Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Leo stood in the barn, staring at the sleigh he’d spent three hours polishing yesterday. The wood gleamed, the brass fittings caught the morning light, the red cushions looked like something out of a Christmas card. Ready for Sunday’s Tree Lighting ceremony.
Ready for a festival he wasn’t going to be part of.
He turned away from it, grabbed a pitchfork, and started mucking out Comet’s stall with more force than necessary. The physical work felt good. Gave him something to focus on besides the hollow ache in his chest.
He’d done the right thing yesterday. Said what needed to be said. Jade was already halfway out the door—might as well face facts now rather than wait for the inevitable. Better for everyone.
Better for Lila, who’d already lost one person close to her. No point letting her get attached to someone else who was just passing through.
Comet snorted from the doorway, shaking his head hard enough to make his harness bells jingle.
“What?” Leo demanded, jabbing the pitchfork into the hay.
The reindeer just stared at him with those dark, knowing eyes.
“Fine. And maybe better for me too,” Leo admitted, his voice rough. “There. Happy?”
Comet turned and walked away, which felt like judgment.
Leo went back to mucking, but his gaze kept drifting to that sleigh. All polished and ready for a partnership that was over before it really began. He should feel relieved. Should feel like he’d dodged a bullet, protected himself from the kind of pain Steve had gone through when Lisa left.
Instead, he just felt empty.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, saw Mayor Clark’s name, and silenced it without answering. It rang again immediately. Silenced.
Then a text:
Leo, urgent. Need to discuss Sunday’s schedule.
He shoved the phone back into his pocket.
The truth was, he couldn’t face Jade. Couldn’t look at her and see the hurt he’d put there. Couldn’t stand in that bakery and pretend to discuss cocoa stations and sleigh routes when every word between them yesterday had been designed to wound.
Better to just... not. Cancel the whole thing. Stay here with his reindeer where things made sense.
Vixen wandered over and nuzzled his arm. He scratched behind her ears absently, his mind circling.
He didn’t owe Jade anything. They’d worked together for a few days, almost kissed once in a moment of Christmas-fueled insanity, and then reality had crashed back in. That was it. That was the whole story.
A clean break now meant no messy complications later.
His phone rang again. Different number this time—probably someone from the town council. He ignored it.
The sleigh sat there in the center of the barn, mocking him with its readiness. All that work, all that planning. The route they’d mapped together, the timing they’d calculated, the way her face had lit up when they’d figured out the perfect loop through town.
Leo grabbed the harness he’d been conditioning and started working saddle soap into the leather with aggressive circular motions.
The familiar smell of leather and oil was grounding.
This was real. This was solid. Not feelings, not maybes, not the risk of caring about someone who’d probably be gone by Valentine’s Day.
“It’s better this way,” he said aloud, as if saying it would make it true.
Comet snorted again from his stall.
“She was going to leave anyway,” Leo continued, working the soap harder into the leather. “Better now than later. Better before Lila gets more attached. Before—”
Before I get more attached.
He stopped, the harness hanging loose in his hands.
Who was he kidding? He was already attached.
Had been since she’d nearly electrocuted herself and he’d come running like some knight in flannel armor.
Maybe even before that, if he was honest. Maybe since high school, when she’d chewed on her pen during physics class and he’d lost track of bridge calculations completely.
His phone buzzed again. Text from Mayor Clark:
Leo, people are asking about rides. Do you have the route mapped out?
Leo stared at the message. His thumb hovered over the screen.
He could type out a response. Make up an excuse. Vixen’s leg, equipment trouble, something. Get himself off the hook cleanly.
Or he could just... not respond. Let the silence speak for itself.
He chose silence.
Another text appeared immediately:
Is everything okay? Call me when you can.
Leo silenced his phone completely and shoved it back in his pocket.
From across the fence, he could hear faint sounds from the bakery. A door opening and closing. Mabel’s voice calling something he couldn’t make out. Normal morning sounds from a business trying to survive against impossible odds.
A business he’d just made it harder for.
Leo hung up the harness with careful precision, then moved to check water troughs. Anything to keep moving, keep busy, keep from thinking too hard about the look on Jade’s face when she heard he’d bailed on the festival.
She’d figure something out. She was resourceful, capable. She’d managed before he got involved, and she’d manage after he was gone.
The fact that his chest hurt when he thought about being “gone” from her life was something he chose not to examine.
Vixen nudged him, and he realized he’d been standing at the water trough for five minutes without actually checking anything.
“Besides,” he said aloud, as if the reindeer needed convincing, “she’s selling the bakery anyway. What does she care about one festival? It’s not like the revenue matters now.”
The words should have made him feel better. Should have eased the guilt gnawing at his ribs. If she were selling, then the whole festival was just... theater. Going through the motions for a business that was already gone.
So really, he was doing everyone a favor by pulling out now. Saving them all the effort of pretending this Christmas miracle was going to save anything.
“Right,” he told Vixen. “It doesn’t even matter. The sleigh rides were supposed to help the bakery, but if there’s no bakery...” He trailed off, the justification feeling hollow even as he spoke it.
Vixen turned her back on him, which felt like judgment.
“She said it herself,” Leo continued, his voice taking on an edge. “Selling is the only option. So what’s the point? Why show up and play Santa’s helper for a business that’s already gone?”
But even as he said it, something uncomfortable twisted in his gut. Because Jade hadn’t wanted to sell. He’d seen it in her face, heard it in her voice when she’d explained about the electrical bills and the impossible math. She’d been devastated.
And he’d taken that devastation and used it as proof of her inevitable departure. Had thrown it back at her like a weapon.
Comet snorted, steam puffing from his nostrils in the cold air.
“Fine. Maybe I feel a little bad about it,” Leo admitted. “But what does she care? In a month she’ll be back in Boston or wherever, and this place will be someone else’s problem. She doesn’t need sleigh rides. She doesn’t need—”
He stopped himself before he could finish that sentence.
She doesn’t need me.
That’s what this was really about, wasn’t it? Not Lila, not protecting himself from future pain. It was simpler and more pathetic than that: Jade was leaving, so why should he care?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he told the reindeer. “But you’re wrong. This is the smart play. The safe play.”
Vixen turned her back on him completely now, walking away with deliberate slowness that absolutely felt like judgment.
Leo spent the rest of the day avoiding his phone, avoiding the bakery windows, avoiding anything that might remind him of what he’d lost by being too scared to trust what he’d found.
By evening, he’d reorganized the feed storage, repaired a fence section that didn’t need repairing, and cleaned tack that was already clean.
And he still couldn’t stop seeing Jade’s face. The way she’d looked at him in the woods during the trial run, soft and open and trusting. The way that trust had shattered yesterday under the weight of his fear and cruelty.
The sleigh sat in the barn, polished and ready for a journey it would never take.
And Leo told himself, over and over, that he’d done the right thing.
Even though it felt like the worst mistake of his life.