Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
COLE
“Don’t overthink it, just feel the tree. It’ll tell you where Santa Paws is supposed to go,” Natalie whispers over my shoulder as I stand frozen with indecision. A sparkly glass-blown cat with a Santa hat is extended in my hand, waiting to be placed on the tree. But where?
There must be a particular way Mrs. D’Amore likes the tree to be decorated, and after the sugar cookie incident, I want to nail it.
“Relax. This is supposed to be fun,” Natalie says, gently placing a hand on my shoulder and guiding my arm to the tree.
“I love you, but I don’t believe anything you’re telling me right now,” I say, my brows pinched in concentration so focused on the tree I barely register that I casually dropped an I love you only days after this woman figured out I like her. Smooth, Cole smooth.
“You mean you don’t trust me?” she asks, apparently ignoring my casual proclamation of love, so cool.
“But I thought you said you loved me.” Or she’s going to throw it in my face.
Also cool. She sounds wounded and makes a show to wipe at her eyes.
Sounds is the keyword here. She’s playing me. She has to be.
Each room in the D’Amore home has a theme, decorated with what seems like years of careful curation by her mother. The woman used tweezers to decorate cookies, for god’s sake. There’s no way in hell she’s just laissez-faire about this Christmas tree.
“Seriously, Cole. My mom is super chill about the tree,” Natalie shrugs, grabbing some tinsel and mindlessly tossing it on the tree.
“It’s literally the one thing in the house I’ve been granted that can be just vibes.
See?” She motions to the silver tinsel dangling from a branch.
“Vibes. Easy. Just throw them up there.”
I narrow my eyes and study her, but she doesn’t blink or fidget like she usually does when she’s lying. If she’s conning me, she’s doing a damn good job, and I’m tired of holding this cat.
Reaching for a branch, I slide the twine over the evergreen and breathe out a sigh of relief. There. I did it. I decorated a tree.
Well, I put an ornament on a tree, and that’s more than I’ve done in years, so put a Santa hat on me and call me Kris Kringle, I guess.
Natalie smiles at me. “Do you feel accomplished?”
“Like a goddamn Hallmark movie hero,” I say. Though I doubt that in the movie the guy is panicking about whether putting the cat ornament next to a homemade macaroni ornament is the right move, or if I should have put it lower. Higher? Should it even be on this side of the tree?
Holy hell, this sucks. For the most part, letting my guard down has been freeing, but there’s also a terrifying side of it. I want Natalie and her family to like…me. Not whoever I was trying to be. I’m way too vulnerable right now, like skating out in open ice and preparing for a hit.
Natalie gives me another ornament: a chickadee holding a blueberry branch in its beak.
“I mean, the other spot was so nice, you could just put them close together,” she whispers.
I nod, feeling like an idiot as the scent of pine needles and the pressure of deciding where to put another ornament overwhelm me. So I listen and slide the chickadee a branch down from the cat.
“It’s starting to snow! What a perfect day to decorate the tree,” Mrs. D’Amore’s slippered-steps shuffle into the living room where we’re decorating the Christmas tree in front of a picture window.
Big wet flakes fall softly outside. Christmas carols crackle from the record player.
Cookies baking in the oven fill the house with sugar, butter, and flour.
My shoulders relax while a nostalgic holiday feeling surrounds me.
Could this actually be a laid-back experience, like Natalie said?
Mrs. D’Amore pauses next to me and I swear I can feel her stare before I look over my shoulder to see it.
“I’ll go see if I can find the tape measurer, Cole.
” She gives my shoulder a sad, pitiful pat.
“Oh, and we put the tinsel on last so we don’t crowd the ornaments with it.
” She pinches at the tinsel that Natalie threw near my ornaments and plucks it off the tree, letting it fall to ground, her lips flatlining with disgust.
I sputter and choke on my spit, devolving into a coughing mess.
Around the tree, Natalie counts off branches before placing an ornament on the tree.
Her mom smiles at her with pride. Natalie tries to hide her mischievous grin from me.
“Do you have the ornament spacer you made for me when I was a child? That might be more helpful for him.” she says.
“If it wasn’t clear with the cookies, he’s spatially challenged.
” She whispers this last part like it’s a tragic flaw of mine.
“Oh, yes! I think I saw it in one of the Christmas boxes your father pulled from storage. I’ll go get it.” Mrs. D’Amore looks up at me and smiles sadly. “It’s okay, dear. You’re a spectacular hockey player.” With a sigh, she shuffles out of the door.
“You little traitor,” I whisper once she’s gone.
“Me?” Natalie puts her hand over her heart. She has the audacity to blink and look at me with a doe-eyed innocence I never should have trusted.
“You said this was a vibes tree. You threw that tinsel to show me how vibey it was.” I point at the silver pile fallen to the floor.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been over here angelically and correctly decorating the tree this whole time. You sound paranoid.”
“Then who was whispering over my shoulder?”
“The devil, I suppose.” She shrugs and picks the tinsel up from the floor. “I don’t know why you listened to her. She hates Christmas.” Far too proud, she tosses the tinsel and it lands on my head. Silver dangles over my eyes and I brush it away with a huff.
“I guess it was an old habit,” I say, cracking my knuckles and stepping forward. I grab the box of tinsel.
“What are you doing?” Natalie puts her hands up, a giddy smile on her face.
“You know what they say about old habits?”
“That you should break them.” She takes a step back.
I shake my head. “I think the saying is more like they die hard.”
“Cole. Cole. Stop looking at me like that. No. Bad.”
“I need my revenge, Natalie. I can’t let you win.” Like a wolf hunting its prey, I take another step forward.
“Okay, but can the revenge just be swift and glittery? You look like you’re about to devour me.”
“I am. Would that be a bad thing?”
Her eyes widen, and a playful giggle escapes her. She darts behind the couch, using it for protection. “Hah! You can’t get me.” She taunts and sticks her tongue out. I put the box down. Heaping it on her head isn’t payback enough.
With both hands planted firmly on the couch’s back, I vault over it in a single, fluid motion.
She squeals and tries to flee, but I’m too fast. I hook an arm around her waist and throw her over my shoulder. Her legs kick wildly in the air.
I spin, searching for a place to put her down because I’m making up this plan of revenge on the fly.
Honestly, when it comes to Natalie, I’m fighting the urge to hoist her over my shoulder like a caveman and bring her to her bed most of the time.
So when we play like this, it’s hard not to let that instinct take over for at least a minute.
Now, though, I want to kiss her, and her mouth is closer to my ass than my mouth and that was poor planning on my part.
“You absolute brute!” She laughs.
“Brute feels like an upgrade.”
“But will you live up to it?”
The palm of my hand flattens right below her ass cheek. Suddenly, the air in the room shifts.
Tension. Tugging. Need. Want.
Natalie’s laughs fade to quick, heavy breaths.
Slowly, I slide her down the length of my body. Her arms wrap around my neck. “Hi, brute,” she says.
I cup her cheek. My thumb runs over her lip. “Hi, sugarplum.” I exhale.
She looks up at me, her eyes soft, laugh lines edging them. A small smile curls her lips. Here in the glow of the Christmas lights, she looks like the Christmas present I’ve always wanted waiting for me under the tree.
“I don’t know if I’ve laughed like that in a while,” she whispers.
“Same.” A wide grin spreads across my face.
“This is mine, by the way.” She reaches up and pokes an indentation on my cheek. I’d almost forgotten I had dimples after years of never using them.
I grab her hand and put it over my heart. “All of this is yours, silly girl. Haven’t you figured that out by now?” Crimson dusts her cheeks and I brush my thumb over her freckles. “God, you’re beautiful,” I say, stuck in her orbit.
Her eyes widen slightly and then, like it’s something we’ve done a million times, she presses up on her toes and kisses me. Hard. Urgent. Searching.
For a second, I forget how to move. I stumble back, heart thudding, before my brain can catch up with what’s happening.
We’ve kissed a handful of times now, sure, but this one feels different.
This one feels like she’s confirming an answer to a theory she’s had for awhile, and maybe the answer is in the way our mouths fit together, or our bodies mold softly into each other.
My hands fall to her waist and I pull her in closer, anchoring her to me. She makes a soft sound in the back of her throat. I love that sound so much my knees almost give. She shifts and hooks a leg around me, like she knows this kiss is wrecking me and she’s trying to support us both.
I find my grounding and palm under her thighs, lifting her easily until she wraps her legs around me. She deepens the kiss, exploration, questions, conversations—they’re over now, and she’s urgent with the pressure in her mouth. Need. Want. Mine. That’s the answer.
I feel her everywhere. In my hands, in my chest, in spaces I didn’t know were empty until now, until she filled them. For a second, the rest of the world disappears.
The lights. The room. The pressure.
The years I’ve spent loving her from just out of reach.
Suddenly none of the past matters.
Because right now, she’s here, kissing me like maybe she’s starting to feel it too.
Something pokes my back.
The room stills.
Natalie’s mouth freezes on mine.
A deafening creak fills my ears.
The tree.
“Shit! Shit!” I put Natalie down at the same time the Christmas tree tips backward. I try, but it’s already over. The tree crashes to the ground. Santa paws’ head rolls to my feet, as if the universe wants to taunt me just a little more.
We both stare at the carnage of pine needles and shattered glass in silence.
“I don’t care where you go, but get out of the living room.” Her mother’s voice booms behind us.
“Yeah, that’s totally fair,” Natalie says, peeking at me with a naughty glint her eyes. “Come along hungry boy, let’s feed you.”