Chapter Nineteen
The mug is formed and drying. Boone let me pick out the glaze, a blue as soft and bright as his eyes. He said he’d mail me the mug when it was finished. Time seems to be moving too fast now as the reminder for my flight in the morning dings on my phone.
“Boone.” I sigh as I lean into him. We’re sitting on the couch, sipping on a shared latte, my back nuzzled into his chest and my legs pulled up to my knees.
“Yes?” he asks, his fingers lightly combing through my hair.
“I’m trying really hard to just enjoy the moment, but I can’t help but think about what’s next,” I admit.
“I mean, let’s be honest with each other.
We’re adults. We have very real, very lived-in lives apart from each other.
We don’t really make sense. What if all of this was just meant to be for now and not for longer? ”
I feel Boone stiffen slightly, almost unnoticeably, but my nerves are on high alert and picking up on any subtle differences. “What do you want, Kate?”
“It’s not as simple as what I want,” I ramble as I turn to face him. “It’s what we both want, or don’t want, or might not want any longer down the road.”
“Kate, I think you’re just scared.” Boone sighs.
“Scared of what?” I question.
“Scared that you’ll fall in love with me and I won’t fall in love with you,” he says plainly, a pain point from Santa Secrets the night before.
My jaw drops slightly. “That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair, Kate, but just because it’s not fair, doesn’t mean that you don’t try,” Boone argues, without raising his voice. In fact, he’s completely calm and collected, even going so far as to take a sip of coffee.
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask, because I can’t be the only one between us trying to sort out how this would even work and how it would feel if it didn’t. If we tried and we failed.
Boone sighs. “When I came to this cabin, I was hurt…suffering. I was scared then. I hid from feeling anything else because I thought I had felt too much. Hiding kept me safe, but I also began to realize that it kept me from living, that I needed to feel again. And then I found you. What were the chances I’d find a woman in a blizzard at Christmas on the same road as I’d found Becca, but that this time I was able to save her? I think I was meant to find you, Kate.”
“But what if we just don’t work, Boone?” I ask.
“But what if we do, Kate?” he questions back.
I open my mouth to say something, but there’s a sound I haven’t heard for days—a car door closing. My eyes quickly flicker to the window by the door before the door swings wide open.
“Merry Christmas!” a woman exclaims loudly, her hands overflowing with food. Her hair is dark and cascading in large curls around her face, and if she were about a foot taller, she might look like Boone.
Then a tall man with graying facial hair follows her in with my luggage. “We bring food and something that I’m guessing a woman named Kate is very much missing.”
I hop up from the couch, hurrying to my long-lost bag full of clothes that fit. “You are a Christmas angel!”
“Pretty sure that’s you, dear,” the woman laughs. “I’m Boone’s mom, Elizabeth, but you can call me Liz. This is Kurt, Boone’s dad and the love of my life.”
I smile at the introduction. “You’re the banana-bread queen.”
Her entire face lights up. “That’s me. I’m sorry we couldn’t get up here sooner to bring food. When Boone called and told me what happened, I immediately began trying to remember what was up here, and I was afraid you’d both starve.”
Boone stands up from the couch, striding toward his mom with open arms, wrapping them around her when he reaches her. “We didn’t starve. Kate is a great chef and teacher. She even taught me how to make an omelet.”
Liz’s eyes widen as she looks at me. “And it was edible?”
I nod my head, laughing. “Yes, very edible. Amazing, actually.”
“Let me help you with all of this,” Boone says to his mom as he grabs bags and dishes that she’s holding onto.
Then Liz’s mouth hangs wide open, and I follow the direction in which she is staring—the Christmas tree. “What’s this?”
“A Christmas tree,” Boone replies plainly.
“What is a Christmas tree doing in your cabin?” Liz questions, a thread of hope looped through her words.
“I didn’t want Kate to miss out on Christmas just because she was stuck with me,” Boone answers.
“He used the chicken coop lights,” I add, grinning.
Liz looks over at me. “Well, Kate, I wish he would have found you sooner. It’s about time there was good cooking and Christmas in this place.”
And I know she doesn’t mean anything permanent with her comment, but there’s something about it that causes my pulse to quicken. The Christmas snow globe Boone and I had been stuck in is no longer. Life outside the glass has entered, and Boone’s real life has resumed.
It is only hours until mine does, too.
I pick up my luggage and then turn to Kurt. “How did you find this?”
“Small-town perks,” Kurt replies. “Your rental is at our house, too. Somehow, mostly unscathed, all things considered.”
“Wow, thank you. I was really worried about Miranda, but I told myself she was made of steel or aluminum or whatever Mitsubishi Mirages are made of, and that she’d be fine.
She really didn’t want to make the trek, you know.
I wasn’t quite sure how I’d be able to get her back.
” I ramble until I realize everyone is staring at me—Boone with amusement, his parents with curiosity.
“You named the car Miranda?” Liz finally asks.
I bite my lower lip. “Well, I figured naming the car I decided needed to be my trusty steed through the snow was not just a necessity, but an admirable thing to do. Turns out, she wasn’t so trusty, or maybe it was the driver, but either way, thank goodness Boone found us.”
Boone’s grin has doubled in size as my words have grown.
Finally, Liz laughs and replies, “Oh, I like you. You’re fun. I can see why Boone cut you down a tree.”
I feel my cheeks warm. “Well, I’m going to go change into something that fits. Thanks again for retrieving this for me.”
Then I quickly leave the room, shutting Boone’s bedroom door behind me before leaning on it, sighing.
I hadn’t thought I’d meet Boone’s parents.
Not now, possibly not ever. Of course, I’d thought about it.
My mind had begun to wander off into unknown territory, a place I kept barricaded because it was a place I’d been to before in my ignorance with a boyfriend I’d managed to keep for five months.
Planning a life with someone only to have the fantasy ripped away the moment they decided it wasn’t going to work, which was the polite way to say, ‘It’s definitely you. ’
I am more of a woman of the hour than a woman for a lifetime, or at least that’s what my track record from the last twenty-two years of boyfriends, and lack of them, has concluded.
Boone is weak. Maybe he doesn’t realize it, and I’m not sure I realized it at first either. I thought I was the weaker one, but I’m the first woman he’s allowed into his life since Becca, and he didn’t exactly allow it. I kind of managed to force my way in through my own reckless decisions.
I’m fun now because I’m new and different and maybe even exciting. But he’ll realize sooner or later that I am just the woman that helped him feel again, and not the one he wants forever.
I need to be the stronger one of us right now.
I lift my suitcase onto Boone’s bed, unzipping it, thankful to see things that are mine.
I rub my hand over the familiar fabrics.
I choose a festive red turtleneck sweater and black leather pants that I don’t have to roll around my waist to fit.
Then I internally squeal when I pull out my makeup bag and quickly snatch up my mascara, running to the bathroom attached to Boone’s bedroom.
“Better,” I say to myself in the mirror.
I return to the bedroom, packing my bag back up and folding Boone’s clothes neatly on his bed.
I’ve made my decision, and I stiffen my spine with resolve before I take a breath and go back out to ask Boone’s parents for a ride back to Miranda so I can get myself back to the airport and resume my real life, and Boone can go choose the woman he wants to find a new forever with and not just be stuck with me.