Chapter 14
Charlie
I leaned against the doorway, arms crossed tight over my chest, telling myself I was just checking the draft by the heater vent. Truth was, I wasn’t fooling anybody—not even me. I was watching her.
Belle sat hunched over the desk, hair falling forward, pen scratching across her notebook.
Cataloguing, same as always. But something was different today.
Every movement had an edge to it. She flipped pages like they’d offended her, jabbed at the paper with her pen like the words might bruise if she pressed any harder.
She was upset. And I didn’t need to guess why.
A man with sense would’ve left her to it.
Let her cool down, let her hate me in peace.
God knew I’d earned it. But standing there, seeing that furrow in her brow, the way her shoulders tensed like she was carrying the weight of the whole damned town—it gnawed at me.
I’d seen enough people worn down by burdens too heavy for them.
Watching her look that way gutted me worse than any memory.
I cleared my throat, shifted my stance, told myself to walk away.
But instead, I drifted over to the old stack of records gathering dust by the wall.
My fingers shuffled through them, the sleeves brittle with age, until one half-faded cover caught my eye.
I pulled it out, set it on the player, and dropped the needle.
The first tinny notes of a Christmas classic crackled through the library.
Belle’s head snapped up. Her eyes widened like she’d just caught me doing something scandalous.
“You… own Christmas music?"
“Didn’t you put one of my records on the other day?”
“Oh… well, yeah.” Her lips twitched. “Still. I’m surprised you own it at all.”
I shrugged, tried to look bored. “Came with the house.”
For a beat, I thought she’d go back to glaring at her notes, let the silence choke us both again. But then she huffed out this little laugh—quiet, soft, reluctant. Like she didn’t mean to, but couldn’t help herself.
And damn if that sound didn’t loosen something tight in my chest.
It was small, nothing really. Just a laugh, just a crack in the storm cloud hanging over her. But I felt it like sunlight, seeping in where I hadn’t realized I was cold. For ten whole seconds, I swear I felt ten pounds lighter.
I busied myself with straightening a stack of papers, pretending I hadn’t been hanging on her reaction. But the truth clawed at me anyway: I wanted her to laugh again. Wanted her to look at me without that shadow in her eyes. Wanted things I had no business wanting.
The record popped, the old speakers humming, and she bent back over her notes, still smiling faintly to herself. And for once, I didn’t mind the silence that followed. It felt less like distance and more like a truce.
The record crackled on, some syrupy holiday tune I hadn’t heard in decades. I should’ve let it play out and kept to the shadows, but Belle never left things alone.
She glanced up from her notes, lips tugging into a grin that was half-mischief, half-challenge.
“So, you actually have taste after all,” she teased.
I snorted, muttering the only shield I had left. “Don’t push it.”
But she pushed anyway—of course she did. She always did.
Before I could retreat, she was standing, crossing the space between us with that stubborn light in her eyes. She extended a hand like she was offering me some fragile truce.
“Dance with me, Charlie.”
The words dropped like stones in my chest.
“No,” I growled, shaking my head. “Too old. Too stiff. Not built for that sort of thing anymore.”
She didn’t back down. She never did. Instead, she laughed softly, tugging at my sleeve with a persistence that made my heart stutter.
“You can grumble all you want, but you’re not getting out of it. Just one dance. For Christmas.”
“Belle…” I started, the warning rough in my throat. But her hand was still there, waiting, steady. Warm.
Against my better judgment, against the fortress I’d built around myself, I let her pull me in.
The first few steps were awkward as hell.
My scarred hand hovered uselessly in the air, unsure where it belonged, terrified of the answer.
My body moved like rusted gears grinding back to life, stiff, mechanical.
I wanted to let go, to bolt, to put space between us before she saw how close I was to breaking.
But then she leaned in. Just lightly. Enough that her head brushed my chest, enough that her warmth settled against me like she’d been made to fit there.
The scent of her hair, faint and sweet like vanilla. The rhythm of her laugh when my foot shuffled clumsily against hers. The way she didn’t flinch from my hand when I finally, cautiously, set it at her waist.
It was too much.
And yet not nearly enough.
The weight of her trust pressed against me, more dangerous than any battlefield I’d survived. Nobody trusted me like this. Nobody looked at me the way she did—like the scars didn’t matter, like the past didn’t dictate the man in front of her.
Every step we took in that small circle of firelight and dust, I felt the walls inside me buckle. The fortress I’d lived behind all these years wasn’t built for this kind of siege.
I told myself it was just a song. Just a dance. Nothing more. But with her in my arms, humming under her breath, smiling up at me like I wasn’t a monster at all… it felt like the start of something I’d sworn I’d never allow again.
And God help me, I didn’t want it to end.
We moved clumsily, two people pretending to know the steps, her guiding more than me.
I tried to keep pace, to not crush her toes, but we spun once and my hip clipped the edge of the desk.
She laughed, quick and unbothered, tugging me along.
For half a second I let myself laugh too—low, rusty, a sound I hadn’t made in years.
Then we stumbled again, this time into the doorframe. My hand shot out to steady her, palm pressed against the wood just over her shoulder. She looked up at me, a smile lingering on her lips, and then froze.
I followed her gaze.
Above us, nailed crooked into the molding, hung a sprig of mistletoe. Old, faded, brittle from some long-ago holiday I’d spent ignoring. I must’ve walked past it a thousand times without noticing. Now, with her eyes locked on it, it might as well have been burning.
The song on the record player crackled on, but the rest of the world held still. My breath came sharp and uneven, chest tight like the room had tilted under me.
I shouldn’t. God help me, I couldn’t.
But the way she looked at me—open, steady, no fear in her eyes, no hesitation—undid every wall I’d built.
I bent my head slowly, testing. Waiting for her to flinch, to step back, to remind me who I was and what I wasn’t allowed to want.
She didn’t.
She tilted up, closing the space, her lips brushing mine like a secret offered. Tentative at first, soft as snowfall, but when I didn’t pull away—when she realized I wasn’t going to—she pressed closer.
Heat surged through me, burning away the cold I’d lived in. My hand, scarred and ugly, found its way to the small of her back. She didn’t push it off. She leaned into it, into me, until the kiss deepened into something that stole my breath and gave it back all at once.
Pain, desire, fear—they tangled in my chest until I couldn’t tell one from the other. It felt like sin. It felt like salvation. It felt like something I didn’t deserve, and yet in that moment, I couldn’t make myself let go.
When we finally broke apart, the record was spinning to its end, the last notes fading into static. She was smiling up at me, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, breath coming fast.
And I felt like I was drowning. Drowning in light, in the impossible weight of hope.
I tightened my hand into a fist against the doorframe, trying to anchor myself to the solid wood, to anything but the pull of her. But her smile stayed, warm and relentless, and I knew I was already lost.
She was still so close I could feel her fingertips against my chest, light as moth wings but steady enough to burn through me. Her lips parted, her breath warm when she whispered, “Will you take me to see the Christmas lights in town?”
The words slammed into me harder than any bullet I’d ever taken.
Christmas lights. Town. People.
I hadn’t set foot in the center of Holly Ridge in years.
Not once. Not for parades, not for carolers, not for tree lightings or the holiday auction.
I’d built my silence on avoiding all of it—the stares, the whispers, the pointed way mothers pulled their kids closer as I walked by. Crazy vet. Dangerous. Monster.
My first instinct was to refuse. To cut her off with a flat “no” and send her back to her safe, sweet world where the worst thing she had to worry about was tangled lights and spilled cocoa. That was what made sense. That was survival.
The refusal was right there on my tongue when I made the mistake of looking at her.
Really looking.
Her eyes were wide and hopeful, soft as candlelight, but steady too—like she believed I could. Like she wanted me there, with her, in that world of twinkling bulbs and laughter.
And suddenly, the thought of saying no felt impossible.
Because what was I really refusing? Not the lights. Not the town. I’d be refusing her.
I realized, with the kind of clarity that knocks a man off his feet, that I’d walk through any fire she pointed at. I’d face down the whole damn town, every whisper, every ghost, if it meant keeping that smile on her face.
The knowledge gutted me. Terrified me. And yet—it awed me too.
My chest ached, sharp and relentless, like something inside me had cracked open after years of being soldered shut.
I was gone.
Gone in a way I hadn’t let myself be since before the fire, before the betrayal, before I learned that loving someone meant giving them a blade and trusting they wouldn’t use it.
But here I was again, blade already in her hand, and I didn’t care.
Her question still hung in the air, soft as snow: Will you take me?
I swallowed hard, my throat dry, words like gravel when I finally forced them out.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” I muttered.
She only tilted her head, that stubborn, luminous smile tugging at her lips. “I think I do.”
And damn me, but I believed her.
I didn’t mean to reach for her, but my hand was already there—scarred palm cupping the soft curve of her cheek. She leaned into it without hesitation, eyes shining like I’d hung the stars myself.
“Tomorrow,” I murmured, the word rasping out of me before I could drag it back. A promise. A surrender.
Her face lit up, brighter than any string of bulbs they could hang in that town square. She beamed, and then she was in my arms, wrapping herself around me like she’d known all along I’d give in.
I should’ve let go. Should’ve reminded her what I was, what I wasn’t built for.
But I didn’t. I held on. Tighter than I should’ve, tighter than a man with scars like mine had any right to.
Because for the first time in years, the weight in my chest eased.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t just a shell propped up in an empty house.
The record player sputtered, the last notes fading into soft static. She pulled back just enough to smile up at me again, and I knew I was done for.
For her, I thought, fierce and certain, I’d face the whole damn world.