13. Gia
13
Gia
The sky is clearer today, allowing the sun to warm up the snow drifts and help them melt. I’ve dreamed of a white Christmas for years, and now that I have one, I wish it would go away.
Tomorrow is Christmas, and my folks are still stuck in Harbor Point. I was adamant on the phone again today: Don’t rush. Take your time. Be safe.
Still, though, the little girl inside me is hoping I’ll get a miracle.
I scan the dining room from the kitchen door. Everyone is in bright spirits since the sing-along last night, including me. I can’t go too long without performing, without remembering that part of myself. And singing with Mars was more fun than I’d like to admit. Our voices mesh well together. Sadly, that’s not everything when it comes to a relationship.
But that’s okay. I’m okay.
Or I was until Kade walked out. I watched him go, his whole body tense, head dropped and stewing. Kade does that. He stews, lets everything sit inside him until it’s burning.
Bryn went after him pretty quickly, but when she returned without him, I knew something was wrong, because then she was stewing, too. Must be genetic, the stewing. Me, on the other hand, my emotions are as plain as day on my face most of the time. It’s not something I can help, despite wanting to be the cool, distant girl all my life.
“He thinks we set him up,” Bryn told me when we finally got into bed, and she could clear the smoke of her anger. “That we brought him here to force him to see our dad.”
I scoffed. “Why does he think that?”
Bryn was quiet for a long time, settling onto her side away from me. Then, she softly said, “Because I told him I want to see Dad.”
I told her Kade would sleep it off. That everything would be fine in the morning. Except it’s not because he hasn’t made it in for breakfast. Between the scraping of forks and chatter, a six-foot-whatever giant is missing from the landscape.
Bryn is not alone, though. Everyone has requested we push the tables together so that instead of separate café tables, it’s one long banquet. My parents would love how all the guests have banded together and become this temporary misfit family.
Bryn is squeezed between Andrew and Ahmad, and though she laughs and chats with everyone, there is a clear distance on her face—a sadness.
It’s Christmas Eve. No one should be sad on Christmas Eve.
So, I have Abigail fix me up a plate of food and package it up so it will stay warm on my walk to Kade’s cabin.
“I didn’t know we were doing door-to-door service now,” Abigail says with a raised brow.
“He’s a big guy, he shouldn’t go hungry.”
“Sure… that’s why you’re going all the way out there to give him his breakfast.”
I start to retort, but Mars pokes his head into the kitchen right at that moment with a white teapot in his hand. “I’m afraid I’m out of hot water.”
That would usually be my job, something pedestrian, so I can leave all the art of cooking to Abigail, but she leaps to attention, meeting Mars at the door. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me fix that right away.”
Mars is as Mars does and strikes up a conversation with Abigail, allowing me to sneak out through the common room and out the back door. At least some people are getting along, clearly very well.
When I arrive at Kade’s cabin, I knock on the door. I don’t get a response right away.
“Kade… I know you’re in there.”
Nothing.
“I have food. It’ll get cold if you leave me out here,” I add, trying to keep my composure bright.
Still, nothing.
I go over to the window and peer inside. Kade has moved all the furniture off the carpet in the tiny drawing room and is horizontal to the floor, doing push-up after push-up without stopping. He has a pair of headphones on, drowning out the world—probably trying to forget he’s even here in Blue Flag.
On a normal day, I’d probably linger here, watching his back muscles rippling and the sweat collect on the back of his neck. I swallow. Not now, Gia . I rap on the window with my free hand, watch him stumble to his knees, and squint at me through the window.
“Food!” I cry out so he can hear me through the double panes and wave my free hand. Don’t get distracted by the abs, don’t get distracted by the abs!
Kade pulls his headphones down onto his neck and gets to his feet. His expression is unreadable through the window. I won’t let that deter me.
I meet him at the front door just as he opens it. He’s glistening with sweat, and I’m not feeling anything about that at all. I smile brightly. “You didn’t come to breakfast,” I say.
“Wasn’t hungry,” he says, his blue eyes regarding me from under lowered eyelids.
“What do you mean you’re not hungry?” I say through a laugh, gesturing to his torso. “Something has to make those muscles, right?!” Okay, I’m making it weird now.
Kade eyes the bag. He starts to reach for it, but I jerk it away just before he can grab it. “Can I come in?”
“Gia…”
“Five minutes. Two minutes! That’s all.”
Kade’s eyes flutter shut with annoyance. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Then I shouldn’t be any threat to your peace. Two minutes, that’s all,” I say. “Then I’ll give you the food. Abigail made cinnamon rolls from scratch today; you don’t want to miss them. I had her leave the raisins out just for you.”
Kade can’t resist a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. He pushes the door aside and allows me through.
“Thanks,” I mutter, ignoring the sweating chest as I go. I place the bag down on the pushed-aside coffee table, and when I turn to face Kade again, I find he’s pulling a black T-shirt over his head, covering up all those muscles. For the best—they’re too distracting.
Kade shakes his dark hair away from his face and threads his fingers through the sweaty strands. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Come on, Kade, you know Bryn told me about the conversation you two had last night.”
Kade crosses his arms over his chest. Oh no. I’m going to get this, Kade. Standoffish, former soldier Kade. In the best of times, Bryn and I can tease him out of this stance, but in the worst… well, he’s intimidating. “So?”
“So, I just… we didn’t trick you to come here so that you’d have to see your dad,” I say. “That’s ridiculous. We’d never do something like that.”
“Okay.”
I blink at him. “ Okay? ”
Kade raises his brows and says nothing. You heard me .
“You don’t believe me.”
“No. Does that really matter, though?”
Kade is hard to read and can be difficult to deal with, but I’ve never been… uneasy around him like this. Never scared of him. He’s responsible for my safety. And though he’s meant to be brutish and imposing to others, to me, he’s safe. He’s Kade . I don’t like this side of things. “Of course, it matters. You’re my… you’re like family, Kade. I’d never do that to you.”
“Family is just a word,” he says. “Doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
“What’s gotten into you?” I exclaim and immediately regret it when I see the flash of anger in his eyes. “I mean, I know it’s hard being back in Blue Flag. But Bryn and I would never try to make it harder for you than it already is, Kade. ”
“You think you understand how hard it is for me to be back here?” he asks.
I swallow. “Is that rhetorical?”
“No. Do you really think you know, Gia?” My name comes out of his mouth like a curse word.
I shake my head minutely. “I guess not, but?—”
“You don’t. Not at all.” He steps toward me. I try to stand my ground but find myself leaning away. “The last time I was here, I swore, never again. I would never come back to Blue Flag because it’s only a painful reminder of what I don’t have anymore.”
My shoulders fall. I wish he’d said something earlier. I wish it hadn’t gotten this bad.
“We were thirteen years old when we lost everything,” he says. “Thirteen. Mom died, and Dad went with her.”
“I know?—”
“ You don’t! ” he shouts, an expression so strong it’s like a gust of wind over me.
He’s never yelled at me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him yell. He’s cool, calm, collected, and that’s what makes him scary. I didn’t know he had anger like this in him.
Kade swallows, his jaw ticking. “You don’t know . And just because you might know through Bryn, you don’t know from me how…” His bottom lip warbles. “How hard it is to be here.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I’m sorry,” I whisper. I want to cry, too, but that wouldn’t be fair.
His eyes cross my face, quick and calculating, sizing up the next step of his mission. He steps away, rubs his hands over his eyes, then places them on his hips. “I came here because you asked me to. You put me in an impossible situation.”
“You could have said no!” I say, trying to smile. “I know I held your job over your head, but I’d never actually?—”
“I can’t say no to you, Gia. I don’t know how.”
My knotted muscles unfurl the slightest bit.
“I wish I did. Because then I wouldn’t have to sit here thinking about all the years that have gone by and Mars ,” he huffs.
“What about Mars?” I ask incredulously.
Kade finally looks at me. His eyes pop wide, and his mouth twists until a laugh bubbles out of him.
“What about Mars?!” I reiterate, still confused.
“You’re acting all chummy with him after everything he’s put you through! I’ve been here, I’ve seen it, and I’m not going to enable you like Bryn does. It’s your life, but I won’t sit by and be quiet anymore. He’s not good for you.”
This is all news to me. Of course, his coldness to Mars was always obvious, but to outright disapprove of my relationship… “I’m a grown woman, Kade.”
He sighs, makes a fist with his hand, and pops it up against his head. “I know you are, Gia, I didn’t say?—”
“I can make choices for myself. If I want Mars, I’ll have Mars,” I say, as if it is that plain of choice. “But I don’t. He’s just–he’s just here, and I’m not going to make our relationship anyone’s problem because?—”
“Except for me,” he mutters.
I stare at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Except for you ? What does Mars and I have to do with you, Kade ?”
“I’m supposed to protect you.”
“From paparazzi and wild fans, not my personal life.”
Kade shakes his head. “It’s not that easy to separate them when you sing Christmas carols with a guy who broke your heart as if nothing happened. ”
“Are you jealous?” The words spill out without much thought. But his frustration seems so unfounded and confuses me to such a degree that I can’t help but think there’s something else behind all of it.
His brows jump. “What?”
I lick my lower lip. Say it again . “It sounds like you’re jealous.”
Kade scratches the side of his face, his eyes falling. “Could you go, please?”
It takes me a moment to get my bearings, but when I do, I drag myself toward the door without another word.
It takes a whole minute of the ending of the conversation to hit me.
He didn’t say yes.
But he didn’t say no.
And if Kade is jealous of Mars, that could only mean one thing.
He feels what I’m feeling, too.