A Cliché Christmas(21)

No. In no sense of the word was I okay, especially not while in the presence of Weston James. “I’m fine. I just need to get going.”

“Need to or want to?” He scanned my face for answers I prayed weren’t there.

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

I rolled my eyes and hiked my satchel strap higher onto my shoulders. I squeezed past him in the tight hallway.

Peeking my head into the living room, I whispered, “Bye, Prince Pickles. I hope you get reunited with your owner soon.”

The dog was safe, fed, and drooling on a large pillow.

Crisis averted. Weston didn’t need me after all.

He never had.

Jerking the front door open, I made my way back to my car, unwilling to allow Weston to bully me into staying there a minute longer.

I stood outside in the cold, waiting for Weston to unlock my car with the keys he’d stolen from me, when I heard his voice.

“We’re not driving anywhere until we talk.”

I whipped my head around. “What?”

Arms folded, eyes narrowed, Weston stood with his feet planted shoulder-width on the porch steps.

“Be serious, Weston. Let’s go.”

“Oh, I’m serious. And if you think you’re getting these keys back without wrestling me to the ground—a wrestling match I’d thoroughly enjoy, by the way—then you’re crazy. It’s time to talk, Georgia. Inside, where we won’t die from hypothermia.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, mirroring his macho demeanor. “No.”

The smirk on his face churned my organs into a rage stew.

“Then what’s your plan, Georgia?”

I had no plan, other than to get away from him—far, far away.

“Give me the keys.” I held out my palm as a shudder racked my body from head to toe.

He arched an eyebrow. “And if I refuse?”

Before I could answer, he strode toward me and manacled his large, warm hand around my wrist. My strength faded, extracted from my being by the heart-sucking vacuum that was Weston James. My knees trembled as he raised my hand to his mouth, warming it with his breath.

And then I was transported to another lifetime.



By the age of ten, Weston had more than made himself known in my life: pulling my hair, pushing me into puddles, and giggling when I misspelled a word during the spelling bee in fourth grade. But then one afternoon after school, he found me crying alone in the park.

Even though I knew he lived across the street, I wasn’t worried about running into him—or anyone for that matter. No one played at the park in mid-October. It was too cold.

Leaning against the big oak tree, I shivered as tears rolled down my cheeks. My mom’s most recent lecture replayed in my mind—her insensitive words, her unyielding expectations, her uncompromising demands.

When Weston slumped down beside me, I envisioned every nickname imaginable involving the word baby being tacked on to Georgia by the end of the school week. He’d mock me, tease me, ridicule me for years to come. All because the girl he saw every day at school—the one who wouldn’t be caught dead showing weakness to the world, the one who had challenged him time and time again inside the safety of those four walls Monday through Friday—didn’t match the girl who sat crying in the park. The girl who was so tired of compensating for her emotionally absent mother.

But Weston said nothing.

He simply lifted my hands to his mouth and warmed me from the inside out.

No words needed.

After that day, he still pestered me, of course, still sought me out in school and joked with me, but that day at the tree changed me—gave me hope.

That we could be more than just classmates.

That he could be something I’d never really had before.

A friend.

An unspoken, unexpected, friend.



Weston’s inviting breath dissolved the knot that had wrapped itself around my heart and held me captive to my doubts. As his lips brushed against my fingertips, his warmth sparked my frozen core back to life. I didn’t yank my hand away, or twist my arm, or elbow his wickedly attractive face. I simply thawed under his touch, berating myself for the weakness that had once again taken me over.

He reached for my other hand as if it were a piece of kindling to add to a fire—the one he’d just built inside me. “You are so stubborn.”

Diverting my eyes, I exhaled shakily.

“Why do you do this, Weston?”

“Do what?”

“This?” I nodded to my hands and pulled them away from his grasp, cold seeping into my bones immediately. “Just stop it already. We aren’t kids anymore.”

His intense gaze steamrolled me. “No, we certainly are not.”

Every hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. I swallowed.

“Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know, Georgia? Tell me why one day I was confessing my feelings to you and the next you pretended not to know me. Like I was suddenly some kind of creep for trying to talk to you at school . . . or anywhere.”

Weston stepped closer as my backside pressed against the freezing metal of my car door.

“Maybe I got tired of being your dirty little secret, the butt of your jokes.”

His jaw clenched. “What are you talking about?”