“I’m begging you.” The Andalusian gives a lazy snort while Knox comes up to me to help with Sally. “You’re going to be the subject of the next town hall with the screening of a film called Why No One Is Allowed to Touch Sally When She Isn’t Getting Any Carbohydrates. A Film by William.”
We lead the animals outside, each of us with a horse in one hand, a lantern in the other.
“Do you need a hand getting into the saddle?”
I shake my head. “I land triple axels and spins out on the ice, my entire weight on a one-and-a-half-millimeter-wide blade. I think I can manage getting my foot into a stirrup.”
I don’t. Knox has to help me get a leg up to swing onto her wide back. Eventually, I manage. It’s high, and I want to come back down. My stomach is a bit weird. I wish I’d secretly fed her some feed.
Knox hands me a helmet that’s been outfitted with a headlamp. He’s wearing one, too, and that makes me feel better because, to be honest, I feel a bit like a miner.
He smoothly swings up onto his Andalusian, as if he didn’t do anything else, and shows me how I can direct my horse with my knees. Then we set off.
It’s wonderful. Aspen by night during a snowfall, between us only the sound of horses’ hooves in the snow, the occasional snort, and the metallic rubbing of the bit as the horses slide it between their teeth.
We circle Silver Lake. Ice floes drift toward one another on the dark water and drift apart again. Reaching the mountains, the horses pant as they climb uphill and speed up when they go downhill again.
At some point Knox says, “YouandI without any spaces.”
Sally steps over a snowy root, I look at Knox and ask, “Without any spaces?”
He nods. “Nothing comes between us anymore.”
I smile. I smile and am in love.
It’s the middle of the night by the time we reach the Winterbottoms’ resort. In spite of the heated seats, the cold is eating at my limbs. Our horse ride was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, but, honestly, I almost froze to death. No idea if any life will ever seep back into my feet.
Knox opens the door, and we’re back in a sea of golden rays. The panoramic windows have been decorated with string lights, the banisters of the wooden stairs have also been hung with garlands of fir, and the walls have been hung with wreaths covered in little candy canes, gifts, and reindeers.
“When did all this happen?” I ask. “Did the little Christmas elves show up while we were out?”
Knox puts his keys into the wooden bowl on the sideboard and looks around. “Dad has a decorating firm come over to decorate the house. We used to do it all together—Mom, Dad, and me—but after her death all he’s ever said is that he has no time, patience, or talent for any of it.”
I slip out of my boots and slide across the warm wooden floor to the fireplace in my wool socks.
It’s not a classic fireplace, but one built into the wall, and above it towers a varnished wooden beam with two rustic consoles as support.
Three ivory-colored bows decorate the cornice as well as an elongated fir tree and four advent candles.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. But what really catches my eye are the long, white knit stockings with pom-poms at their ends dangling between the bows. There are three of them.
Three.
And they each have a name.
Knox.
Jack.
And Paisley. Paisley.
I run my fingers over the firm, curved lines of the yarn and feel like I’m dreaming.
“Knox,” I say, without looking up from the socks. I wave him over. “Knox, look at this.”
He comes out of the bathroom with a half-eaten Twinkie in his hand. “Hm?”
“Come here. Have a look at this.”
His footsteps make a hollow sound as he crosses the large living room.
On the way toward me he stuffs the rest of the Twinkie into his mouth and tosses the wrapper into the umbrella stand.
Over the last few weeks I’d been wondering which of the two Winterbottoms used the thing as a trash can, but somehow it was obvious.
“What’s up?”
“My name’s there, too.” I point to the sock as if it were some kind of relic. “There. Paisley.”
Knox looks at me. “Yeah. And?”
“Why?”
“Umm. Because you live here?”
“I’ve never had a Christmas stocking.”
Knox frowns as if in pain. The touch of his hand between my shoulder blades warms my heart and drives the cold of sadness out of me. He pulls me to his chest, kisses my head, and says, “And now you have one, babe. Get used to it.”
It’s dumb, and I don’t want to, but I start to cry. Strange how it’s always the little things that make the cup run over. I’ve just carried so much.
Blows. Mental abuse. A shitty childhood.
Shattered dreams. Abandoned friendships.
And now, here I am, and it’s this white stocking with my name on it that brings it all back.
I howl like a dog, drench Knox’s expensive shirt, and smear it full of snot.
Sometimes it’s just like that. And right now is a good moment to do it, here in Knox’s arms, in my new life, filled with joy and gratefulness.
Now I can just let everything out, let everything go.
It’s all good. It’s all good. Go away, rotten thoughts. Go away, and don’t you dare come back.
The whole time Knox just runs his hand through my hair. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders, pushes me away from his chest, looks at me, and wipes the tears off of my face. I sniffle like a little kid to stop the snot from continuing to flow. My eyes feel swollen.
“You’ll get one next year, too,” he says, taps me on the nose, and smiles. “And the year after that. And the year after that one, too. Forever. Because you belong to me now. No one will ever mistreat you again, you hear? That’s a thing of the past.”
“Can you stay with me tonight?”
“Of course,” he says, kissing my nose. “Of course.”
But then his glance wanders up the stairs and I know he is imagining my room. He swallows.
I take his hand and make small circles over the outside of his middle knuckle. “We don’t have to go to my room.”
Knox looks at me. His lips spread. “How do you know…”
I caress the close-cropped hair by his right ear. The minimal stubble prickles. “You carved your name into the wall by the bed. K-n-O-x. Crooked and bent but legible.”
He smiles faintly. “I was six, I think.”
“Does the reason you don’t want to step foot in there anymore have to do with your mom?”
He swallows again. His eyes drift toward the ceiling, as if he could look directly into the room, as if he could jump into a time long since past when his heart was so much lighter.