Chapter 10
kelsey
I watched Teddy retreat into himself, shoulders tensing as he stood and carried his empty plate to the sink. The easy banter from moments before evaporated, leaving behind the familiar chill that had defined most of our interactions toward the end of our marriage.
“Teddy—” I started, but he was already moving toward the living room and the little tree that couldn’t.
“Might as well get this done,” he said without looking back.
I forced myself to follow him, my bare feet silent on the hardwood. He’d already dragged the first box of ornaments closer to the tree and was stabbing his knife through the packing tape with more force than I would have used.
“You don’t have to help,” he muttered, ripping the box open and scattering packing peanuts across the floor. “I can handle it myself.”
Usually, I’d leave him to brood and find something to do on the opposite side of the house. Sometimes, I’d leave altogether under the guise of running errands, which was nothing more than an excuse to drive around, scream-singing angry rock songs until my throat was raw.
But this wasn’t my house, and I’d already made one attempt at driving in a blizzard. I wasn’t exactly keen on a repeat performance.
The need to impose some order on at least one part of the chaotic situation we’d found ourselves in was strong. When everything else spiraled out of control—our marriage, our son, our lives—I’d always retreated to what I could manage. Cleanliness. Organization. Decoration.
Control the controllable.
“I know you can.” I knelt beside him, reaching for the second box. “But I want to help.”
Teddy shot me a sidelong look. “You never could leave well enough alone.”
“Please.” I bumped his shoulder with mine, using a teasing tone to deflect from whatever was happening between us. “There’s not a single part of this tree that’s well enough, Riggs.”
He didn’t smile at my weak attempt at humor, but some of the tension left his shoulders. “Why’s it so important to you?”
“Because I miss—”
This.
Miss bickering about ornament placement and why the big ones go on the bottom of the tree, never the top.
I miss telling you that the star’s still crooked so that I can smack you on the butt when you climb the ladder to fix it.
I caught myself, forcing a smile. “I missed out on tree decorating this year.”
I. Miss. You.
Teddy stared at me for a long moment before pulling a snarl of lights from the box. “You wanna help?” he asked, his voice low but edged. “Friendly thing to do would be to sort out the rest of these.”
I accepted the tangled mess of lights, grateful for something to do that didn’t involve touching him. The silence stretched between us, broken only by the rustle of tissue paper.
“Did the girls just stuff everything into a box and hope for the best?” I grumbled as I worked on a particularly stubborn knot.
“Not everything.”
I glanced up to find him holding a silver bell engraved with “Our First Christmas 1995.”
“Haven’t seen this since…” He trailed off, running his thumb over the letters.
Since we were a family. Since Christmas meant something.
Our eyes met over the boxes of memories, and for a moment, the weight of everything we’d lost threatened to crush me. Not just our marriage or our life together, but the future we’d planned, the family we’d built, the son we’d buried before ever getting to see him grow up.
“We don’t have to put it up,” I said, my voice thick as I worked another section of lights free.
He was quiet for a long moment, turning the ornament over in his hands. “It goes on the tree.”
I looked at him in surprise. The man I’d known toward the end of our marriage would have taken any excuse to avoid painful reminders. Would have shoved the ornament back in the box and pretended it didn’t exist.
“Teddy—”
“It goes on the tree, Kels.” His voice was firm, but there was something fragile underneath it. “All of it goes on. That’s what you do with ornaments.”
I managed to nod while fighting against the sudden urge to cry. He was right. That was what you did with ornaments. You put them on the tree, even when they carried memories that felt too heavy to hold.
“Hey,” he said thickly, catching a rogue tear that managed to slip past my lashes with his finger. “It’s part of our story. Good or bad, it’s ours.”
And just like that, the walls I’d built around my heart toppled completely.
I nodded again before returning my attention to the tangled light strands, shoving my emotions back down.
We worked in companionable quiet after that, falling into the familiar ritual of decorating.
I settled cross-legged on the floor, the lights spread across my lap like some kind of holiday puzzle.
This was something I knew how to do. Something that made sense, unlike everything else happening between us.
I was aware of his gaze on me as I climbed onto the stepladder to wrap lights around the higher branches, his hand automatically moving to steady it.
The transformation was nothing short of miraculous, considering what we’d started with. The tree glowed with properly arranged lights, and the ornaments we’d placed so far brought much-needed splashes of color to the previously depressing display.
The almost-smile on my lips faded as Teddy passed me another ornament—a clay foot mold painted bright red with “Christmas 2000” scrawled in my careful handwriting.
Addie’s first Christmas.
My chest squeezed tight. I’d made one for each kid. Sure enough, the next one he unwrapped was Skylar’s from 2003, slightly larger and painted a forest green.
The third bundle contained Levi’s footprint from 2010, painted a cornflower blue to match his nursery. It was the smallest of the three, because he’d been our smallest baby, barely six pounds at birth.
After taking Teddy’s advice and placing it just above his sisters’ ornaments, I paused to adjust the pipe cleaners on a Styrofoam snowman head before stepping back. He was watching me again—this time with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher.
“What?”
Teddy shook his head with a low chuckle before passing me a glass ball painted with tiny snowflakes—something Sky had made in elementary school. “You could make a tumbleweed look like it belongs on the cover of a magazine. Always could.”
“Mm… my therapist would probably say it’s my pathological need to try to control the things around me,” I said with a snort, carefully hanging the ornament where it would best catch the light.
“Funny,” he murmured, his palm meeting my spine as he reached around me to hang a popsicle stick reindeer. “Mine would say the same thing about you, too.”
Had his hand not been holding me upright, I likely would have toppled over in shock.
Teddy Riggs, in therapy?
The same man who’d once told me that therapy was “just paying someone to listen to you bitch and moan”? Who’d refused to join me for grief counseling after Levi, saying he didn’t need to “talk about his feelings with strangers”?
It seemed about as likely as his father, Paul—the founder and former president of Silent Phoenix MC—taking up ballet.
His mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “Jesus. Don’t look so surprised, Kels.”
“What? I’m just glad to hear you’re finally addressing all your… issues. And I’d be happy to provide your therapist with a comprehensive list of things you could work on, if they need suggestions,” I said sweetly.
He clicked his tongue against his teeth and moved closer. “Bet you’ve got that list memorized, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I murmured, tilting my head back to meet his eyes. “And organized into categories.”
This time, he did smile, a real one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made the dimples on his cheeks appear. My stomach flipped. God, I’d missed that smile. Missed the way it transformed his entire face, softened all the hard edges grief had carved there.
By the time I registered what the sudden shift in his expression meant, it was too late. I made a futile attempt to dart around him, shrieking when he looped one arm around my waist and took me down to the rug.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned when he moved above me, his fingers skimming up my sides.
He tickled me until I was thrashing beneath him and begging for mercy between screams of laughter.
“Stop—I can’t—” I gasped, trying to catch my breath as his fingers found the place where my neck met my shoulder that had always been my undoing.
“What’s the magic word, baby?” he asked, grinning down at me with the same boyish expression that had first made me fall in love with him at fifteen.
“Please,” I managed between helpless giggles.
“Please, what?”
“Please stop tickling me before I pee on your rug!” I wheezed, my sides aching from the assault.
He stopped immediately but didn’t move away.
We lay there panting, his body caging me against the soft rug, our faces inches apart.
The laughter died on my lips as I became acutely aware of every point where we touched—his chest pressed against mine, his thighs bracketing my hips, his hands braced on either side of my head.
The playfulness evaporated, replaced by something infinitely more dangerous. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my lips parted on a shaky exhale.
We were close enough that I could see the small flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, close enough to watch as his dark pupils eclipsed them. I knew that look. I knew what would come next if I didn’t put a stop to it. But my will had always been paper-thin where he was concerned.
“Teddy?” I whispered when he abruptly pulled back with a muttered curse.
His hand moved to the back of his neck, and I pushed myself up into a sitting position while my heart parachuted out of my chest.
Here it came—the rejection, the gentle letdown, the explanation for why he’d been so careful to keep his distance since our interrupted moment in the hallway.
“We can’t…” He cleared his throat, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “Think it’s best if we hold off—”