You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(147)

This is me, she thought. All of me. Wanting all of you.

He sighed, said something soft she didn’t hear or understand, and his hands gripped her waist, the strange fabric of her dress sliding between them, amplifying every touch, broadcasting it all over her body.

Hey! Dean is touching me now!

She rose up on her toes. He bent down. They met halfway.

His lips were dry. He smelled like pencil lead. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as hard as she could. For as long as she could.

I won’t let you go. Not again. Never again.

“Let’s go check on your mom,” she said.

“And then what?”

“Will you come with me?” she asked, pulling away from the kiss.

His eyes, his touch, everything about him said yes.

“Where?”

“To my house.”

“I’ve never been to your house.”

She wrapped her arm through his, pulling them into motion. “Well, you are in for a very short, very boring tour.”

“What are we going to do there?” he asked.

“Talk,” she said.

He booed.

“I think we have a lot we need to say,” she said. “I know there’s a lot I want to tell you. About how sorry I am and how much I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

“I remember when we were kids and you said that this place would poison us. That our parents would.”

“I remember.”

“They almost did, Dean. They almost took all this away from us, and I think we need to get out all the poison.”

“Okay. Get out poison. Then what?”

“Well, then I imagine we’re going to be so emotionally wrung out and exhausted that we’ll fall asleep.” Now she was just having fun with him. And she wanted to keep having fun with him forever. She wanted it to never end.

“Nap. Got it. And then?”

“Monkey sex, Dean. Then monkey sex.”

“Excellent!”

“We got time, boy. We got plenty of time.”

He stopped and pulled her in close, breathing kisses across her face. “Merry Christmas, Trina,” he said.

“Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered back.

They stepped back into Marion’s tiny little hospital room and were both brought up short by the sight of Eugene, in a big black overcoat, leaning over Marion’s bed, pressing kisses to her forehead.

She felt Dean’s entire body tense up. And she wanted, badly, to get him out of here before something happened between Dean and his father.

“Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but the two adults jumped back as if they’d been caught necking.

“Trina,” Eugene said in his deep voice. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

“It’s no problem. None at all. Let me just get our stuff.”

Dean stepped out of the shadows with her and Eugene’s eyes beneath the bushy white eyebrows went wide.

“Dad,” Dean said with a short nod of his head while he grabbed his jacket off the bed.

“Dean.”

Trina nearly rolled her eyes. The testosterone was so thick she could barely see.

“Glad to see you could make it to your wife’s hospital bed,” Dean said while shrugging into his coat. “Had to finish that last cigar, I suppose.”

“Your mother asked me to stay at the party,” he said.

“Because that’s what Mom does,” he said. “Mom says that kind of thing.”

“And I mean it,” Marion said. “Stop, Dean.”

Trina had her feet wedged into her shoes and her coat and purse over her arm. She went back to Dean and put a hand against his chest. “Let’s just go, Dean,” she whispered.

Dean’s eyes went from his mother to Trina and she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. And she had that strange sensation of knowing him both really well and not at all. Not really. And instead of making her daunted or worried, the thought was a happy one. An exciting one. Getting to know all the parts of this man would be happy work. That would make for happy days.

He touched her hair, pushed it behind her ear. “Maybe I need to do some work to deserve you,” he whispered for her ears alone.

“Is there something happening between you two?” Eugene asked, pointing a finger at Trina and Dean.

“If it is, I can only say it’s about damn time,” Marion said, holding his hand. “Wish them a merry Christmas and let them go back to their evening.”

Eugene seemed slightly baffled, as if he’d walked into the wrong room.

“Merry Christmas, Dean. Trina,” he said with a sort of head bow.

“Merry Christmas, Dad,” Dean said, then wrapped his arm around Trina’s shoulder and led her out of the room.

“That was strange,” she said. “Did you think that was strange?”

“Things are always strange with my dad,” Dean said. “I’ll drive. We can come back to get your car in the morning.”

“But that was stranger than usual, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. We didn’t fight.”

“Right,” she said, with a smile. “You didn’t fight.”

“It’s a Christmas miracle.”