Chapter 18
An hour after Sal’s tour, I found myself under the dining room table, halfway through extricating a derailed freight car from the miniature Polar Express, when Terri said, “It’s nice having someone so small around here who can get under the table.”
I grunted, sliding another car along the track and assessing whether the repaired section would actually hold. “Why don’t you have one of your grandsons help?” I asked, my voice reverberating off the underside of the oak and through the hollow legs.
It wasn’t a dig. Rex’s boys were upstairs, probably launching plastic dinosaurs at the ceiling fans.
I realized the boys weren’t, in the strict biological sense, Terri’s grandsons.
Rex was a nephew, not a son, but the kids only ever called Terri “grandpa,” and Sal always referred to them as “her babies.” My point was, no one needed a DNA test to know who loved who.
I reversed out from under the table, bumping my head on the way up.
Terri extended a hand to haul me the rest of the way upright.
He regarded the table, then the set-up below it—sprawling oval of plastic track, the mainline running under chair legs and looping through a paper-maché tunnel labeled “The Grand McMurtry Pass”—and nodded.
“Perfect,” he said. “You know, you’re a natural at this. ”
I dusted my knees. “I’ve always preferred mechanical work to baking,” I said, shooting a look over my shoulder toward the kitchen, where Abby and Sal were embroiled in the kind of cookie assembly line that would’ve impressed Willy Wonka, had Willy Wonka been real and a propagator of cookies instead of candy.
Whatever. You catch my drift.
He eyed the train controls. “Well. Here goes nothing.” Terri flipped the switch and the little engine shuddered, then rolled forward with a gratifying whine.
I held my breath, waiting for the repaired section to fail, but the train clattered past with only a slight lurch.
It made the full circuit, then another, faster each time, until the whole contraption was vibrating like a tuning fork.
We both cheered and high-fived, which was, as far as this family’s rituals went, among the least embarrassing I’d participated in all day.
Sal popped her head into the dining room, wearing an apron that said “Dough Me, Baby” and a face dusted in flour. “You finally got it working, eh? About time,” she said, then beckoned Terri with an imperious finger. He bustled over to her and planted a big, showy kiss right on her lips.
“I guess now you’ll finally be sociable,” Sal said, giving him a little poke in the side.
Terri winked. “Are you talking to me or Alison?”
She grinned. “Both of y’all. Come on, Alison. Abby and I are about to watch The Great British Bake Off while we eat our cookies. You want to come?”
“You’ll spoil your dinner,” Terri said, wagging a finger at us.
Sal made a dismissive gesture. “Oh hush. It’s Christmas. That means we eat cookies whenever we want.” She ushered me down the hall before Terri could mount any further objections.
I trailed after her, the smells of sugar and butter clinging to her hair and apron, and that’s when I realized that I was having fun. These people were fun. This holiday was fun. Eating cookies was fun. Even crawling around under tables and re-working old train sets was fun. It was all super fun.
Maybe it was because this version involved minimal family drama, good food but not so much it felt gluttonous, and plenty of sentimental old stories, or maybe I was just tired of being a grinch. Either way, the prospect of cookies and amateur pastry meltdowns on Netflix was pretty darn exciting.
I was halfway down the hall when Alaric intercepted me at the corner, one hand sliding across my back and the other gently clasping my wrist. “I need your help with something,” he said.
Sal, already rounding the bend toward the TV room, called, “Well, hurry up. We’re eating cookies and yelling at the TV. She won’t want to miss it.”
Alaric replied over his shoulder, “I’ll do my best, but no promises.” Then, to me: “Let’s go.” His grip was firm but careful, as though he knew I’d try to resist and wanted to give me the illusion of free will.
We ducked out the side door and into the backyard, where the last light of the afternoon made the snowdrifts look like meringue topping. The air was so sharp it hurt my teeth, but I followed, curiosity outpacing the cold.
He led me down a little flagstone path, past the bird feeders, to a shed painted an audacious shade of turquoise.
It looked, at a distance, like a retro diner had crashed into a tool rental shop and they’d decided to keep the accident.
The sign above the door read “The Clubhouse” in hand-carved letters.
Alaric opened the door and gestured for me to go in first.
Inside, I braced for the expected chemical aroma of gasoline, paint, and rotting leaf mulch, but was instead hit with something closer to lavender, cedar, and the faint musk of old books.
The shed had been converted into what can only be described as a “she-shed”—and I know that phrase is insufferable, but if the shoe fits—complete with a cast iron stove, several mismatched armchairs, a wall of neat cubbies holding yarn and fabric, and a folding workbench doubling as a crafting station.
There was a basket of what looked to be book binding supplies at one end and a stack of board games at the other.
Every surface was either painted pastel or covered in flowered oilcloth. It was more cottage than utility.
Alaric closed the door behind us, sealing out the cold and the rest of the planet. He looked at me with a mixture of mischief and something more serious. Something that made my stomach tense and flutter and suddenly I knew why we were here and what I would find if I simply looked up.
I scanned the space. “Let me guess,” I said. “You want me to knit you a new Yeti sweater.”
“Maybe next Christmas,” he said, sidling closer. “But this is urgent.”
We hadn’t kissed under the basketball hoop at Sawyer’s house. There’s been no time, so we’d skipped that bough of mistletoe. I felt a little sad about it.
Alaric maneuvered us to the center of the room, and I noticed, only now, that the ceiling beam above us was rigged with a length of striped ribbon. Dangling from the end was the expected mistletoe, so comically oversized it looked like a prop.
I stared up at it, then back at him, my nerves growing jumpy and buzzing with anticipation. “This is your big emergency?”
Alaric ran a hand through his hair, looking for all the world like a schoolboy about to risk detention for a kiss. “I promised myself I’d find a way to make this one count.”
I swallowed, not trusting my own voice. Years of training myself to dodge this kind of emotional ambush had left me without a decent defense mechanism. I wanted more than a kiss from this man. I wondered if he could read the longing in my eyes as clearly as I tried to broadcast it.
Moving closer, closing the last of the gap between us, his hands hovered at my shoulders, then traced down my arms, barely touching, until they reached my wrists. His skin felt hot against mine.
He said, “If you don’t want to, you can tell me to fuck off.”
I wanted to laugh, or make a joke, but all that came out was a breathy, “I don’t want—I wouldn’t do that.”
Alaric bent, just enough that our faces aligned. “You know,” he said, “for someone who claims to hate Christmas, you’re doing a great job today of participating.”
I didn’t reply, because I was too busy bracing for the moment his lips would meet mine.
I expected it to be a kiss like our first real one in eighteen years—a full, greedy, possessive thing—but he surprised me by simply brushing his mouth across my neck, just below the ear, light as a feather.
He paused there, letting the tension arc between us like a live wire, then pulled away, eyes locked on mine.
“Are you satisfied?” he whispered.
I let the question hang in the air, refusing to answer it, because any answer I gave would probably make me sound like a horn dog. Instead, acting on instinct, I grabbed his face and kissed him like I wanted.
There’s a kind of silence that follows a first kiss, the sort where two brains try to recalculate the laws of physics to account for what just happened. Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, it lasts long enough to let you appreciate the moment before it all goes sideways.
However, there’s a little known economic principle that says each time you do something risky, the act becomes easier. Maybe that’s why, the moment our lips met this time, all my neurons rerouted away from the “Should I?” district and toward the nearest “Fuck yes” substation.
Alaric responded immediately and his kiss was not sweet or careful or exploratory. Our teeth clicked. His hands cupped my face, then my neck, then slid down and caught in the hem of my snowflake sweater. He yanked me closer, and I found myself gasping beneath his skilled fingers.
I had always considered myself an aficionado of self-denial, a marathon runner in the competition of wanting things but never taking them until I didn’t want anything anymore.
But with Alaric’s body pressed against mine, the muscles of his chest hard and real under my fists, I abandoned such habits and philosophy in record time.
We stumbled backwards, knocking into a shelf lined with cans—buttons, loose eyes, straight pins—and I felt something topple and bang behind us, but neither of us looked back.
I was too busy figuring out how get him naked as soon as possible.
My pulse hammered so hard I wondered if he’d feel it through my ribs.
I had the sudden, unspeakably urgent need to touch him, and before my cortex could veto the idea, my hand landed on the waistband of his pants. He stilled, just for a second, like a dog on point, and then deepened the kiss, his tongue making slow circuits that made my knees threaten mutiny.
I squeezed him over his fly—tentative at first, then with growing confidence—and traced the line of his zipper. Alaric’s exhale was an honest-to-god shiver, the sound half-growl, half-moan, and instead of backing away, he leaned in harder, pressing me up against the wall.
One of his hands slid under my shirt, hot and possessive against my skin, the friction of calluses skimming my ribs.
His thumb grazed the side of my breast, then he hesitated.
I gripped his forearm and pulled him closer, a wordless “Yes, you idiot.” He took the hint and cupped my breast through the bra, fingers spread wide, and I almost sobbed with relief.
He massaged, finding a rhythm like he was learning it from my body.
My nipples went hard under the thin cotton and the heat of his palm.
I arched into him, our hips suddenly, brutally aligned, and for a moment the world shrank to a locus of heat and pressure at the apex of my thighs.
He kissed down my jaw, then under my ear, then bit—gentle, but with intent—and I squirmed against him, nails dragging over his back until I found skin. Alaric let out a hungry, low noise that I’d have paid millions of dollars to hear again, and again.
We made out like that for what felt like hours and also no time at all, hands frantic, mouths messy.
My mind, as it sometimes does, tried to offer a running commentary: Look at you, getting mauled in a shed, wearing a sweater with a snowflake on it, at a Christmas party in Texas. By Alaric Jordan of all people.
Yaaas! You go girl!
The thought was so absurd I nearly laughed, but Alaric’s hand on my breast interrupted the impulse.
His hands were both wonderfully careful and sinfully greedy. He lifted my shirt—first an inch, then more, as though making sure I wasn’t going to stop him—and when he reached the bottom of my bra, he slid his palm up and under, skin to skin. I groaned into his mouth, not caring if he heard.
My own hands, not to be outdone, found the button of his jeans and popped it open with a dexterity born of absolute desperation.
He hissed through his teeth, pure pleasure.
Emboldened, I slipped my fingers inside and was rewarded with the feel of his erection, hard and hot and so, so.
. . big? For a split second, I stiffened. Shocked.
Holy shit. This thing is huge.
So, this is what he’s been hiding under those custom suits and smug sweaters. Yikes.
Alaric, meanwhile, had hiked up my shirt completely and kissed down my chest, tracing his tongue over the curve of my breast before pulling the bra cup aside and closing his mouth around my nipple.
The sensation was so sharp and good I might have blacked out for a second.
He alternated between sucking and gentle biting, his stubble rough against my skin, and it was all I could do not to cry out.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said, the words muffled against my skin.
I reached down, stroking the goddamn monster in his pants, hoping I wasn’t making it angry, and replied, “Shut up and keep going.”
And he did. God, did he.
His free hand explored my hips, sliding down to squeeze my ass, then hoisting me up so I had to wrap my legs around his waist. The movement was fluid, practiced, as if he’d played out this scenario in his mind a hundred times.
Maybe he had. Good for him. His mental preparation had paid off and I wasn’t going to dwell on it.
Our breathing turned ragged, the windows fogged, and the shed felt both infinite and smaller than a phone booth.
My senses were overloaded: the taste of his mouth, the scent of his cologne mixed with sweat and ozone, the friction of denim against my thighs, the humid pressure of his lips on my breast.
It was the kind of make-out session you remember for years, the kind that ruins you for polite, adult kissing forever. We couldn’t get close enough; the more I got, the more I wanted. I hadn’t realized I was capable of wanting anyone this much.
I lost all track of time, lost my internal monologue, lost myself. So, when the knock came at the shed door, I didn’t register it.
But Alaric did. He jerked his head up, wild-eyed, and for a second we just stared at each other, panting, clothing half-off, both of us unrecognizable as the people we’d been ten minutes ago.
Then the knock came again, firmer.
“Fuck,” said Alaric, and I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
He reluctantly disengaged, arms still around me, and pressed his forehead to my shoulder. His voice, when it came, was equal parts hopefulness and threat. “Please. Whoever you are, I will give you one billion dollars to go away.”
Through the door, muffled but unmistakable, came Rex’s voice. “Sorry. We got to get going, Alaric. Sal wants that firewood picked up for tomorrow and you know what she’s like when she doesn’t get what she wants. Not even a billion of your dollars is worth my aunt’s wrath.”