Chapter Seventeen
My insides are bursting. Boone and I somehow whipped up what I would consider to be in my top five Christmas Eve dinners, and that’s saying a lot as my mother always has them catered in from some of the best chefs in the area.
Not that our area was ever prominent in fine dining, but they were still home cooked and fabulous.
I’m lying on the floor, my head under the tree as I look up at its branches draped with the chicken-coop lights.
It smells amazing. I never had real Christmas trees growing up.
My dad would hang those silly pine-scented car air fresheners on the branches, claiming that it was just as good as the real thing. It’s not, I now realize.
Dog has curled up next to me, a welcome warmth as he purrs happily. Boone had even prepared the cat a small Christmas Eve meal with ham and mashed potatoes. He’d devoured it.
I hear Boone’s steady footsteps enter the living room from his bedroom. He’d taken a shower after dinner. I still have trust issues with the pipes and haven’t braved challenging them again.
“What are you doing?” Boone asks, as he crouches down to look at me under the tree.
“Appreciating the tree,” I answer.
“And you have to do it from under it?” he questions, his face rippling into wrinkles.
I smile more at myself than Boone. I reach my hand out at him, inviting him under the tree with me. “Come and gain a new perspective.”
Boone doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he grabs my hand and slides effortlessly under the tree with me.
I can smell his soap that I never got to fully appreciate in my own shower when it attacked me yesterday.
He keeps hold of my hand as he breathes out what seems like every ounce of air from his chest, relaxing onto the floor.
I roll my head over to look at him. “This is what Kevin and I do every Christmas Eve when we do Santa Secrets. It feels like we’re somewhere else, somewhere closer to the magic of Christmas.
We used to think Santa had a better chance of hearing us if we could speak into the tree.
It’s silly, I know. But there is something about lying here that makes the rest of everything feel far away.
That somehow our secrets were safe under the tree together. ”
He rolls his head over, his blue eyes gentle as they gaze into my green ones. “That’s not silly at all. It’s special.”
I smile at him. “What’s silly is two adults still believing it.”
He squeezes my hand. “So, let’s do it.”
“Let’s do what?”
“Santa Secrets,” he answers. “How’s it work?”
“We don’t have to tell each other all our secrets,” I say quickly. “I’m not sure you can handle all my deepest secrets, anyway. I’m a lot.”
“A lot of what?” he asks.
“You know what I mean,” I mumble. “A lot of everything.”
“Why do you say that as if it’s something that’s wrong with you? I’ve yet to be disappointed when there is a lot of something I like.”
“You can’t like me, Boone,” I state as if it’s a fact. As if I’m just naturally unlikeable, which statistically speaking, proves it. A lot of people have liked me and then fallen out of like fairly quickly.
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t like, Kate,” Boone argues.
“Well, then, let’s do this, and we’ll see if you still like me,” I propose.
“What are the rules?” he asks promptly.
“It’s secret for secret. That’s it. Those are the rules,” I explain.
“Are we allowed questions?”
“Questions?”
“Yeah, for clarification, or maybe to dig deeper into the secret.”
“Yes,” I answer. “That’s fine. Let no secret detail go unturned.”
He squeezes my hand again, which is something I’ve been trying to not think about. That we’re holding hands. It seems like such a simple thing, and yet it doesn’t seem simple with Boone. It seems real, and real is usually the opposite of simple. It’s usually complicated and messy and, well, honest.
Which is why I haven’t yet let go. I appreciate Boone’s honesty, and if he wanted to let go, he would. I’m not going to be the first to break our honesty when the truth is, I want to hold his hand, too.
“You go first,” he says. “You’re the veteran.”
I smirk. “Only by experience, not by age.”
Boone laughs. “I wondered if you were going to say anything about my age reveal earlier. What do you think about it? Do I seem forty-one to you?”
“My dad was forty-two when he died,” I reveal, which immediately sparks the reaction from Boone of squeezing my hand again.
“But that’s not my secret. Oh, I’ve got one.
I called the police on my upstairs neighbors twice this year for loud music late at night.
I thought they were having a party. Turns out, it was just their thirteen-year-old son learning to play the drums. Still, noisy, but I’m not one to discourage learning, so naturally, I had cookies made in the shape of drums and drumsticks for them and delivered the cookies myself. ”
“To apologize?” Boone asks.
“Oh, no. I didn’t let them know it was me that called the police. To encourage their son—Liam, I learned—to keep up the good work. That I was a huge supporter of the musical arts,” I add.
“Honest Kate wasn’t honest?” Boone’s eyes widen in amusement.
“Not when it meant having a tiff with my upstairs neighbors,” I laugh. “Listen, enough people in New York are rude just for the fun of it. I didn’t need people I lived in my building with to be rude for a reason.”
“Fair enough,” Boone agrees. “Plus, they got cookies.”
“Exactly!” I exclaim. “Expensive ones, too. And now Liam even says hi to me in the elevator. Okay, your turn.”
“Hmm,” he mutters. “I don’t do my own laundry, and I know, I’m a grown man who should be doing his own laundry, but I don’t have a washer and dryer up here, and my mom insists.
It’s not that I can’t do laundry. I can and have.
It’s just that I don’t do it currently, or really for the last five years. ”
My eyebrows arch. “Your mom still does your laundry?”
“I know. It sounds bad, but it’s not still does.
She stopped when I moved to California. I had some unfortunate experiences with learning that you don’t dump three capfuls of detergent in the washing machine and that it really does matter if you wash clothes on hot or cold.
But when I moved back, my mom thought it was a way she could help me out while I was sorting out everything during that time, and she just never stopped. ”
“She seems like a good mom,” I remark.
“She is,” Boone agrees. “Keeps me in banana bread and clean clothes.”
I smile at him. “My mother did my laundry when I lived at home, but only because she didn’t want me to mess any of it up.
She had strict rules for what was allowed to be worn to ensure my brother and I looked appropriate by her definition of it.
When I was sixteen, I really wanted a pair of ripped jeans.
Of course, she refused. Said they were pants for hoodlums. Soon after, my dad made up an excuse to get me out of school.
He took me to the mall and bought me a pair.
I kept them hidden in my Mustang and would change into them on my way to parties. ”
Boone laughs. “I think I would have liked your dad.”
“He was a good person,” I reply. “He wasn’t perfect, but he was good.”
“Those are the best kind of people,” Boone remarks. “Now, your turn.”
And because I like the shock-and-awe effect, I decide to reveal something that might scare Boone away.
“I’ve never had a real boyfriend. I mean, I’ve had boyfriends and they were real, not imaginary.
But not the kind of boyfriend where I thought it could be more—that it could be life.
And I know that sounds ridiculous, because I’m fast approaching forty and you’d think… there would’ve at least been one.”
“Did you love any of them?” Boone asks.
My eyebrows furrow together. “I mean, I liked them. I’ve even said, ‘I love you’ a few times and heard it back. But real love? No. Not the kind of love that actually means something bigger than a moment.”
“It doesn’t mean it’s not for you, you know,” he replies.
I feel the lines between my eyebrows crease more intensely.
“Love, Kate,” Boone adds. “Just because you haven’t had it yet, doesn’t mean you won’t. Love doesn’t have an expiration date. Not in having it and not in losing it.”
“Do you still love Becca?” I ask bluntly. I know he does, just like I still love my dad. But I need to hear him say it, instead of me just knowing it.
“I’ll always love Becca. That doesn’t mean it’s the only love I’ll have. I thought it was when I first came to this cabin five years ago. I kept hidden where love couldn’t find me, but I’ve been wondering what’s next for me. Praying about it,” Boone says softly.
The truth is I’m not scared to kiss Boone. I’m not scared to love him, either. I’m scared that he’ll eventually realize I’m not easy to love. It is easier to just not have it than to believe it can be for me.
“No one has wanted to try to love me like you love Becca. Something always happens where they realize I’m a lot to handle,” I admit. “I mean, look at the predicament I got myself into by thinking I was bigger than a blizzard.”
Boone smiles at me, but it’s different. Tender. Something in the way his lips curve has softened. “Kate, it’s not that you are too much. It’s that they weren’t enough. Don’t let small men make you wish you were a smaller woman. And you are bigger than a blizzard.”
My secret hasn’t pushed Boone away. In fact, his grip around my hand is more secure.
“Your turn,” I manage to breathe out.
“Becca didn’t die in a snowstorm. She survived the crash. I found her.” Boone sighs heavily.
I gasp. “Here?”
He nods his head. “We were back home for Christmas. She’d secretly bought this cabin for me as an escape.
She thought she would surprise me and was driving back from setting up Christmas decorations.
She didn’t have a lot of experience driving in snowstorms. She wasn’t answering her phone.
My parents knew where she was, and I went out to find her.
I found her alive, but she’d suffered injuries from the crash.
They wouldn’t let me in the operating room even though I’m a surgeon. They wouldn’t let me try to save her.”
“What? Why?!” I gasp.
“Protocols,” he answers simply.
“Oh, Boone,” I whisper, rubbing his hand with my thumb.
“That’s why I stopped. If I couldn’t save the person I loved, then what was the point of all those years of training?
” he mumbles. “So, I moved here. I trashed all the Christmas décor Becca had set up. I thought I was starting over, but really, I was just running away. But God still found me up here. He’s been helping me. ”
“I heard you pray over me last night,” I admit, my cheeks burning hot. “I haven’t been prayed over since my dad used to do it. He’d tuck me in every night, asking God to protect me and guide me. I’m not sure I’ve really answered my dad’s prayers.”
“You heard that?” he asks quietly.
I nod my head. “Thank you.”
“The truth is, I haven’t always been happy with God,” Boone murmurs. “But I’ve learned God is bigger than our feelings. He must at least have more answers than I do. Maybe not the ones I want, but answers.”
“You want to hear something silly I used to pray for when I was little, and I guess I still hope for?” I whisper.
Boone smiles at me. “Yes.”
“I used to pray every night after my dad left my room to be married to someone that would sit on a front porch swing with me every day. My parents never sat on our front porch and swung together. I always felt sad for my dad because I’d find him swinging out there by himself, so I’d hop up next to him, and he’d wrap his arm around me, pulling me close.
I guess I just wanted that for my dad so much that I decided to pray for it for myself,” I detail out. “I know that’s silly.”
Boone’s smile widens. “That’s not silly, Kate. I think it’s beautiful.”
“Do you have a final secret?” I ask Boone, watching as the lights dance in his blue eyes.
“I lied to you yesterday,” Boone says, turning his body toward mine. “I still promise that I won’t kiss you, but if you kiss me, I’m going to kiss you back.”
“Do you want to kiss me?” I question.
“Well, I don’t want to not kiss you, Kate.” He laughs.
There’s something in this moment that has grown warm, our hearts spilling out between one another, not to convince one another that we are perfect, but to convince one another that we are anything but.
“None of what I had to say scared you?” I ask.
“You don’t scare me, Kate,” Boone says calmly, completely unfazed by all that I’ve revealed. In fact, he looks more certain than I’ve seen him. Not that he ever looked uncertain, but this is a different kind of determination.
“I haven’t kissed anyone in a long time,” I admit. “I’m not sure I’m really that great at it.”
Boone laughs. “I believe you told me that you can always right a wrong; it just might come with a lot of effort. I’m okay with some extra effort if that’s what it takes.”
“Okay, but if I kiss you, it doesn’t have to mean anything,” I ramble nervously.
“Lying during Santa Secrets?” Boone questions. “Kate, Santa might not bring you the very best gift.”
“It’s just…” I trail off.
“If you don’t want to kiss me, you don’t have to kiss me.
I just told you that I’m kissing you back.
” Then Boone scoots closer to me, letting go of my hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear before tracing his finger down to my jawline.
“Here’s the truth, Kate. I like you. I’m not scared of you.
In fact, I think you’re the perfect amount of enough.
I don’t know what tomorrow looks like, but I like where we are today. ”
My breath has halted in my chest. We’re wrapped in the scent of pine trees and the closeness of Christmas, as if this moment right now is something we’ll never have again. And we won’t.
I feel myself leaning toward Boone, closing the gap between us slowly.
His hand is still on my face, but he doesn’t move toward me.
He won’t kiss me. It must be me that kisses him.
Our faces are only inches apart when I pause and whisper, “When I made you promise that you wouldn’t kiss me back, I was hoping you’d break it. ”
Then my lips are on his lips, and he doesn’t hold back. He kisses me fervently, as if I’ll never be too much for him.