A Cross-Country Christmas(40)

He shrugged, still holding on to her hand.

“It’s the best romance novel ever written. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy spend an agonizing amount of time misjudging each other and completely misunderstanding the other’s motives. Their mutual disdain for each other is because they’re both proud and prejudiced and. . .”

“Kind of sounds like you and me,” he said.

Her forehead wrinkled. “No. Mr. Darcy was hopelessly in love with Elizabeth and. . .” She trailed off, a blush rising to her cheeks as he slowly raised his eyebrows at her.

“She falls hopelessly in love with him?”

She glanced at their hands, still clasped together, then quickly pulled hers away. “Well, of course. It’s a romance novel.”

“Right,” he said. “Sounds kind of silly.”

She gasped, then narrowed her eyes. “You athletes are all the same.”

“Oh?”

“Have you even ever read a novel? Or is that too boring for you?”

“There you go, judging me again,” he said.

She sighed.

“Just like Elizabeth Bennet,” he said. “I know Darcy had his faults, but she writes him off pretty early on, don’t you think? Makes all these assumptions about his actions and his personality, and all the poor guy is trying to do is take care of the people he loves. Plus, she was totally creeping in on his conversation when she was hiding behind the seats at the dance.”

Again, she stopped, right in front of a wreath booth, a look of disbelief on her face.

“I might’ve misled you. . .a little,” he said.

She raised a brow. “Just answer me one question—Jennifer Ehle or Kiera Knightly?”

“Kiera Knightly. Hands down,” he said, to her astonishment. “And you and Elizabeth have a whole lot in common.”

“Hey, look! You’re under the mistletoe!”

Lauren spun in the direction of the voice to find a middle-school-aged girl pointing at them.

Will looked up, and Lauren followed his gaze. Sure enough, they were standing right underneath one of the many bunches of mistletoe hung around the market.

Lauren hurried away from it. “We’ll have to be more careful where we stop.”

Will glanced at the little girl, who shrugged and said, “Aww.”

You and me both, kid.

He had made great strides with Lauren—they were friends now, sort of. And he was lucky to call someone like her his friend, even if she was prickly. He kind of loved that.

It was more than enough.

He lifted his phone and snapped a photo of her, bathed in the dim white glow of the lights overhead. He glanced down at the image on his screen.

Who was he kidding? Being friends with her would never be enough.





Chapter 18





Lauren lay in the quiet hotel room, the light from the lamppost outside the window barely filtering in through the drawn curtains. It was too dark to make anything out, but she didn’t need to see Will to know he was there, laying on the loveseat, only a few yards away.

She could hear him breathing.

She stared at the ceiling, replaying the night in her mind on repeat. The conversation. The torchlight parade. The mistletoe.

His comments about her not living in the moment.

She’d judged him harshly, and it shamed her.

Their approaches to life were so different. Confident and apprehensive in exactly the opposite ways. He said she made him want to go after those things he never admitted he wanted—never thought he deserved. And she convinced him. Inspired him, even.

Can I learn the same from Will?

After all, he wasn’t wrong about her—he wasn’t wrong about her all those years ago either. Never mind that it was painful to think about, but Lauren wasn’t the popular girl. She wasn’t winning over guys with beauty. She was plain. Studious.

Boring.

Lauren’s life, her history, her parents, her freshman year during Christmas break—she’d locked all those hard memories away in a mental box and figuratively swallowed the key. All that damage kept her relationally closed off and singularly focused, pursuing only things that had nothing to do with people. With the exception of Maddie, she didn’t let anyone else in.

If she didn’t, she couldn’t get hurt.

But the problem she was starting to realize was how she had missed out on the moments of her life.

How does that quote go? ‘Life is what’s happening while you’re busy making other plans’? That was absolutely Lauren. How much did she even remember about the years that had led her here? She’d been compacting her life into big projects and promotions—and that compacted 365 days into four or five events.

Time shrinks when it’s not paid attention to.

She rushed purposefully toward her career goals, but what else did she really have?

“Will?” She whispered, her heart teetering, the same way she felt at the top of that hill with an inner tube in her hand. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

She paused. If she told him something about herself, she couldn’t take it back. He’d know it forever.

She panicked. “How’s. . .um, the loveseat? Over there?” Mental face-palm.

Will fake stretched with a loud groan, smacked his lips like he was half asleep, and said, “Oh, you know, can’t complain.”