Chapter 13 #2
“How ‘bout I get the cookies and you just stand here and look pretty?”
She shot me a look that was equal parts annoyed and satisfied. “This is your fault,” she muttered, tugging the flannel back on with shaking fingers. “I think you broke me.”
“Yeah?” I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I pulled the cookies out and set them on the stovetop before sliding the next pan in. “You complaining?”
She opened her mouth, probably to tell me exactly where I could shove my smugness but closed it again when she caught sight of the cookies. They were perfect—golden brown, edges crisp, centers still soft.
“Huh.” She tilted her head, examining them. “Would you look at that. It’s a Christmas miracle.”
“Told you I wouldn’t let them burn.”
“No, you told me I had twelve minutes to come,” she corrected, grabbing a spatula to transfer them. “Which, for the record, is an insane thing to say to someone.”
“No, insane would have been seeing how many times I could make you come before the next batch was done.” I waggled my eyebrows in the least mature way possible, and she snorted, a sound so familiar and sweet it almost hurt.
“A+ for confidence, but an F-minus for humility,” she said, refusing to look at me. Not that it mattered. The flush creeping up her neck told me everything I needed to know.
I watched as she lined the cookies up in perfect rows on the cooling rack, trying to memorize every detail of the moment—my flannel shirt swallowing her frame, the bare skin of her thighs peeking out from below, her damp hair curling around her face like she’d just crawled out of bed after the best sex of her life.
“You’re staring,” Kelsey said without turning.
“Damn right I am.” No point pretending otherwise. “It’s been a long time since I got to see you like this. Let me look.”
A beat passed. Her hands paused mid-cookie transfer, then slowly relaxed. She turned around, eyes searching my face. “You’re really not going to make a move, huh?”
“Already made my move, baby,” I said, dropping my voice to a rumble. “More than once. But I’m not pushing it.” I crossed my arms, rooted to the tile so she could see I meant it. “This is fine.”
Her laugh was bright and genuine, the sound filling up all the empty spaces in my chest I’d been trying to ignore. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my ex-husband?”
My smile faded. “Trying to do it different. That’s all.”
This time, when her eyes met mine, there was something like tenderness in the way she looked at me—as if she was seeing through to the inside, to the scared asshole who just wanted to keep her safe and close and happy, even if he didn’t know how.
“You’re right,” she murmured, toying with a button on her shirt. “We’ve got at least seven more batches to go. Better pace yourself, Riggs. You’re not as young as you once were, and I’d hate for you to start something you can’t finish.”
I crossed the kitchen in three strides, caging her against a cabinet. “You questioning my stamina, sweetheart?”
“Maybe I am.” She tilted her chin up, defiant even in surrender. “What are you gonna do about it?”
I cracked my neck from side to side and rolled my shoulders before dropping back to my knees between her spread legs. “Oh, darlin’. I’m gonna prove you wrong.”
The fire crackled as I tossed another log in, sending sparks spiraling up the chimney like tiny orange stars. The whole cabin still smelled like gingerbread—a scent that would forever remind me of Kelsey on my tongue, of her coming apart in my kitchen. Repeatedly.
I dusted off my hands and turned to find her curled up on the couch in yet another shirt she’d claimed as her own, remote in hand, scrolling through my streaming options with the kind of intense focus most people reserved for major life decisions.
“The Muppet Christmas Carol?” I asked, unable to keep the grin off my face when I saw her selection. “Really?”
She shot me a look. “You love this movie.”
“I tolerate this movie,” I corrected.
“Well, too bad because it’s tradition, mister,” she said, which wasn’t all that far from the truth. It had been Addie’s favorite since she was five, and she’d demanded we watch it every Christmas Eve until it became as much a tradition as hanging stockings or leaving cookies for Santa.
I flicked off the overhead lights, leaving just the tree and fireplace to illuminate the room.
The shadows softened everything, made it easier to pretend this was just another December night from before.
When movie night was sacred, when all three kids would pile on the couch between us, back when everything made sense.
“Wouldn’t be Christmas without Gonzo narrating Dickens, I guess,” I conceded.
“Exactly.” Kelsey patted the cushion beside her. “Now get your ass over here before I start it without you.”
“Fine,” I said, dropping onto the couch beside her. “But if I hear one word about how Michael Caine was the only actor who took his Muppet role seriously, I’m putting on Die Hard.”
She curled into my side immediately, the same way she’d done for thousands of movie nights before.
Head on my chest, arm draped across my stomach, legs tucked up beneath her.
My arm went around her shoulders automatically, pulling her closer.
Muscle memory. That, or maybe she’d just been made to fit there.
The opening credits rolled with Scrooge scowling his way through Victorian London as Muppets sang about what a prick he was. Kelsey nudged me when Rizzo and Gonzo showed up outside Scrooge’s counting house, doing their vaudeville routine. “This is your favorite part,” she murmured.
“My favorite part is when it’s over,” I lied.
She snorted, the sound vibrating through my chest. “You cried last time we watched it.”
“Did not.”
“Did too. When Tiny Tim died. I saw you.”
“Had something in my eye,” I muttered, but she was right. Something about that little puppet and his father’s grief always got me, especially after—
I shut the thought down before it could take root. Not tonight.
My hand moved to her shoulder, fingers tracing absent circles. This had been my move since we were teenagers—the mindless touching that said I’m here without requiring words. She relaxed into it, her breaths evening out as the Ghost of Christmas Past appeared on screen in a beam of light.
“I love this part,” Kelsey whispered as the ghost took Scrooge back to see his younger self, before life had turned him hard and bitter. “When he remembers who he used to be.”
I studied Scrooge’s face—the wonder and pain of seeing his past self, of remembering the boy he’d been before everything went wrong. Maybe that was why Kelsey loved it. We’d both been different people once. Softer. Less broken. The kind of people who believed love was enough to fix anything.
Her hand had started moving under my shirt at some point, fingers tracing the line of hair on my stomach in lazy patterns that made it hard to focus on the movie. Not sexual, exactly. More like she needed to touch, to confirm I was solid and real beneath her palm.
I caught her hand, pressing it flat against my stomach, and she nuzzled against my chest. We stayed like that through the Ghost of Christmas Present—the spirit of generosity and abundance, showing Scrooge all the love and warmth he was missing by shutting himself away.
Then the third spirit appeared.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—the silent, hooded figure that even the Muppets couldn’t make less ominous—pointing at a future Scrooge hadn’t chosen yet but was hurtling toward anyway.
On screen, Scrooge begged to know if these shadows were what would be, or what might be if he didn’t change his ways, and I couldn’t help but think about my own future.
What would my ghost show? More empty Christmases in this cabin, trying to pretend the half-decorated tree wasn’t a metaphor for my half-lived life?
More nights buying Kelsey’s expensive shampoo just to breathe in the memory of her?
More years of going through the motions while the best part of my life existed five hundred miles away, building a new future that didn’t include me?
Or worse—regret. The kind that ate you alive. The kind that came from having one last chance to say something real, to have the hard conversations, but choosing to stay silent. Letting her walk away again because I was too scared to admit I’d never stopped wanting her in every way that mattered.
Kelsey must have felt me tense because she shifted, turning to look up at me. “You okay?” she asked softly.
“Yeah.” The lie came automatically, but she saw through it.
On screen, Scrooge was promising to change, to honor Christmas in his heart and try to keep it all year round. But that was the thing about promises made in the dark—morning always came, reality always intruded, and most of us went back to being exactly who we were before.
Without a word, Kelsey moved, swinging one leg over to straddle my lap, the movie forgotten behind her.
“Hey,” she whispered, cupping my face between her palms. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere.” I gripped her hips, pulling her closer until there was no space between us. “Just thinking about what happens when—”
She kissed me before I could finish, deep and desperate, like she could swallow the words before they poisoned the air between us.
When she pulled back, her lips were swollen, her breathing ragged. She kissed along my jaw, down to my throat, her teeth grazing a spot on my ear that made me groan.
“I’m gonna take care of you now,” she whispered against my skin. “Don’t think about tomorrow. Just be here with me tonight. Please.” The words came out in a rush, her cheeks darkening even in the firelight.
Every rational part of my brain screamed that it was a bad idea. That every act of intimacy we shared would make it harder when she inevitably went back to Texas, back to her life without me.
And I’d be here, even more broken than before, with new memories to torture myself with during the long Colorado nights.
I’d lie awake wondering if she’d met someone else—someone who made her happy, who didn’t retreat to the clubhouse when shit got complicated, who knew how to say the right words instead of hiding behind silence and distance.
But who was I to deny her anything when she looked at me like that? When she said please in a tone that had always been my undoing?
“Yeah,” I breathed, lifting my hips so she could tug my jeans down. “Yeah, okay, baby.”
She smiled—soft and real and tinged with the same melancholy I felt—before sliding off my lap and settling between my knees.
It was most definitely a mistake. Hell, everything about the past three days had been a mistake. But when her mouth closed around me, hot and perfect and familiar, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
The movie played on behind her—Scrooge learning his lessons about love and redemption and second chances—while I raked my fingers through her hair and tried not to think about how this was just another Ghost of Christmas Past we were creating.
Another memory that would haunt me through all the Christmases yet to come.
But for now, I let myself have it. Let myself pretend that redemption was possible, that second chances weren’t just fiction, that the woman I’d loved since I was seventeen might somehow find her way back to loving me, too.
Even if it was just for tonight.