And it would’ve been good. Sometimes it hit him. That he really couldn’t call her anymore. That she wasn’t just down the hall. That nobody would ever care for him again the way that she had.
But most of the time, he was all right.
“I feel like I should’ve said something sooner.”
“Oh, you mean when we were realizing that we had sex with each other? Because the fact that you didn’t make me think of my mother right around that time is actually all right with me.”
She snorted, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said. “If you can’t laugh about it, what’s the point of living through it? And by that I mean my mother’s death and the fact that I screwed you.”
“Levi doesn’t need to know,” she said. He took a big step over a fallen log, and stopped and watched as Jessie scrambled over the same one. “There’s no reason to tell him.”
“Sure,” he said, gritting his teeth. “We need to swing by my place.”
“Your place?” she asked.
“I just mean the cabin I’m staying in. There’s an axe inside, and we’re going to need it to cut down the tree.”
“Oh. Good point.”
The little cabin came into view, and he marched right in and grabbed the hatchet from the front room. And when he came out, she was standing about twenty-five feet from the entry, her arms wrapped around herself, her little nose cherry red. She was just so damned cute. And that was the problem. He’d thought that way back when, and he thought it now. And he was too old for her. Too jaded for her. Too everything for her.
But you had her now.
True. But he hadn’t known it.
Like that makes it better. It makes you a bigger ass, actually.
His self-awareness could take a hike as far as he was concerned.
“You look like you’re afraid I’m going to bite you.”
She laughed. It was a strange and almost frantic sound. “To be honest,” she said, “I’m actually slightly more afraid that I’ll bite you.”
“Don’t be so honest, Jessie.”
Her words caused a kick of lust to hit him in the stomach.
“Why not? You’ve seen me naked. What’s the point of lying?”
“For sanity,” he returned.
They continued walking through the snow, with Jessie shambling behind him, taking two steps to keep up to his one.
And there he saw it. A big, glorious pine tree. Exactly the kind that his mother would’ve loved. And that mattered. It just did. Because he wasn’t in his own place for Christmas.
“I like this one,” he said.
She stood back, wrinkling her cherry-red nose. “I mean... It’s okay.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.”
“The girl who was at the masquerade ball last night is not a huge fan of Christmas.”
“No.”