You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(133)

His blue eyes moved over her with intensity, as if he were checking her for injury. Blood, maybe from a wound. But all her wounds were internal. And he already knew about those.

“You okay?” he asked. For a moment the weight of the memory, of both their memories, was almost too much to bear.

This is why she’d stayed away for so long. Because it was all too grim. There was nowhere to turn here without running into her failure, the ghost of the scared, trapped kid she’d been. Unloved and left behind.

On the heels of that came the freezing anger. The urge to push herself away from anyone that could potentially hurt her.

“Trina?”

“It’s never a good night.” She turned the mug in her hands, letting the heat seep into her skin. Part of her felt like she’d never thawed from that night. She was still a frozen girl sitting outside in December, waiting for her mom to come home.

“You ever hear from your mom?” he asked.

“Yeah. She called once a few years ago.”

“Once?”

“I wasn’t interested in forgiving her. I mean…my phone rang one day and it was her, and I’m supposed to just forgive her?”

“No. But aren’t you curious?”

“She lives in Denver. She’s married to a dentist, has two step-kids. And she left me. She left me behind like I didn’t matter. So I figure I got all the pertinent details.”

“Oh my God, Trina—”

“It’s fine,” she said. Though it wasn’t. Every other day of the year she barely thought about it, but on Christmas Eve, it stung. Hard. And Christmas Eve back here… God, what had she been thinking?

She stood, unable to sit. The urge to move, to leave, was hard to resist.

It was so, so hard to stay.

“Why are we here?” The question sprang from some dark place. A dark place she’d been able to forget about the last few years. She’d buried it under work, endless work. And distance. Miles of it.

“Well, I live here.” He shot her that cocky grin that made her want to climb inside his lap, his memories, into every joke he had. “And last night you wanted to get laid.”

“No, I mean, how are we both here? In Dusk Falls? We promised, remember? That we’d never come back?”

“I remember.” He shrugged. Set his coffee down. Picked it back up. Odd, he seemed nervous. Dean was never nervous. “I don’t know, Trina. But we were kids and I think maybe some places are hard to avoid.”

“Right.” The bitterness, the guilt she felt over her choice, it would not be contained and came out as a terrible, rough laugh. “This place shouldn’t be one of them. It’s nothing but bad memories for both of us.”

“Not all bad.” He waggled his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the bed.

She laughed, happy to jump onto the raft of easier thoughts. “Not all bad. A little foggy, maybe.”

“You only have yourself to blame. The shots were your idea.”

“No way,” she cried. She was not a shot kind of girl. She was a half a white-wine spritzer at a firm party kind of girl.

“Hand to God, you wanted tequila.” He leaned back against the counter. “So, what are you doing back here? Last night you didn’t say.”

No. Last night she’d avoided the issue.

“New job,” she hedged.

“Around here?” His happiness actually made her hurt. “I thought when you left for law school in California, we lost you forever.”

“I couldn’t turn it down.”

Tell him. Tell him. He’s going to find out sooner or later.

“Well, I for one am happy to see you.”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him over the edge of her mug. “You made that clear last night.”

She’d forgotten one of the most adorable things about Dean. He blushed. Bright pink. Big burly man blushing like that, it was enough to make her take her pants off again.

“When did you move back here?” she asked.

“To my palace above a bar?” He spread his arms out wide.

“No, Dusk Falls. Last I heard you were engaged and living near Laramie.”

“We broke it off before the wedding. I think she caught on that I was more interested in pissing off my dad than I was in actually being married. So we split—or rather, she split. And last year I…ah…I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Really? You ramrodding somewhere?”

“Yeah.” He said it casually. But she knew that was all he’d ever wanted, and his family had sold much of their herd and acreage years ago. But still, he’d gone to school and graduated top of his class in land management, despite the narrowing field.

He’d gotten what he wanted, what he’d worked hard for, what his father both disdained and never thought he could do. He got it.

And that wasn’t easy in his world. In any world.

She put her mug down on the edge of a bookshelf and crossed the room to him, like he was gravity and she was a stone at the top of a hill.

He turned slightly to face her when she came to stand beside him. Both their hips pressed against the counter. Their bodies cupped the air between them. While the cold wind blew against the window, she was safe and warm. With Dean. The world could fall away around them. As long as she had this moment. This now.