And suddenly, they heard the front door open, and mutually froze.
And heard footsteps.
Then Jessie started to hurriedly run circles around the tree, wrapping the lights, as if demonstrating a little bit more progress might make it believable that they hadn’t just been talking about sex.
And there was Levi, looking exhausted from the day.
“Nice,” he said.
“Yeah,” Damien practically grunted.
“I was thinking maybe we could have pizza?”
“Such a long drive,” Jessie said.
“No. I order it, and have them deliver it to a friend of mine’s address that’s on the outskirts of the edge of where they deliver. And it cuts my drive time in half.”
“That’s brilliant,” Damien said.
“A country boy can survive,” Levi said. “I’ll put the order in, and be back in about an hour.”
“Sure,” they both said.
And then when Levi walked out, they were assured that they had the house to themselves for the next hour. And that suddenly felt weighted. And very, very dangerous. “We better make progress on these decorations,” she said.
Yes. They would do decorations. As if every single one would be evidence of the fact that they hadn’t been lusting over each other. Or that she hadn’t been lusting over him.
“I don’t find you unattractive,” he said, once they hung the last decoration on the tree. “But it doesn’t matter. Because the fact is, you’re you. And I’m me. I’ve already lost my family. I can’t lose you all, too.”
Of all the things she’d expected, it hadn’t been that. And it made her feel...hopeless and sad, and deeply honored, all at once.
It made her want to draw closer to him even as she knew he was trying to push her away.
She just didn’t understand why Damien had to make her feel so much.
CHAPTER SIX
LEVIARRIVEDWITHPIZZA,and by then, the youngest Granger, Camilla, was home, too.
And he and Jessie had turned this house into a winter wonderland. As if it was evidence that they hadn’t been thinking about stripping each other’s clothes off. But that was all he’d been thinking about. The only thing. And he felt... Well, he felt a bit like the liar that he was. Both to her and to Levi.
Because it had happened. That was the thing. And he knew why he had resisted two years ago. She had been twenty-one years old, and he’d been about to leave. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her. Her innocence, the fact that she’d had a girlhood crush on him. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of any of that. She was too important to him. Not just Levi.
But now... It had happened, and he was going over excuses that sounded more and more asinine the longer he tried to stick to them. But it was this. This family thing. Sitting around eating pizza together. It mattered. With the Christmas decorations all around him that he never would’ve had if it wasn’t for them.
“Dylan is flying into Portland at like two in the morning,” Camilla said, reaching to the center of the table and pulling an olive off one of the pizzas.
“Don’t do that,” said Jessie, slapping her sister on the hand. “Nobody wants your feral fingers all over their food.”
“Jessie,” said Camilla, her tone measured. “If there is a ferality scale, you are far more at the robust end than I am.”
And it was all this family shit. It just felt like a lot. Like something different than he’d experienced in his life, and it made him even more determined to protect it. This moment made him want to double down on what he already knew.
But then he looked at Jessie, and he felt something inside himself rise up and roar. He wanted to protect her. And that was the problem. He didn’t see a way to have her and protect her, and protect this. She looked up across the pizza, her eyes caught his and he felt lightning go straight down to his gut.
“I am not,” Jessie said. And he realized that she was talking to Camilla. But she was still looking at him.
And here it was, Christmas Eve, and her brother would be here in the morning. And they would all gather and do the Christmas thing. And then Damien would go. He would go because it was what he had to do. He’d wrap things up on his own piece of land, and then he would go back up north. It would take some time for him to move down here. And then what? That was the question. Then what would happen?