Chapter 6 #2
This was what Christmas looked like when you were alone. When there was no one to perform for, no reason to pretend the holidays meant anything more than the end of another long year.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the Rockies stretched endlessly, a million-dollar view that only emphasized how empty the space was. How alone he’d been, staring at all that beauty with no one to share it with.
“Sit.” He eased me onto the couch in front of the roaring fire, then dropped to his knees.
“Teddy, you don’t have to—”
“Hands.”
I extended them reluctantly. His palms dwarfed mine, rubbing small circles until the blood began flowing again.
“Better?” he asked, like it was just another task on his to-do list.
Defrost the ex-wifesicle. Check.
When I nodded, he moved to my feet, muttering a curse at their mottled bluish-purple color. His hands engulfed my left foot, coaxing life back into my frozen toes.
The sudden sensation was excruciating, and I bit down hard on my bottom lip to keep from crying out. If frostbite didn’t kill me, the pins and needles would.
“I know, baby,” he murmured. “I know it hurts.”
Baby.
The familiarity of it—the pet name on his lips, his hands on my skin, the automatic way he knew exactly where to press—threatened to undo me completely.
This was the man who’d rubbed my feet through all my pregnancies, when they were swollen and achy. Who’d sat on the floor of our bedroom at two in the morning, kneading the cramps out of my calves with a patience most men didn’t possess.
Now he was doing it again, and I couldn’t bear the tenderness of it. Not when I was already so raw, so close to falling apart completely.
“You really don’t have to do this,” I whispered, even as my body betrayed me, relaxing into his touch.
“Yes, I do,” he insisted before switching to my right foot. “Can’t have you losing toes. The girls would never forgive me.”
The girls. Always our safe topic, our neutral ground. But even that felt loaded now, sitting in his empty cabin while they pulled the strings for this little reunion from two states away.
“Speaking of,” I said, wincing as another agonizing wave of feeling returned. “I need to call them back. Addie texted earlier—”
“Already texted them.”
I lifted my head to peer down at him. “What’d you say?”
He shrugged, his face the picture of innocence. “Told them your phone was dead, but that you were riding out the storm here, which is technically true.”
My brow rose. “That’s it?”
A ghost of a smirk tugged at the side of his mouth. “Might have mentioned I had to rescue some crazy woman who drove her rental into a tree in the middle of a blizzard.”
“I’ll have you know I didn’t drive into the tree, Theodore,” I said primly. “I drove into the guardrail. The tree was collateral damage.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth, fighting a full-on smile. “My mistake, Kelsey Dawn. The tree was just an innocent bystander.”
It was strange how easily we’d slipped back into the easy banter that had been a staple of our relationship. Even stranger was how badly I wanted it to last.
He stood abruptly. “Come on, Speed Racer. Let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”
Panic coiled around my chest like a python. The practical part of my brain knew he was right. The wet fabric was leeching what little body heat I’d managed to generate. But the thought of undressing in front of him, of being that vulnerable when I was already hanging on by a thread—
“I can do it,” I rushed to say.
He sighed, a bone-deep weariness that came from fighting the same battles repeatedly. “Let me.”
I let him peel the bloodstained sweater off, obediently holding my arms up like the kids used to when we got them undressed for bathtime.
When his calloused fingers grazed the sides of my breasts as he pulled off my bra, everything changed.
Not the slow, subtle shift of tectonic plates, but the sudden crack of lightning splitting a tree in half.
My body, which had been half-frozen and stuck in survival mode, suddenly remembered it was alive.
More than alive—it was hungry in a way I hadn’t felt in years.
Goosebumps scattered across my skin, and his pupils expanded, the muscle in his jaw twitching before he moved onto my jeans. His knuckles brushed against my belly as he unzipped me, and a small moan slipped past my lips.
“Sorry,” Teddy muttered, mistaking the sound for pain. “Hands are probably still too cold.”
Cold?
They felt like brands against my skin, each touch leaving invisible marks I’d be feeling for days.
The denim clung to me like a second skin, forcing him to work it down slowly. When the red lace came into view—purchased post-divorce in a desperate attempt to feel desirable—he rasped, “Jesus, Kels.”
Which, for the record, was not the review the salesgirl promised.
I’d bought them to prove to myself I was more than a grieving mother, a discarded wife, a woman who’d spent four decades at war with her body.
They were meant to be a confidence booster.
Standing in front of my ex-husband now, I only felt ridiculous.
Especially like this. One year since the AFib diagnosis, one year since I’d stopped working out. When Teddy left, I’d been a gym rat, all sharp lines and tight muscles. Now, softer curves had replaced the body I once weaponized against him.
He probably thought the lace was a pathetic attempt to be something I wasn’t. Or maybe he was cataloging the ways my body had changed, the gym-honed results that had vanished as soon as I stopped chasing them.
Shame stung my eyes when he knelt again, his breath warming my thighs as he peeled them off, instructing me to lift one leg, then the other.
Even when I stood bare, Teddy stayed on his knees, forehead resting against the curve of my belly, shoulders rising with ragged breaths. My fingers slipped into his hair, threading through damp strands at the crown of his head before he jerked back, blinking up at me as though waking from a dream.
He cleared his throat and grabbed a navy flannel shirt off the couch, wrapping it around my shoulders.
The fabric fell to mid-thigh and was saturated in his scent—wood and leather and something I’d never been able to identify but had long associated with him. I had to fight the urge to bury my nose in the collar like some lovesick teenager.
After working my arms through the sleeves, he buttoned me in, one by one, eyes never quite meeting mine.
I lost track of my breathing somewhere around the third button.
His hands lingered at my collarbone, thumbs resting in the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammered as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
I caught his wrist without thinking, and his eyes flashed to mine, our faces frozen inches apart. His breath ghosted across my lips. All I had to do was lean forward. Close that insignificant distance and feel his lips against mine again.
“You need to rest.”
The abrupt withdrawal stung. I dipped my chin in a nod and let him lead me to the couch, my cheeks warm with embarrassment. What had I expected? That he’d pull me into his arms and tell me he’d never stopped loving me? That we’d fall into bed like the last two years hadn’t happened.
Teddy tucked me beneath a pile of heavy quilts that smelled like the cedar closet back home before stripping off his shirt. He tossed it next to mine on the floor before undoing his belt, and I tried to look away.
Really, I did.
Once upon a time, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other—in the backseat of the Bronco, at the clubhouse, in every motel we ever stayed in. But toward the end, even sex had become a rarity, another item on the endless list of things we couldn’t get right.
Looking at him now as he slipped on a pair of sweatpants—his body harder and leaner than I remembered—I ached with memories of the wildness as much as the loss of it.
There were tattoos I’d never seen before—roman numerals lining his rib cage, a black feather on his thigh, and swirling script over his heart. My eyes snagged on the first letter, trying to make it out in the shifting shadows from the fire—an H?
My heart dropped. Hannah? Heather? Some Colorado mountain woman who didn’t come with three decades of baggage and a dead son between them?
Something that felt suspiciously like jealousy snared in my chest, which was ridiculous for a man I once told I hoped never to see again.
“Move forward,” Teddy said, voice rougher than gravel.
“I’m fine where I am.”
He stared down at me, hands on his hips, every inch the frustrated father who could stop the kids’ bickering with a single look.
“What? I’m comfortable.” I wasn’t. The angle was wrong, the heat from the fire only reaching one side of me while the other stayed stubbornly cold.
But sharing a couch with him, pressed together under blankets while the storm raged outside?
That was a special kind of torture I wasn’t sure I could survive.
“I’ll be fine. Just need a few more—”
“Your teeth are chattering loud enough to wake the dead,” he grumbled, all six-foot-two inches of him squeezing in behind me on a couch that suddenly felt doll-sized.
My breath hitched as his bare chest pressed against my back, solid and warm through the flannel. Every muscle in my body went rigid. “Teddy, no.”
“It’s not—Christ, Kels. Just trying to get your body temp back up. This is the fastest way.” Something in his voice suggested he was trying to convince himself as much as me. “Stop squirming.”
“I’m trying not to fall off,” I bit out, hugging the edge of the cushion to keep our bodies from touching.
A low sound escaped his throat when I shifted again, too far this time. The couch edge disappeared beneath me, and I started to slide.