Chapter 19
kelsey
Something that had felt earth-shattering at the time but was probably related to his spending either too much time at the club or the body shop he’d taken over after Phantom passed.
The angel had missed his skull by a solid three inches, thank God, and embedded itself in the drywall behind him with enough force to snap off her halo and crack her porcelain wings.
Now she hung on the tree at a perpetual fifteen-degree angle, halo M.I.A.
, looking like she’d been hitting the communion wine a little too hard.
Like some kind of battle-scarred survivor of our marriage.
Which, I supposed, made two of us.
I reached out to straighten her, my fingers hovering over the gold-painted dress that had chipped away to reveal the white ceramic underneath. Then I pulled back. Let her stay crooked. She’d earned it.
Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows, turning the snow-covered landscape beyond into something that belonged on a postcard. The kind of light that made everything look softer and cozier.
If someone had told me I’d be standing in my ex-husband’s living room, wearing nothing but thick wool socks and one of his old Silent Phoenix T-shirts while White Christmas played on the TV, I would have told them pigs had a better chance at flying.
But here I was, fiddling with a Christmas tree that was—according to Teddy—’Perfectly fine, Kels. Jesus Christ, stop fucking with it,’ while Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye performed “Sisters” in drag on the screen behind me.
A year ago, I would have been horrified at the lack of proper Christmas attire.
That Kelsey had a closet full of holiday sweaters and blouses for every day of December.
She’d insisted on picture-perfect family photos where everyone smiled just right, even when Levi was having a bad day, and Teddy was exhausted from work, and the girls just wanted to be literally anywhere but home.
That Kelsey had performed Christmas like it was an Olympic sport, and she was going for gold.
This Kelsey hadn’t worn real pants in three days and was seriously considering making it a New Year’s resolution.
From the kitchen came the unmistakable sound of Teddy moving around—cupboard doors closing with unnecessary force, the coffee maker beeping, his low grunt when he bent to get something from a lower shelf.
Living with him had always been a little like cohabitating with a bear.
Not in a dangerous way, but in the sense that he took up space unapologetically, moved through the world with a kind of lumbering confidence that occasionally resulted in knocked-over coffee mugs and cabinet doors left hanging open.
I’d spent years trying to domesticate that wildness, to smooth his rough edges into something that fit better with my vision of what our life should look like. Funny how it had never occurred to me that maybe I was the one who needed smoothing.
The kitchen went quiet for a beat, then Teddy emerged carrying a plate of gingerbread cookies in one hand and two mugs of coffee in the other.
The jeans he’d thrown on when we finally emerged from the bedroom rode dangerously low on his hips, revealing a V of muscle that had no business existing on a fifty-three-year-old man.
His hair was pulled back in a messy low knot, and he hadn’t bothered with a shirt because why would he cover up all that.
If my ovaries hadn’t been decommissioned, they absolutely would have given a standing ovation.
I’d spent two years at the gym trying to reclaim some version of my body that I’d lost to pregnancy and three decades of stress-eating and yo-yo dieting, and here he was looking like a Calvin Klein ad for the AARP crowd.
It felt like a tragedy that we’d spent the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon sleeping like the dead and not having a sex marathon.
“You’re staring,” he said, a knowing grin spreading across his features as he set the coffee and cookies on the table beside the couch.
I planted a hand on my hip and scoffed, “You’re half-naked in my living room, Theodore. Where else should I look?”
His tongue clicked against his teeth. “Your living room, huh? That was fast.”
“You’re the one who invited me to move in approximately—” I bit the inside of my cheek, squinting to read the clock on the oven. “—what, eight hours ago? I’m just practicing.”
“Practice makes perfect, baby.” He set the mugs on the coffee table and dropped onto the couch with an emphatic groan.
“Need your Life Alert, Grandpa?” I asked cheekily.
He shot me a look that could have melted steel. “Keep it up, Kels. See where that smart mouth gets you.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” I turned back to the tree, fighting the smile threatening to break free.
I felt lighter than I had in years. Like someone had taken the forty-pound weighted vest I’d been wearing since Levi died and finally let me shrug it off.
My shoulders didn’t ache. My jaw wasn’t clenched.
The constant background hum of anxiety that had been my companion for so long had quieted to something manageable.
“Careful with that one,” Teddy rumbled as my fingers moved back to the angel. “Lost her halo and almost took my eye out last time you handled her. Starting to think maybe she’s not as angelic as advertised.”
When I glanced over my shoulder, he was watching me in the way only someone with three decades of context could—equal parts fondness and exasperation.
“Maybe she was just tired of being perfect,” I’d said it jokingly, but the truth was, I was tired of being perfect. Exhausted by it, actually.
“Maybe she was,” he agreed softly.
I ran my index finger over the crack in the wings, ostensibly to give the angel one final adjustment, but really because I needed a second to collect myself.
I’d spent most of my life scared of being anything less than perfect. Because perfect meant safe. Perfect meant no one could criticize or find me lacking.
A damaged ornament never would have made it onto old Kelsey’s tree. I would have spent hours ensuring everything was perfect and matched that year’s color theme.
The old me would have been up since dawn, meal-prepping something elaborate and Instagram-worthy.
She would have been counting the carbs in those gingerbread cookies, calculating how many miles she’d need to run to burn them off.
She would have been frantically checking in with the girls and mentally cataloging everything that still needed to be done before the holiday could be properly enjoyed.
Matching pajamas.
Raspberry-cream cheese Danishes made with crescent rolls and shaped into candy canes.
Christmas newsletters where I made our life sound like a Hallmark movie when the reality was anything but.
Perfect meant doing everything and still never feeling like it was enough.
The leather on the couch creaked as Teddy got up and crossed the living room. He came up behind me, banding both arms around my shoulders and pulling me back against his hard body.
“Know what I see when I look at that angel?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
“Evidence of my terrible aim?”
He huffed out a laugh. “See a woman who loved me enough to throw shit at my head when I was being an asshole. See someone who fought for us, even when fighting meant breaking things.”
I craned my neck to find his hazel eyes. Warm and open and so full of love it took my breath away.
“You’re being serious,” I said, not quite a question.
Teddy pointed to a mercury glass ornament, our reflections staring back at us in the metallic, mirrored finish. “I see you, Kels—no makeup on, hair a mess, wearing my shirt—this is the girl I fell in love with. Not some perfect version you thought you needed to be. Just you.”
He pressed a smacking kiss against my cheek and swatted my backside before returning to the couch. “Now, quit fucking with the goddamn tree and come eat your dinner.”
A laugh bubbled up. “Gingerbread cookies and coffee constitute dinner now?”
“Hey, we’re empty nesters living in sin. We can eat whatever the hell we want.” With the plate balanced on his thigh, he picked up one of the cookies—one of the Christmas light ones that bore an unfortunate resemblance to a butt plug—and took a bite.
The lamp on the side table caught the silver threads running through his beard, turning them platinum in the golden light.
Teddy was beautiful. Devastating, really, in the way that dangerous things often were. All that barely contained power wrapped in tattooed muscle and the kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly who you were and refusing to apologize for it.
And he was mine. Again. Still. Always.
I padded over, hyperaware of how his gaze tracked the movement of my bare legs.
A week ago, I would have been self-conscious about the way my thighs touched, about the cellulite and spider veins that had appeared after pregnancy, about all the ways my fifty-one-year-old body wasn’t what it used to be.
Now, though? I felt like a model walking a runway with the way he was looking at me.
“Had to ice these damn things all by myself yesterday,” he said, patting the empty space beside him on the couch. “Least you can do is enjoy ‘em with me.”
Heat crept up my throat as I recalled the reason he’d had to do it all by himself. How I’d ended up sprawled across his kitchen island, limbs still quaking and unable to move after my fourth or maybe fifth orgasm, while he whipped up the royal icing with a smug expression.
I stopped in front of the couch, and before he could say anything, I plucked the plate from his lap before sliding onto it myself.
One arm automatically went around my shoulders while the other went to my bare legs, fingers splaying wide across my skin. “What’re you doing, baby?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
I selected a gingerbread cookie shaped like a candy cane and bit off the tip while keeping my expression perfectly innocent. “Eating dinner. Like you said.”