Chapter 8 Our Axel, Her Axel
Our Axel, Her Axel
Ethan
The sight of them together stops me in the doorway. My muscles ache pleasantly from an hour of shoveling snow, but the warmth spreading through my chest has nothing to do with physical exertion.
Cassidy is on her knees beside the Christmas tree, carefully hanging a delicate glass ornament while Axel holds the box steady. When she laughs at something he says, the sound goes straight through me.
“A little higher,” she’s telling him as he reaches up with a silver bell. “Perfect. You have a good eye for this.”
Axel beams at the praise. The scene before me outshines every dream I once cherished.
Those fantasies—vivid as they were—never captured the fleck of glitter catching light on Cassidy’s cheek, or the alchemy in her hands as she transforms simple materials into moments of wonder.
The reality of her being here now with a child fills spaces in my chest I’d convinced myself would stay hollow forever.
Except this isn’t our child. This is a living reminder of the worst Christmas of my life, and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Watching Axel’s face light up as Cassidy shows him how to drape tinsel properly, I realize I don’t see Britney’s betrayal when I look at him.
I see a future I never imagined. One I never thought I’d want again.
“Mr. Ethan!” Axel spots me and waves me over. “Come see what we did!”
I set down the coffee mugs I’d been carrying and move closer, trying to ignore how her breath hitches and her gaze darts away when our eyes meet. She’s still wearing that oversized sweater from earlier, and it keeps sliding off one shoulder in a way that’s driving me slowly insane.
“This looks incredible,” I say, and I mean it.
In the span of a few hours, they’ve transformed this rundown living room into something that actually feels like Christmas. The tree is covered in a mixture of vintage ornaments and silver tinsel, with warm white lights that make everything glow softly.
“Ms. Cassidy said we need to make Christmas special,” Axel explains while hanging another ornament. “Even if we’re stuck here.”
“What do you think goes on top?” Cassidy asks, holding up a gold star and a ceramic angel with a chipped wing.
“The angel,” Axel and I say at the same time, then look at each other in surprise.
Cassidy’s eyes dart between us, and there’s something soft and almost wondering in her expression. “Angel, it is.”
She reaches up to place it on the highest branch, her oversized sweater rising to pull taut across her hips, revealing the curve of her backside. I grip the back of the couch to keep from reaching out and touching her.
“I can’t reach,” she says.
“Here.” I step behind her, close enough to catch the scent of her favorite rose hair mist. My chest brushes her back as I lean in, my mouth near her ear. “Let me.”
But I don’t take the angel.
Instead, I slide my hands just above her hips, feeling the way her stomach tightens under my touch. She’s soft where I’m hard, warm where I’m burning, and when I lift her—fuck—she makes this little half gasp, half moan sound before she melts back against me.
“Got it?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “You can—you can put me down now.”
I lower her slowly, letting her body drag against mine. The sweep of her backside down my thighs is torture. By the time her feet touch the ground, she’s trembling.
She turns to face me, and there’s no space left between us.
Her lips are parted, her dark eyes locked onto mine, and I can see the pulse in her throat. The space separating us is electric.
I want to back her against the tree, taste her lips, and slide my hands under that damn sweater.
But I don’t.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
“This is the best Christmas tree I’ve ever had,” Axel pipes up, oblivious to the charged moment happening above his head.
How many Christmases has this kid had where a crooked tree in a falling-down house is the best he’s experienced?
“We’re not done yet,” I hear myself saying. “You know what this place needs?”
“What?” Axel asks.
“The smell of Christmas cookies,” I say. “I saw flour and sugar in the kitchen earlier. We could make this whole house smell like Christmas.”
Cassidy’s face lights up. “I love that idea. Axel, do you want to help us bake?”
“I’ve never made cookies before,” he admits, but there’s eagerness in his voice.
“Then you’re in for a treat,” I tell him. “Cassidy makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world.”
“That was eight years ago. I might be rusty.”
“Some things you never forget,” I say, and our eyes lock.
Axel tugs on my sleeve, breaking the spell. “Can we start now?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” Cassidy says, already heading toward the kitchen. “But fair warning. It’s going to get messy.”
As I follow them, I catch myself imagining what it would be like if this were real. If this were our house, our tree, and our kid asking to help make cookies. The thought fills me with longing.
The kitchen fills with the warm scent of vanilla and butter as Cassidy measures flour into a mixing bowl. Axel stands on a chair beside her, cracking eggs with concentration.
“Easy does it,” she encourages as he drops shell fragments into the bowl along with the egg. “We can fish those out.”
I lean against the counter, watching her patiently guide his small hands as they pick out the pieces. “So,” I say, trying to sound casual, “what do you do now? For work, I mean.”
“I’m a librarian,” she says, not looking up from the bowl. “Head librarian at a branch in Atlanta.”
“A librarian? But you were going to be a journalist. You had that internship lined up at the Tribune, remember? You were going to change the world, expose corruption, win a Pulitzer...”
Her hands still on the wooden spoon she’s been using to mix the dough. “Plans change.”
The flatness of her voice tells me exactly when those plans changed. Eight years ago, when our world fell apart.
“Can we make sugar cookies too?” Axel asks. “The kind with the colored frosting?”
“We don’t have food coloring,” Cassidy says, “but we could make plain ones. Maybe cut them into shapes if there are cookie cutters somewhere.”
“Christmas Eve could be cookie decorating day,” I suggest, desperate to lighten the mood. “We could make our own frosting, maybe find some sprinkles.”
Axel’s face lights up. “Really? Like a party?”
“Exactly like a party,” Cassidy agrees, and when she smiles at him, some of the tension eases from her shoulders.
But I can’t stop thinking about journalism, about dreams deferred, about how many ways one terrible Christmas changed both our lives.
The house has settled into quiet with Axel finally asleep on his mattress by the fireplace. His small form is curled under the pile of blankets, his breathing deep.
I find Cassidy on the couch, staring at the Christmas tree in the darkness. She’s pulled her knees up to her chest, making herself small in the corner of the old sofa.
“Are you okay?” I ask, settling beside her on the couch. Not too close, but close enough to catch the scent of her cocoa body butter.
“He’s a good kid,” she says softly. “Sweet.”
I follow her gaze to the tree, but I can tell she’s thinking about more than ornaments and tinsel. She glances over at Axel’s sleeping form, and something shifts in her expression.
“Sometimes when I look at him,” she continues, “I wonder what our kids would have looked like.”
I turn to study her profile, the way the lights play across her features.
“Same complexion as Axel probably,” she says, almost to herself. “Maybe my hair texture, but looser. Your eyes for sure.” She pauses. “I think about that. A lot.”
“Cass...”
“Stupid, right?”
“Not stupid,” I say roughly, keeping my voice low. “I think about it too.”
She turns to look at me then, and there’s so much pain in her eyes it makes me ache. But there’s longing, maybe. Or regret.
“We had names picked out,” she whispers.
“Nina, for a girl,” I say automatically. “After your mother.”
“And Axel for our first boy. After your dad.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and before I can think better of it, I reach up and swipe them away. She doesn’t pull away.
“Tell me about your life,” I say quietly.
She shifts on the hardwood floor beside me. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Are you… are you happy? Is someone making you happy?”
There’s a long pause, and I watch her fingers twist together in her lap. “There was someone. David. We were together for almost three years.”
My heart dips. “Three years is serious.”
“He was good to me. Kind, protective, everything I thought I should want after…” She looks away. “He proposed.”
“Fuck.” The word explodes from me, and I scoot back abruptly, running my hands through my hair. “You were engaged?”
“I said no.”
I stop breathing. “What?”
“I couldn’t say yes. Not when I didn’t love him the way I loved—” She cuts herself off, but we both know what she was about to say.
“That poor bastard.”
“I ended things right after. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” She meets my eyes. “What about you? Anyone serious?”
I chuckle, mindful of the sleeping child nearby. “The opposite. I perfected the art of meaningless relationships. Never more than a few weeks, never anything real. My aunt is worried I’ll end up alone.”
“Ethan…” Her voice is soft, almost broken.
I can’t stand the distance between us anymore. When my lips touch hers, it’s like coming home after years of being lost. She tastes like the cookies we made and everything I’ve been missing.
For a moment, we’re twenty-two and in love and the world makes sense. My hands tangle in her hair, and she makes the little sound in the back of her throat, which always drove me crazy.
“Let me make you feel better,” I say.
“We are strangers now,” she says quietly. “Eight years changes people.”
“Does it?” I challenge, moving closer. “Because being here right now feels like no time has passed at all.”
Her breath catches, and I see something flicker in her eyes before she looks away. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t acknowledge that there’s still something between us?”
“There’s nothing else between us except a child. Your child with my sister.”
“Cassidy, Britney—”
“You were everything to me,” she says, her voice breaking. “And you threw it all away for one night with my sister.”
“I didn’t throw anything away,” I fire back. “You gave up on us. You never gave me a chance to explain myself or to prove my innocence.”
“I saw you!” she shouts back, and Axel stirs on the mattress. We both freeze, waiting, but he settles back into sleep. When she speaks again, her voice is a harsh whisper. “You were in bed with my sister. She gave birth to your first child! What was there to prove?”
“Your sister drugged me, then raped me, Cassidy. There’s no way in hell I would have touched her, would have hurt you like that.”
Her face goes completely white, she opens her mouth, then closes it, before shaking her head violently. “You’re really going to sit here and lie to me? After everything?”
“I’m not lying—”
“Drugged you?” The words come out strangled.
“That’s... that’s insane. Britney wouldn’t—she was barely eighteen, Ethan.
She was just a kid who had a crush—” She breathes in deeply.
“You’re pathetic.” She stands, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Just admit what you did instead of making up some ridiculous story to get yourself off the hook.”
“You know what? Believe whatever the hell you want. Keep playing the victim if it makes you feel better about walking away without a fight.”
“I walked away? You’re the one who—”
“Who what? Who got set up by your manipulative sister? Who tried to call you a hundred times to explain? You changed your number, Cassidy. You disappeared.”
“Because I saw you with her! I saw—”
“You saw what she wanted you to see.”
“Stop.” Her voice is low, and she’s pressing her palms against her temples. “Just stop. You’re confusing me, and I can’t… I won’t let you mess with my head again.”
We stare at each other across the small living room.
“I can’t do this,” she says finally, her voice small and tired. “I just can’t.”
She turns and walks toward the stairs, leaving me alone with the bitter taste of old wounds torn open fresh.