Chapter 24 Devon
DEVON
A tense silence hangs in the air around me.
Mom hovers over my shoulder doing her very best not to make a single sound but failing as every movement from me draws a small, tense squeak from her.
With only my good hand to work with, my movements are as delicate as I can manage.
Slowly, very slowly, I lower the fragile caramel nest down onto the bed of cream and take a cautious step back as if my presence changing the air around the cake will affect it.
It doesn’t move.
It doesn’t shatter.
It’s perfect.
“Yay!” Mom cheers softly and kisses my cheek. “Your dad is going to love it.”
“I hope so. Took me long enough.”
With a teasing smile, I relax fully and roll my shoulders.
There’s not much I can do to surprise Dad on his birthday when it comes to his cake, but I stayed up late last night getting the perfect caramel consistency for the best nest I’ve ever made.
I barely slept out of anxiety that I would wake up and find that it had caved in on itself while sitting in the fridge. Luckily, fate was good to me.
Puffing out my cheeks, I move to the sink and wash my hand just as the buzzer at the front door rises to life.
“I’ll get it!” Drying my hands, I rush past my mom and hurry to the door but before I open it, I pause.
I’ve worn my nicest red dress and white tights to remain festive.
I’ve poured myself into the strongest shapewear I own and curled my hair, all so I’ll look my best.
But for what? So a man I rejected will look at me?
Maybe it’s pathetic and doubt wraps its cold fingers around my wrist, refusing to let me open the door.
The buzzer repeats and I jump, then open the door with a smile. “Hi!”
Kairo stands on the doorstep in dark jeans and a light grey Polo shirt that stretches open at the neckline as he lifts his arm to brush snow off his hair.
His coat drapes over one arm and his smile warms my very core as our eyes meet.
“I’m not too early, am I?”
“No, you’re right on time. Come on in!” Waving him over the threshold, I peer past him toward his car as it rapidly gets covered in snow. “No Martin?”
“He’s actually taken the day off.”
“Does he do that?” Closing the door, I take his coat and hang it on the rack.
“Apparently, his trips out here have him taking a new look at his life. I guess you could say the town is rubbing off on him.”
“Wow, that’s got to be a good thing, surely.”
Under Kairo’s arm, he holds a long black box and when he catches me staring, he smiles.
“A present for your father. I wasn’t sure of the protocol, but I hope that’s alright.”
“As long as it’s not Christmas themed. He loves the season as much as I do, but having a birthday in December? He hates getting festive presents.”
“I promise it’s not.” Kairo chuckles.
“Excellent. Please, come through. Everyone is here.”
In the lounge, Kairo is greeted warmly by my father and all the other friends who have dropped by to help him celebrate.
As warm as the scene is, I notice some tension on Kairo’s face and a small bubble of guilt worms through me.
I should have warned him that this wasn’t just a family affair.
Despite it, the tension seems to bleed away as he presents my father with a rare bottle of Scotch that’s even older than he is, and everyone cheers while joking that something so lavish isn’t meant to be drunk, but my dad ends that by immediately opening the bottle and pouring a glass.
“I think he likes it,” I murmur in Kairo’s ear. “What a sweet gift.”
“I’m glad he likes it,” Kairo replies, leaning close to me so I can hear him over the rising laughter in the lounge. “I saw some of the other bottles he collects when I was here for Thanksgiving, so I thought he would love another.”
“That’s so thoughtful.” Our eyes meet. “Thank you.”
Kairo’s gaze falls away and he straightens up while clearing his throat. “You’re welcome.”
After the introductions and a few shocked responses when people learn Kairo is my husband, it’s on to party games.
It doesn’t matter my father’s age.
He clings to the youthfulness of party games with the strength of a stubborn toddler and there’s no escaping them, not even for Kairo.
We start with dangled candy canes and Kairo lets me gently tie his hands behind his back, then I set him loose on the string being held up by two of my father’s friends.
They certainly don’t make it easy for him, but I can’t take my eyes off him.
The sparkle in his eyes, the breathless laughter that escapes him each time he lunges for a dangling candy cane and misses, the way we all know he could make the game too easy by standing up straight, but he doesn’t to keep it entertaining.
By the time he catches a cane between his teeth, his face is flushed with merriment and cheers rise around him while I gently untie his wrists.
“Good catch.” I chuckle as the game continues behind us. “You should check the tag.”
Kairo turns to face me with the cane still held between his teeth.
His eyes are bright, his hair has lost the perfectly combed look, and his smile is so warm that my heart skips a beat.
The urge to remove the cane for him rises like a swelling wave.
Thankfully, he removes the cane from his teeth before I lose control and checks the attached tag while licking his lips.
“I’ve won a bauble?”
“Oh!”
Clutching his hand without thinking, I pull him toward a table tucked near the window.
On it rests a bowl full of creatively, if badly, painted baubles. “You can choose one! They’re gifts from some of the classes at school we raised money for.”
“Wow.” Kairo’s brow lifts. “This town is…” He trails off and picks a green bauble covered in so many gold stars that they overlap one another. “I like this one.”
“Perfect!” I release his hand before his touch becomes too warm. “It suits you.”
“You think?”
“Mmhmm. You’re a man who tries to do too much so all your stars overlap. But if you take a breath and relax, you see the green underneath.”
“How poetic.” Kairo chuckles. “Thank you.”
The game continues until all canes are claimed and then it’s on to the next game.
I partake in neither game—being tied up or blindfolded sparks too many bad memories, so once again, I’m in charge of preparing Kairo for his round.
“What’s this one?” he asks softly as he stands before me.
“This is like pin the tail on the donkey, only you’ll be given a mystery item and you have to place it on the Christmas tree behind you. Blindfolded.” I pull a silk handkerchief from my pocket and wave it before him. “Do you want to?”
Kairo’s eyes don’t leave my face as he nods. “Sounds fun.”
“Okay. I’m going to blindfold you and then my mom will choose your decoration.”
“Do you need me to kneel so you can reach?” His voice is so soft, almost intimate, as if we’re the only two people in the room.
I shake my head and slowly fold the handkerchief to create a makeshift blindfold, then I reach up and slowly place it over Kairo’s eyes.
Tying it around the back of his head means leaning fully into him, so I stand on my tiptoes and carefully wind the blindfold to the back of his head where my good hand and my cast-affected fingers fight one another to tie a gentle knot.
It’s difficult.
I’m so close.
His body is pressed right against mine, his breath ghosts my cheek with the angle I’ve chosen, and his lips are inches from mine if I turn my head.
The knot slips between my trembling fingers and as my distraction grows, I wobble and slip.
Only I don’t fall.
Both of Kairo’s hands suddenly grasp gently at my waist and the urge to flinch away rises inside me like the lash of a whip.
Only… It’s different.
Rather than the spike of fear I’m so trained to experience at touches to my body, it’s more akin to a surge of excitement and my breath catches in my throat.
“Careful,” Kairo murmurs softly in my ear. “Don’t fall.”
I can’t speak.
I’m boiling up from the inside being this close to him and I completely forget how easily someone could be watching us.
It feels like we’re the only two to exist and I want to kiss him.
God, do I want to.
Even though I told him I wasn’t interested. How can I mess him around like that?
The knot finally tightens and I step away.
Kairo’s warm hands easily slip from my waist and I distract myself from my fluttering heart with prayers that he didn’t feel the seams of the shapewear holding all my curves and bumps in the right place.
If he did, he doesn’t say a word.
As I step away, our bubble breaks and the real world surges back.
My father spins Kairo four times then my mom places a reel of tinsel in his hands and sort of directs him toward the tree.
I watch him and laughter bubbles up as he stumbles around and hugs the tree, his head jerking away from the branches as he tries to drape the tinsel appealingly.
It falls from the tree more times than anyone can handle, and it’s not long before most people are laughing too hard to stand.
He eventually succeeds and removes the blindfold with a triumphant cheer to the applause of everyone in the room.
Most attempts are similar to his and a haphazardly decorated tree gradually forms. Every year, the tree gets crazier and it’s one of my favorite traditions.
Finger food is shared around to calm appetites, and after enough drink has flowed, Mom brings out Dad’s cake, and he hugs me tightly, repeatedly kissing my cheek in admiration for my spun caramel nest and cream.
Kairo vanishes amid the celebrations and after the cake has been cut, I seek him out.
He stands out on the patio without his coat, staring past the railing toward the darkness shrouding the trees that line our property. His arms are crossed, and his stance is relaxed.
Is something wrong?
He doesn’t react when I open the patio doors, nor when I approach to join him.
The cold cuts around me like a thousand icy kisses, but I ignore it and focus on Kairo, who doesn’t acknowledge me until I lightly touch his elbow.
“Kairo? Are you okay?”
He nods once and turns his head to me. “You have a wonderful family, Devon.”
My lips twitch up. “Thank you. They’re quite something.” I’ve missed them dearly these past five years, and seeing all this delight and love again makes me wonder why I even left.
“In all my years… I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something like this.”
“Like the party?”
He nods, his lips pressing together.
“What do you do for your birthday?”
His eyes crease slightly and he grimaces.
“Nothing like this. My birthdays were charity events with galas to catch people’s attention.
Rich parties where my mother would heighten her social standing and my father would deepen business relationships by exchanging checkbooks. So I stopped celebrating.”
“You never had a party?”
He shakes his head again. “It’s so simple and yet…” Kairo sighs. “Your father… he’s a good man.”
Thoughts of Kairo’s own father come back to me, and it hits me with painful clarity why this must be difficult for him.
To come into our home and experience a birthday party like this, to be accepted by my father like he’s known him for years, to be treated like an equal.
I don’t know much about their relationship, but it strikes me as something Kairo never received from his own father, a cold, cruel man, by my understanding.
“He’s not perfect, but he tries his best.”
“That’s what’s important.” Kairo suddenly fully faces me. “He tries. He’s there for you. It’s…”
His face twists as he wrestles to find the right words. “It’s pitiful, I know, but your father… he’s like something out of my childhood dreams, and it hit me so suddenly that it took until I was thirty-nine for a man like him to make me feel like I actually belong.”
His voice cracks unexpectedly, and he presses his lips tightly together as if he’s suppressing something.
“I don’t think that’s pitiful,” I say softly, stepping closer. “Sometimes, we don’t know we’re missing something until it’s presented to us. What some take for granted, others crave. I know I took my parents for granted when I left and I… never again. So no, I don’t think you’re pitiful.”
Kairo’s eyes meet mine, and there’s so much unexpected, open emotion in them that I want to scoop him close to me and hold him until he understands that he is absolutely wanted.
And with that feeling comes a surge of guilt that I lied to his face and told him he wasn’t.
Snow begins to drift down around us, applying another glittering layer to an already pristine world.
Gigantic flakes settle in Kairo’s dark hair.
Before I think it through, I reach up and very gently brush them away.
My fingers are slightly embedded in his hair when his head suddenly turns and his warm, soft lips press against my inner wrist.
For a second, I’m frozen in this moment. His kiss is tender and sweet.
The warmth blooming out from the touch chases away all the cold of the air around me and his soft hair is like warm silk against my fingertips, even with the cold of the snow.
It’s a beautiful, perfect second.
And then I flinch. The reflex takes over, and I jerk away from the touch before I can stop myself.
I hate myself for it.
Why can’t I be normal?
Why can’t my body understand that this is something I want?
That the safety I feel around Kairo is worth pursuing?
What part of me is so deeply broken that it acts against every other thought and desire I have?
I know the answer.
It’s an answer Kairo seeks as a question floods his eyes and his lips part.
I don’t want to hear that question.
I don’t want to think about the past.
I want him.
I want him.
Before Kairo has a chance to speak, I grab him by the collar of his polo shirt and drag him down to my level, where our lips collide in a messy but eager kiss.
It’s not as refined as when Kairo kissed me at the fair, but it’s what I want.
I have the deepest, heaviest craving for this man and I can’t deny it any longer.
My heart beats wildly.
The world falls away from me and Kairo’s tender, warm lips suddenly slide against mine.
He returns the pressure I give him and one warm, thick arm encircles my waist.
He draws me tight against him and as my eyes close, his other hand slides down my cast and locks our fingers together in a gentle, tender grasp.
I melt.