Chapter 18
[Saint]
In the early hours of an officially new day, I follow Lumi upstairs and directly into her shower, where we wash away the lingering sweat from our couch exercise and begin a second round.
Lumi’s hallway bathroom has a claw-foot tub with a loose curtain for water protection, so shower wall sex is out of the question. Instead, I bend her forward, place her hands on the edge of the raised tub, and slide into her again.
Rubbing my hand up her spine, I grip a fist full of that red-wine hair and gently tug, causing her to hum.
A sound that has quickly become a holiday favorite, and one I’ll remember all through the year, forever marking this season in my memory.
We fit so easily together, and in the steamy heat of the confined space, I realize I never want to leave her.
Not that I hadn’t had the revelation at other times during my stay, but the desire to stay stitches into my heart the way I weave into her body, filling her, connecting us, binding us together. Every moment is another memory that will be woven into me.
Lumi is something homemade with love.
Love.
It’s strange to be loved by many and yet feel so alone. Strange to be considered something magical yet not feel magic in your life.
Lumi.
As I glide in and out of her, her name becomes synonymous with the glitter of wishes.
“Saint,” she cries out, drawing me deeper into the moment. The mystery of this woman who feels so familiar. As if, despite decades of travel, what I’ve been searching for my entire life is right here. In a bathroom. In a claw-foot tub. In Lumi.
“That’s it, snowheart,” I grunt, feeling my back pinch and my balls tighten. I can’t hold out much longer. I’m surprised I even got it up a second time after the release I had earlier, but Lumi does this to me. She puts a spell on me.
Magic.
As her hips thrust backward, I surge forward, and she snaps, crying out loud and proud as her orgasm slips free. The tension breaks within me and I come undone as well, knitting us deeper together, as I jet off within her.
My legs shake as I lean forward, wrapping my arms around her waist and setting my forehead on her back. Whether she’s supporting me or I’m holding her upright is to be determined.
“I could sleep for a week,” she jokes about the energy drained from each of us.
“I wish I could,” I kiss her shoulder blade. How I wish I could sleep beside Lumi for weeks on end, but I have less than a week, as it’s technically the thirteenth and I promised I’d be home no later than the twentieth.
Make everyday moments magical, I told her earlier.
There aren’t enough minutes with Lumi.
In the morning, I jolt awake to the rousing sound of “Here Comes Santa Claus” blaring from my phone. Pressing upward, like I’m about to start a round of push-ups, it takes me a minute to register the floral sheets and the fact that my phone is on the nightstand beside the bed.
Lumi’s bed.
After our shower together, we curled into one another in her room.
As the first line of the holiday song repeats and repeats, I hesitate, desperate to ignore the call. With cell service spotty in the area, Lumi’s wi-fi secures the connection better.
“Is that your ring tone for someone?” The light laugher comes from the end of the bed, and I flip to my back, staring at a vision.
Lumi in that too-large-for-her flannel robe, loosely tied at her waist, gaping open to expose a sliver of her bare body underneath. She’s squeezing her long hair in a towel, as she is freshly showered. Her eyes glimmer in the bright sunlight streaming into her bedroom.
She needs to head to work. I should get to the repair shop.
My phone rings again.
Lumi pauses rubbing her hair. Her gaze flicks to the phone on the nightstand. “Should you answer that?”
Her eyes linger in the direction of the phone. The shimmering blue dulls a bit, dusting the bright color with questions.
Especially as the ring tone ends but immediately starts up again.
With my eyes still on Lumi, I reach for the phone, smacking my hand on the device in hopes to hit Dismiss. I can talk later.
But as I’ve misjudged which button is which, I must have hit Accept.
“Saint, baby?” The sweet coo of my mother’s voice projects from the phone. I shift for a better grip of the device and fall back to the bed, hoping to meet Lumi’s eyes again. Only she’s dropped her gaze to the floor, her brows pinched tight.
“Ma,” I groan, closing my eyes and scrubbing at my head.
“Astan Saint Santos,” she begins.
Every kid dreads the middle name treatment, and yet it’s made worse with three names that mean nearly the same thing.
“Ma,” I lower my voice, sighing heavily and opening my eyes to find Lumi has left her bedroom and closed the door to the hallway bathroom.
“Saint, honey. Where are you?”
“I sent a message. I’m in Hideaway Harbor, Maine.”
“Yes, but for how much longer?”
“A week,” I choke out. I’ll need at least a week to finish working on my car. Ideally, I should leave the Martin in the capable hands of Neve Snowe and hire a car to take me to Bangor, where I can catch a puddle jumper to Nova Scotia. Once there, I have a plane waiting to carry me to North.
Just as I say the word, Lumi opens the door to the bathroom.
She doesn’t look at me, but her lips purse, mouth twisting.
She’s dressed in loose jeans and a fitted Henley with her hair knotted in that twist at her nape.
The local postal office doesn’t require a uniform, so Lumi dresses casually for her position at the counter.
“Ma, let me call you back.” I sit, prepared to disconnect when another voice crosses the line.
“Astan.” The deeper, masculine tone reeks of his authority, and even Lumi pauses, hearing my father’s voice escape the phone.
With her eyes finally locked on mine, I swing to my knees and crawl on them to the foot of the bed.
Wearing only my boxer briefs, the room is cold without the heat of her body beside me and the three layers of blankets over us.
As I near the foot of the bed with my awkward knee-crawl, I reach for Lumi with my free arm, wrapping around her waist, and dragging her back to the bed with me.
We fall against the piles of blankets while I hold the phone in one hand and trap Lumi with the other.
“Da.” My exhale is deep as I prep for a lashing about responsibility. How unacceptable it was that my road trip took me to the last minute. How impractical to get caught in a snowstorm when I understood weather patterns. How frivolous it is to own a sports car.
“Son, we’re waiting.” His tone suggests I should know what he means.
“Now, honey, you know he always comes through in the end.” Ma has returned to the line, announcing I’m on speakerphone with the two of them.
“Yes, but I’m tired of him waiting until the end. You’ve cut it too close this year.”
“There are two weeks,” I remind him.
“Eleven days,” he states, like he doesn’t understand the concept of rounding up. “I expect you to be here in less than that, by half.”
I could argue you can’t divide eleven in half, especially when it comes to days, but flippant responses like that often garner a warning that I’ll indefinitely be on the naughty list.
“A week,” I state, as I told my mother. “I’m still waiting for the specialty tire and—”
The deep grunt from my father cuts my explanation short. He doesn’t want excuses. He wants my presence.
Silently, I curse Nick for so easily getting out of the family business as the second son. I could step away as well, if I really wanted to, but I’d be disappointing so many people.
Our staff. Our employees. The countless number of families depending on us. The children.
With my eyes still focused on Lumi, and her body pinned to mine, she lowers her head into my shoulder, and I breathe in the green apple scent of her.
Could I walk away from it all?
Is living for every moment about them or me?
I shake the selfish thought and press a kiss to Lumi’s wet hair before responding to my dad.
“I’ll be there, Da. I always am.” With that, I click off the phone, never expecting a sign of affection or hint of appreciation from him for all I do. I expect nothing, and yet it still irks me all the same.
Tossing the phone to the mattress, I wrap my other arm around Lumi, squeezing her tighter.
“So that was your dad?” she says after a few minutes, where I’d been dreaming of us crawling back beneath all these blankets and sleeping for a week after all.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“And your mom.” She chuckles quietly, as an exhale leaves her.
I pull back to better see her face, but when she doesn’t look up at me, I hook the edge of my fist beneath her chin and lift her head.
“Hey,” I question, brows pinching together, evidence I’ve missed something.
“I just thought . . . and I’m sorry I thought . . . but . . .”
“You thought what?” I ask, eyes wide and curious.
“I just heard her call you Saint, baby, and it sounded so sweet like a lover—”
“Oh my God.” I gag, exaggerating the choking sound before clarifying. “Or a mother to her son,” I emphasize. “Don’t you call Danny sweet things?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Have you ever been mistaken as his lover?”
Lumi chuckles, the sound awkward. “Well, sometimes people hesitate like I’m his older girlfriend.”
The idea of Lumi being mistaken for her son’s girlfriend isn’t laughable. She’s beautiful and could easily pass as a woman with a cougar fetish. Young guys are probably attracted to her. Still, I laugh, light and easy, that she’s so hot she’s mistaken for the sugar mama of a twenty-something.
“I’m going to start calling you sugar mama.”
“Don’t you dare.” She grips my chest hair and playfully pulls.
“Ow,” I lie, slapping at her hand, until it’s flat against my chest. Her palm to my heartbeat. “So, let me get this straight. You didn’t believe me when I called the woman who called me baby Ma?”
Lumi chews at her lower lip. Her gaze drops to where I’ve imprisoned her hand against my chest.
“Why?” I ask, softening my tone.
Lumi shrugs. “I just thought maybe . . .”
“I told you last night. No one, Lumi. There is no one else but you.” And I wish I could keep you. I wish I could have all the magical moments with you. Weeks of moments. Only with you.
Silence falls between us as my thoughts climb over themselves.
“For a week,” she whispers, breaking apart those thoughts and disassembling me.
“For a week,” I confirm quietly. “I have to go home.” I urge her to understand with the plea in my voice.
“To the toy factory?” She lifts her gaze to my face.
“Yes.”
“Where you make toys?”
“That’s right,” I state.
“What is it your dad does again?”
A pause follows her question because I can’t answer her directly. It’s not like I don’t trust her. Or I’m bound in some blood oath and can’t speak the truth. It’s more that I’ve never told anyone exactly what he does. Or what I do.
“He manufactures toys.”
“Does he deliver them as well?”
My heart races, setting off from a steady beat to a giant leap, like harnessed reindeer eager to be set loose.
“What do you mean?”
Ignoring my question, she asks another. “On December twenty-fourth?”
I swallow thickly, certain no one has ever asked me so directly. Ever paid enough attention to me to form questions and make connections. To see me as me.
“Lumi,” I whisper, like her name is that magic I’d felt last night. That shimmer of hope. That belief in something unknown and special. Faith in something unseen. Love.
With her eyes still questioning mine, she cups my jaw and strokes her thumb along my cheek. The rustling of her skin over my coarse beard is the only sound between us.
“I’ve got to get to work,” she eventually says, her voice quiet. Her eyes are suddenly sad as I’ve taken too long to explain myself.
“Don’t say goodbye,” I plead, squeezing her tighter to me once more. Not yet. Not ever. We still have a week, I want to argue. More moments for magic.
“No goodbye,” she says, just below a whisper, before she kisses my cheek and tugs her body free from my grasp.
I should have held tighter, but in the end, I’ll need to let her go.