Chapter 15
Christmas Eve
kelsey
I woke to the weight of Teddy’s arm draped over me and the warmth of his chest against my back. With his fingers curved protectively around my hip, I could almost believe the past two years had been nothing but a particularly vivid nightmare.
Blue-gray early morning light filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting the snow-covered world outside in shades of shimmering silver and pearl. It was as though someone had taken an eraser to the earth, wiping away all the messy parts and leaving nothing but clean, white possibility.
For several minutes, I lay there, watching the icy sun creep up over the ridgeline, letting myself pretend this was my life…
my home. Pretending I would wake every winter morning to the feel of Teddy’s breath against the back of my neck, our bodies pressed so close together that I couldn’t tell where his ended and mine began.
But then reality, relentless bitch that she was, intruded to remind me that nothing was permanent. Everything had an expiration date. Even peace.
If I shifted even an inch, the whole arrangement would collapse—Teddy’s arm would tighten, or I’d startle him awake.
We’d have to look at each other and acknowledge the emotional wreckage scattered across the sheets between us.
The things we’d said and couldn’t take back.
The absolution I still wasn’t sure I deserved.
So, I stayed right where I was, holding onto the fantasy in my mind until my bladder demanded I get up.
I began the delicate process of extracting myself without waking him.
One careful inch at a time, I eased my body away from his, sucking in a breath when his arm tightened momentarily before going slack again.
I grabbed the flannel shirt from where I’d left it draped over the chair and pulled it on over my pajamas.
Teddy stirred in his sleep, his fingers instinctively reaching for the empty space I’d left behind.
The lines around his eyes appeared softer, the perpetual tension in his jaw released.
He looked younger. Not young—we’d never be young again—but unburdened.
Less like the hardened biker he projected to the world and more like the boy who’d taught me to ride a motorcycle when I was eighteen.
The boy who’d anxiously pressed his lips to my throat and apologized for hurting me the first time we made love.
God, we’d been so na?ve then. So certain that love would be enough to carry us through anything life threw at us. I turned away before the dull ache in my chest could grow teeth and rip me open all over again.
After using the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face, carefully avoiding my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t need to see the evidence of last night’s emotional bloodletting. I felt it in every cell of my body. Like I’d been turned inside out and put back together slightly wrong.
The coffee maker beckoned from the kitchen, and I moved toward it on autopilot, my body remembering the ritual even as my mind stayed foggy.
It was strange, being in someone else’s kitchen and knowing exactly where everything was.
Teddy’s cabinets were organized the same as the ones in our old house.
While the coffee brewed, I drifted toward the living room.
The fire had burned down to gray ash, all except for a few stubborn embers still glowing orange near the center.
The tree stood in the corner, fully decorated, golden lights twinkling softly.
Evidence of our tentative truce, our fumbling attempts to be something other than two people who’d destroyed each other.
My eyes drifted to the hook by the door where Teddy’s kutte hung, the same one he’d had since he patched in at eighteen.
The leather was worn soft from years of use, shoulders creased from where it had molded to his body.
I’d washed blood from it more times than I cared to remember.
Had even helped him patch a bullet hole in it once, my hands shaking as I worked the needle through the leather and tried not to think about how close I’d been to becoming a widow.
It was as much a part of him as his wedding ring had once been. Maybe even more so.
In the chaos of the blizzard, my accident, and everything that had followed, I hadn’t really looked at it. Now I couldn’t seem to look away. I moved closer, drawn by the same masochistic impulse that made you press on a bruise just to see if it still hurt.
The top rocker sewn onto the back still read “Silent Phoenix”—the club his father had founded, the legacy that had defined our life together. Beneath it, a blazing phoenix emerged from flames, wings spread wide.
My fingers drifted lower, to the bottom rocker that had read “Texas” for the entirety of our marriage, and everything inside me went still.
“Colorado.”
I blinked at the weathered stitching, confirming what my eyes were telling me even as my brain scrambled to reject it.
No. No, that couldn’t be right. In the middle of our divorce, he’d gone nomad. He’d told me as much when we signed the papers. And months later, when Addie slipped up and mentioned he was living in Colorado, I assumed he’d retreated here to lick his wounds while helping the chapter.
Nomad meant temporary. Nomad meant he was still figuring it out, still floating, still possibly open to—
To what, exactly? Coming back to Texas? Coming back to me?
I turned the kutte around with shaking hands, needing to see the rest, even though some part of me already knew what I’d find. There, over the left breast, was the same patch his father had once worn on his own kutte.
“President.”
The man who led the chapter, who made the calls, who carried the weight of every brother’s life on his shoulders. The man who couldn’t just walk away when things got complicated.
The kitchen suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in on me like a vise.
I’d known, logically, that he was here. That he’d bought this cabin and the other.
But knowing it and understanding what it meant were two different things.
And standing here, holding the evidence of his commitment—the same way I’d once held his hand when he made vows to me—drove it home in a way nothing else had.
While I’d stayed in our old house, surrounded by bad memories and empty rooms, he’d been here.
While I convinced myself he was miserable without me and that we’d find our way back to each other, he’d been building something new from the ashes of the marriage we’d torched.
Something permanent. Something that had nothing to do with me or the life we’d once shared.
This place wasn’t a retreat or an escape—it was his home. This chapter wasn’t a distraction—it was his purpose. Colorado wasn’t a temporary solution—it was his answer to the question of how to keep going when everything fell apart.
And that answer didn’t include me. I wasn’t even a part of the equation.
President. The word might as well have been “goodbye” for how final it felt.
That was the problem with temporary ceasefires and forced proximity—they created the illusion that everything could go back to how it was.
I’d been so busy thinking about all we’d confessed last night, about the beautiful, terrible truths we’d shared, that I’d forgotten the most basic truth of all: geography didn’t care about feelings.
Distance didn’t shrink because you had a breakthrough.
He’d put down roots somewhere I wasn’t, and I’d stayed in the place he’d left behind.
Both choices were valid. Both were necessary, maybe. But they led to different futures, different paths that ran parallel but never quite touched.
And last night hadn’t changed a damn thing about that.
We were still five hundred miles apart, with separate lives that only intersected in the past.
My throat tightened with fresh tears, but I was too exhausted to let them fall.
What was the point? We’d already cried ourselves empty, confessed our worst secrets, forgiven the unforgivable.
We’d found our way back to honesty, to seeing each other instead of just our own reflections of guilt and failure—doing the work, as my therapist would say.
But that didn’t mean we’d found our way back to each other.
Not really.
The coffee maker beeped, startling me back to the present, but I couldn’t let go of the kutte. Couldn’t stop staring at the patches that rewrote everything I thought I knew about where we stood.
It felt like a door was closing between us.
Or maybe it had been closed all along, and I’d just been too desperate to notice. I’d gotten caught up in playing house and being the center of his world again that I failed to see the signs in front of me.
Behind me, I heard movement as Teddy approached. But I stood paralyzed, kutte still clutched in my hands as the second chance I hadn’t dared to hope for crumbled before it had even begun.
“Mornin’,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. “You’re up early.” The floorboards creaked as he moved closer, stopping just behind me. Close enough to touch but not touching.
My fingers tightened on the leather until my knuckles went white. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Kels?” There was a question in the way he said it, a wariness that told me he’d already clocked what I was holding. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just—” I cleared my throat. Perfect Kelsey mode, already sliding back into place like a mask I couldn’t stop wearing. “Just looking.”
I couldn’t tell if the sudden tension crackling between us was left over from last night’s confessions or something new—something charged by the discovery of what his life had become without me.
His hand came to rest on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “C’mon, Kels. Talk to me.”