Chapter 4
Chapter four
Amber
“The bike,” I repeat, like I’m reminding myself why he’s even here. “Right. Yes. The bike.”
Nick’s got the instructions in his hands. He holds them up, rotates them, squints, rotates again.
“Um.” I sip my wine. “You’re not…exuding confidence.”
“Hush,” he says with a smile to soften the word. “I’m concentrating.”
I try to do as he asks. Be patient, but the longer he looks at the parts laid out on the ground before him and then back to the directions, the more nervous I get.
Why isn’t he actually putting it together?
“Vixen?” he says, and the nickname makes me smile, especially with how natural it sounds coming out of his mouth. Like he’s been calling me that for years.
“Hmm?” I hum around the rim of my glass. The alcohol, plus getting myself off earlier, has left me warm and floaty and a little too relaxed.
“I think we may have a problem.”
Instant full-body tension. “What problem? I hate problems.”
“I do too, but there’s a bolt we need to connect the steering column to the rest of the bike.” Nick holds up the instructions and punches at a diagram with his index finger. “This bolt right here.”
“And?” I trail off, already bracing for what he says next.
“I can’t find it.” His eyes scan the ground intently.
“What?” I gasp, hand to my chest like a true damsel. “No. How do you know?”
“That,” he says, sighing, “is an excellent question that I will now answer with a riveting scientific demonstration.”
He holds the empty hardware bag upside down, shakes it, then looks at me with grave seriousness.
“It’s not in here.”
“Wow. Incredible science. You should win awards.”
He gives me a look. “Hey, don’t mock the process. Sometimes science is just…sadness and missing pieces.”
“That’s super-depressing.” I drop to my knees beside him and sort frantically through every bolt, screw, and washer. “No, no, no, please be here,” I mutter, as if the bolt can be guilted into existence.
A few frantic minutes later, I look at Nick, who has also continued searching. “I don’t see it.”
His head swivels, taking in the rest of the room. “It has to be here somewhere. It didn’t just walk away.”
“Just our luck. To have discovered the first sentient, mobile bolt,” I try to joke, but it comes out weak.
He gives me a pity laugh, then turns back to the rug and starts patting around. “Okay, maybe it fell. Maybe it bounced. Bolts bounce. I’ve seen it.”
Together, we keep searching. It feels ridiculous and strangely intimate, the two of us crawling around on my carpet, inch by inch, like we’re looking for a lost diamond instead of a seventy-cent piece of metal.
Nick takes the left side of the rug; I take the right.
“Did you check under the couch?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Under the tree skirt?”
“Yes.”
“The trash?”
“Nick, I’m not a monster. Yes, I checked the trash.”
He snorts and moves closer, sweeping his hand under the sofa. “You’d be surprised how many Christmas disasters start in the garbage.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
He sits up. “Dollhouse. 2019. Dark times. I’m still traumatized.”
I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. Then the laughter cracks into worry. Braxton will wake up expecting this bike. He’s been talking about it for days. One stupid missing bolt…
Nick’s voice softens, reading me way too easily. “Hey. Worst-case? I’m at Home Depot the minute they open, which is like…” he glances at the clock on the wall, which shows it’s almost two a.m. “in a couple of hours.”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course,” he says simply. “I told you. I’m saving Christmas.”
That warm, fluttery feeling lifts in my chest again, unexpected and way too easy.
We search another minute, then another, checking every tiny pocket of space. Nick even gets down on his stomach to look under the entertainment stand.
I sit back on my heels, deflated. “I don’t think it’s here.”
He lets his forehead drop to the floor with a soft thud. “Yeah. I’m calling it. The bolt is officially MIA.”
“So we’re stuck?”
He rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, arms stretched above his head. His shirt rides up again, exposing that same warm strip of skin.
My pulse skips.
Again.
He doesn’t seem to notice. “We can still assemble most of the frame,” he says. “Just can’t attach the handlebars or the front wheel. Minor details.”
I snort. “Tiny details like…the bike is only half-built?”
He flashes me a soft grin. “Half a bike is better than no bike.”
At some point while he’s talking, he props himself up on his elbows and looks at me. Really looks at me. His hair is mussed from crawling around, a dark curl falling near his eye. He blows it away, and something in my stomach drops.
Why is he cute like this? Why is he cute doing everything?
He sits up fully and dusts his hands off. “Okay. We’re going to regroup. We are very capable adults. We have opposable thumbs. We can do this.”
I shake my head. “This feels like a cosmic test.”
“We’re going to pass it.” He bumps my knee lightly with his fist. “Teamwork.”
The touch is small. Barely anything, but it sparks tiny fireworks up my leg anyway.
I clear my throat. “So we keep building?”
He glances at the instructions, then back at me. “Yep. Let’s build everything that doesn’t require Mr. Missing Bolt. The rest can wait.”
“It’s a plan.” I nod my head like I’m focused only on the bike, trying to ignore the small part of me that cheers because there are still a fair number of parts on the floor, which means Nick’s not leaving.
Not yet.
Nick
We work for another twenty minutes, fitting pieces together, tightening what we can, pretending it’s fine, but the whole time, I’m searching for that damn bolt. Every part I lift, every corner I scan, every time Amber turns away, I’m checking again.
It gnaws at me.
This isn’t just a bolt.
It’s her son’s Christmas gift.
It’s her wanting something to finally go right, and somehow my brain has decided that if I can’t make this happen for her, I’ve failed at something bigger.
I try to swallow it down, but it sits heavy in my chest.
Finally, I can’t take it. “I’m sorry about the bolt,” I blurt.
Amber pauses mid-twist of her screwdriver. Slowly, she turns her head and looks at me, really looks at me, brow soft, eyes searching mine.
“It’s okay,” she says gently. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”
“I kinda feel like it is,” I admit, sitting cross-legged on her floor, shoulders slumping.
She puts down the tool and scoots closer. “You like taking care of people, don’t you?”
I blink, startled, because, yeah, she’s right.
“Like your sister and her kids. I bet you watch out for your employees too?”
I nod.
She gives me a soft smile. “It’s a good quality. A strong one, but you can’t control everything. You can’t help it if we lost a bolt or if maybe it wasn’t put in the bag in the first place.”
What she’s saying makes absolute sense, but I still have that hollow feeling in my gut.
Her hand goes to my knee, and the heat of it travels straight up my leg. “I get it,” she says softly, thumb brushing a slow arc. “I try to take care of everyone too.”
I swallow. Hard.
Her touch is light, but the meaning behind it feels heavy, like she’s opening some small, guarded part of herself just for me.
“Yeah?” I manage, my voice lower than before.
She nods, her eyes dropping to where her hand rests on me, like she realizes how intimate it is.
“I’m always putting myself last,” she whispers. “Always trying to fix everything around me, even when I can’t.” Her fingers curl slightly against my knee. “It’s exhausting.”
God.
My chest aches. For her. For me.
“It really is,” I murmur, reaching out before I can second-guess it. My hand covers hers, warm over warm, fingers gentle as they slide over her knuckles.
She freezes at that but doesn’t pull away. In fact, her body sways toward me as her gaze drifts up to meet mine.
“I get that you don’t know me very well yet, but maybe,” I stop and wet my lips, “maybe we could lean on each other a bit, help each other fix the things that are broken.” My boldness fails me. “If—if you wanted to,” I stutter out.
Her lips part, and her eyes go soft. “I’d like that,” she whispers.
We must have been moving closer as we talked, although I wasn’t consciously aware of it. But suddenly our faces are close, our mouths aligned, and I think…
This is it. I’m going to kiss her.
I lean forward, my eyes sliding shut. I can feel it, the ghost of her breath warm on my mouth. Just a few centimeters more and I’ll know what she tastes like.
That’s when a little voice calls out, “Mommy?”