Chapter 6
Garrett
I don’t even know why I’m going home for Christmas.
Home.
Technically, sure. Pine Harbour is my hometown. It’s where I was raised by my dad—if you can call benign neglect by an alcoholic single father who drank himself to an early death raising—and it’s where I fell in love at the too-young-to-know-better age of sixteen.
But as soon as Rory left, I followed.
And for the next twelve years, I thought of Rory as my home.
Ironic, then, that the last gift I have to wrap, the one I don’t really want to wrap, is for her.
The cardboard box sat on my shitty secondhand coffee table until I finished packing everything else. It’s something I ordered for Rory in October, didn’t have a chance to give her in November, and decided—selfishly—not to give her three days ago.
Now it’s taunting me.
Jesus, I’m not looking forward to this week.
That’s probably why I’m dawdling. It’s not like I had that much wrapping to do. I have a bag of gifts for my cousins’ kids, and a few bottles of booze that’s only available in Quebec to soften my couch-surfing request when I get there.
Maybe if shit gets too depressing, I’ll sleep in my truck at my cousin Josh’s garage.
There’s also a nice cutting board for Rory’s parents wrapped up, too, in case we cross paths.
Just because they’re my ex-in-laws doesn’t mean I forget how much they all love Christmas.
Since I fucking don’t, if I’m going to buy presents, I’ll include the people who do.
And if I don’t see them, well…it’s probably time I outfit the kitchen in this studio apartment a bit better than the dollar-store basics I bought nine months ago.
As I’m reaching for the wrapping paper, I get a weather alert on my phone. After a week of above seasonal temps, the rest of Ontario is finally getting some snow. Pine Harbour might get a white Christmas after all.
Rory will love that.
But she won’t love the drive.
Frowning, I fire off a quick message, hoping it sounds casual.
Are you on the highway or did you take the backroads? Looks like a storm is rolling in across Toronto.
Then I finish wrapping her present and shove it in the bag with the cutting board for her parents.
By the time I have everything in the truck, I give in to the need to check to see if she’s read my messages. Because Dr. Rory Minelli, Chief Fucking Resident, and the smartest person I’ve ever met, has her read receipts turned on.
Something I usually enjoy, watching that delivered notification turn to read. I can practically hear her overactive brain whirring from the other side of Little Italy as she tries to decide how to reply to me.
But today isn’t like the other night, or in the summer. This isn’t…horny Garrett concern. This is just human being Garrett concern.
And she hasn’t read my text message.
She only wants one thing from you, dude, and it isn’t a weather report.
That doesn’t stop me from glancing at my phone again.
I tap my thumb against the steering wheel of my truck. Of course she isn’t going to open my messages—she isn’t in heat.
Swearing under my breath, because I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t do this, I swipe into her contact card.
The smartest woman I know also still shares her location with me. It’s reckless. It means she hasn’t thought about it at all, isn’t being careful. It isn’t right that I can find out at a glance where she is.
And one of these days, if I look at the wrong time, I’ll see her somewhere I wouldn’t want to know about—like on a date, or at the house of someone new.
But this morning, she’s still at home.
I frown. She hates driving in the dark, and she should have left three hours ago if she wanted to make it to Pine Harbour before dusk.
Me too, but I don’t mind night drives.
I put the truck in gear, but I don’t head for the highway. I’ll just swing by her house and offer to convoy drive, so she isn’t alone for that last hour.
I tell myself it’s just the nice thing to do. A holiday kindness. But I know the truth. I want to see her, even if it hurts.
I’ll always want to see Rory, even if it wrecks me every time. I will do anything, take any opportunity, to cross paths with the only woman I’ve ever loved, even if she doesn’t love me back anymore.
I follow the location dot for her phone and find her in the small parking lot behind her building. It’s deserted this morning, everyone either at work or gone for the holidays already.
I park my truck right beside where she’s standing next to an older model hatchback I’ve never seen before, another slice of the life she’s building without me.
She turns, and her shoulders slump.
I step out and slam the door shut harder than I mean to. The wind bites at my face. It’s cold as hell and getting colder.
“Battery?” I ask, nodding toward the car.
She doesn’t meet my gaze as she sighs and tucks her hands into her coat pocket. “Won’t even turn over.”
“Pop the hood for me.” I open it, check the terminals. Corroded. Her battery’s toast. I already know it won’t jump, but I try anyway. She’s watching me and I need something to do with my hands, anything other than touching her.
The seconds tick by.
“Should I go and get a new battery?” she finally asks.
“It’s not just the battery.”
“But should I maybe try that?”
I roll my eyes.
“Yeah.” I jerk my head at the truck. “Get in.”
She snaps her little back super straight. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll take you to the store if you think a new battery is all you need.”
“I’m fine on my own.”
“Yeah? What are you going to do, call an Uber? And then install the battery yourself? If that did work, you still wouldn’t get home until midnight.”
“Don’t yell at me,” she snaps.
Which is all the invitation I need to raise my voice. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you bought a car? Did you even get it properly checked out?”
“Because you’d act like this!”
“Like the fucking thing needs to be re-certified before you take it on the road? You’re fucking right I would.” I drag my hand over my face, then twist and put my entire attention on closing the hood of her car.
Carefully.
“I don’t need your help,” she says, her voice small.
“I know you don’t,” I say. I’m so fucking tired. “When are you coming back?”
“I’m just going up for a few days. I can get Josh to look at it once I’m there, though.”
There’s no way she’s getting the car fixed and driving it all the way to Pine Harbour. “I’ve got room in the truck.”
She stares at me like I just offered to perform open-heart surgery in the parking lot. “What?”
“I’ll drive you.”
Silence.
“You got someone else heading that way?”
She frowns. “No.”
“Then get in the truck.”
“But we can’t—” She’s so righteous when she’s mad. Her eyes blaze. “It’s eight hours trapped in a small space with me.”
“I’ll survive.”
“What about your ninety-minute max?”
“Get in the truck, Rory.”
She stares at me like I’m a stranger, and not the guy who has done this exact drive with her a couple dozen times before. A whole war goes on behind her snappish eyes, and logic wins out, but she’s not happy about it.
I make room for her stuff, a familiar game of Tetris that fills the remaining space in the truck cab and pushes a lot of inconvenient déjà vu buttons.
Now it feels like a drive home for the holidays. All those wintery road trips I complained about, because I didn’t get the big deal about a time of year that had never been special for me.
But Rory loves Christmas. Loves it.
She gets in and buckles her seatbelt. Then she pulls her toque lower and exhales like this whole ride is a bad idea.
She’s probably right.
I put the truck in gear.
She’s not looking at me, but I catch her reflection in the window. She looks tired. That deep-in-the-bone exhaustion I remember from when her call shifts used to run over. Back then, I’d have food waiting when she got home.
“I have snacks,” I offer. “Healthy ones, even.”
No response.
So I add, “You can nap if you want.”
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself. Eight hours ahead of us.”
“Don’t remind me,” she mutters under her breath.
“I think we’ll survive.”
“Don’t be so confident.”
“Last I checked, a little arguing hasn’t killed anyone. Besides, it’s better to get it out of our system now than have it come up while we’re trapped in the same small town for a week.”
She stiffens. “Wait—how long are you staying?”
Zero to sixty. We didn’t even get out of the parking lot. “It’s a figure of speech. I know you’ve got to be back in a couple days. I’ll head back whenever you need to. It’s not like I want to spend that much time up there, anyway.”
She flicks the briefest of glances my way. “I know it’s not your favourite time of year.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Plus, I’m not really looking forward to having to explain all this.”
“Explain what?”
“Uh… Us? The reason I need to crash on an available Kincaid couch?”
“You haven’t told them?” She sounds shocked.
“No.” God, the way my neck just tightened up. And nobody’s asked after Rory, either, in months, so I guess everyone just agrees that it makes sense we’re done. “It went okay with your folks?”
She doesn’t answer. Just stares out the window.
My pulse picks up. “Rory? You did tell them, right?”
“No,” she admits finally.
Jesus. “Have you told anyone?”
She shakes her head.
“Not even your sisters?”
“God, no.”
“We broke up in April.”
“And I was heading into my final year of residency,” she snaps. “Work is literally all I have time for.”
I’m painfully aware of that fact. My cock wants to point out a few highlight moments where she made exceptions to that rule, but…there was also a stretch in there were we couldn’t even convince her to take orgasm breaks.
I try to drag in a deep breath, but my chest is too damn tight. I exhale carefully, drumming my thumb against the steering wheel. “Okay, fair. I guess I’ve been treading water, too.”
She gestures toward my lap, which doesn’t help with the thickening going on in my jeans. “You’ve changed plenty.”
I don’t like the edge in her voice. She’s teasing, but she’s not.