A Very Merry Bromance (Bromance Book Club #5) (42)

She folded it into her palm. “Is this what it’s always like when you get a song idea?”

“No,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I mean, not in a long time.” He gripped her shoulders then and planted a toe-curling kiss on her lips. “I think you’re my muse.”

In the short annals of her dating history, that line was definitely going to the top of her How to Make Gretchen Melt list.

“I swear to God, I will make this up to you,” he said, still holding her shoulders.

“There’s nothing to make up. Go do your thing.”

“The gate will open when you approach it.” Once more, he bent and kissed her.

Then he turned on his heel and strode toward the hallway with a gait she recognized. Not because it was his, but because it was hers. He moved with the purpose and determination that she felt every time she got a new case.

He stopped suddenly, turned around, and jogged back to her.

“Drive careful,” he said. “These roads get really dark, and the deer dart out before you can see them.”

“Worried about your car?” she teased.

“Worried about you.”

Colton pressed his fingers to his lips and turned around for the final time. His quick footsteps faded as he disappeared into a wing of the house she hadn’t explored. She opened her hand and looked at the key fob he’d given her. Loaning her his car was perhaps as intimate as their kiss. A person didn’t just loan their car to anyone. Because it insinuated something intangible. Something she’d had precious little of from the people closest to her.

Trust.

And not as in, I trust you won’t wreck my car.

More like, I trust that you won’t wreck me.

And that’s what scared her. He could give her a hundred romance novels to read and change her mind about Christmas, but one thing wouldn’t change.

She was a Winthrop. And eventually, they wrecked everything in their paths.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


Colton heard voices. Faraway voices.

“I think he’s dead.”

“Poke him with a stick or something. See if he moves.”

“What if he doesn’t? Do we have to call someone? Because I really need to get these presents wrapped today.”

Colton peeled open one eye and found the whole crew—Malcolm, Mack, Noah, Vlad, Gavin, Yan, and Del—all staring down at him as if conducting an autopsy. Each wore apprehensive expressions and blinking reindeer antlers.

“Jesus, you look like roadkill,” Mack said. “You sick or something?”

“What are you doing here?” His voice was like sandpaper.

Vlad held up a roll of wrapping paper. “Wrapping party, remember?”

Fuck. Colton had, in fact, not remembered. He sat up, stifling a yawn. “What time is it?”

“It’s eleven o’clock, fuck stick,” Noah said. “That’s what time you told us to come over.” His hand dove into one of the bags he carried, and he pulled out another set of antlers. “We got some for you too.”

“How’d you get in?” Colton groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“You gave me a key and the security code,” Vlad said.

“That was for emergencies.”

“This is an emergency,” Vlad said. “Elena wants presents wrapped early to see if they’ll all fit in my Santa sack, and if they don’t then we have to figure out something else.”

Mack snorted. “Santa sack.”

Noah backed away from the couch and cast a gaze around the room, taking in the chaos left over from last night. Scraps of paper were all over the floor by the piano bench, some crumpled. Four empty bottles of water were lined up along the rim of the piano. Leaning against the legs, two of his guitars.

“Rough night?” Noah asked.

“I was up late writing.” Which felt like the world’s biggest understatement. He’d been possessed last night. As soon as Gretchen left, he’d sat down at his piano, and the songs had poured out of him. He didn’t stop until he passed out on the couch sometime before dawn. He hadn’t been that inspired in years. It was as if some great dam in his mind had been cleared of debris and the river of words began to flow again. Which was so shitty of a metaphor that he’d be ashamed to use it in a song, but still . . . it fit.

Noah patted his shoulder. “You wrote another new song? That’s great, brother.”

“Three,” Colton corrected.

“Three?” The guys said it together in a harmonized holy shit pitch.

“You wrote three songs last night?” Yan said, apparently just to clarify.

“That must be some kind of record,” Vlad said, plopping down on the opposite end of the couch. His reindeer antlers jostled back and forth with the movement. “Will you play them for us?”

“No.”

Vlad pouted. “Why not?”

“Because they’re just first drafts.”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Noah pointed out.

True. But this was different. For the first time in his life, he was well and truly terrified that people wouldn’t like his songs. And not even just because of what happened with the label, but because these new songs were a total departure from what he’d written before. They were the most honest things he’d ever written.