You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(126)

Dean didn’t want what his father had. Not the money or the power. None of it. And Eugene could not understand that and so the fights were epic.

Sometimes Trina didn’t know who had it worse, her with her father and their long icy silences or Dean and his dad who clashed and fought and exploded against each other all the time.

It was a crappy toss-up.

“Screw him.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Dean tipped the flask to his lips and took a long pull. “Luckily, Laramie is far away and I’ll never have to come back here if I don’t want to.”

“Hear, hear,” she said, and took a swig when he handed the flask back to her.

The wind blew past the porch, and she couldn’t control her full-body shiver.

“You’re freezing,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she lied. But Dean got up off the blanket and wrapped the part he’d been sitting on around her. And then he tugged her against his chest, her cheek against the scratchy fabric of his camouflage snowmobile suit.

Her eyes went wide. She held her breath, both trying and not trying to feel his body beneath the layers between them. But she felt stupid and awkward. Heavy and stiff, like she’d suddenly turned into a mannequin.

She tried to pull away, because she didn’t know how to do that—how to lean back against Dean like it meant nothing. Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to mean. Or if it meant something to him.

Basically, she just didn’t lean back against guys.

“Just…relax,” he muttered, pulling her close, holding her still.

She sighed and did as he asked. In stages, she just let him hold all her weight and all the worry on her back, and after a while, after all the awkwardness faded away, it just felt really good. To just let him hold her up. He was big. He was strong.

He could handle it.

Dean was the one person in her life with whom she didn’t have to hide all her garbage.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, staring up at the snow falling from a coal-black sky.

“Yep.”

“Won’t your family miss you? I mean the party?”

“The McKenzie Christmas Eve Extravaganza will go on just fine without me. Besides, Josh is home.”

“How is your brother?”

“Still managing to breathe despite having his head up Dad’s butt.”

It was almost impossible to believe that Dean and Josh were brothers, except they looked nearly identical. They were just so different. Dean lived in his body and in his smile, and he was a pretty decent guy. Josh lived in Skeletor’s Snake Mountain with the rest of the bad guys.

“Thanks for the food,” she said, holding up the little bag. An olive fell out of one of the holes from the toothpicks, and she put it in her mouth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t score any of the yule log. It hadn’t gone out yet.”

Man, she did like the yule log.

“Did you play?” She wiggled a piece of cheese out of the bag.

“Yeah. Mom begged.” He sighed. “It’s not the same without you, though. ‘Silent Night’ just isn’t as pretty without the piano.”

“I miss that party.”

“No way,” he laughed. “It’s the one nice thing about our parents not being friends anymore. You don’t have to sit through that party.”

She glanced up at the black, black sky and kept her mouth shut. He just wouldn’t understand how much she used to look forward to Christmas Eve. She’d loved that party. Loved that little half hour in the middle when she and Dean would play Christmas carols.

“Can I ask you something, Trina?” he said after a while.

“Sure.”

“If your mom doesn’t come back…what are you going to do?”

“Stay out of my dad’s way, not that that will be hard. And then, after I graduate, I’m going to leave and never come back.”

“Never?”

“Not ever.”

He was quiet for a long time, and Trina sat up to look at him. He gave her a quick smile, then looked back out over the glittering snowdrifts to the red lights of the cars on the highway in the far distance.

People leaving, going someplace else. Someplace better. That’s what she thought when she looked out at those lights.

I want to be there, she thought. Tires on the road, this town in her rearview mirror.

“You?” she asked.

“Same. We gotta get outta Dusk Falls, Trina. Or they’ll poison us.”

Their parents and this stupid feud between them. All over that patch of land at the boundary of their properties. The same patch of land Dean had ridden the ATV over to get here. The land with the coyotes.

“Tell me something good,” she said. Having pulled away from Dean, she now wanted nothing more than to lean back against him. But by shifting away she felt like she’d sort of given up her claim.

“My butt is numb.”

“Mine too,” she laughed. “And I don’t think that’s good.”

“Remember the year the Christmas tree fell over at the party?”

“And smashed into the ice sculpture? Of course I remember. The look on your mom’s face…” She attempted to recreate it. A kind of slow motion horror/panic silent scream.