Chapter 5

ChapterFive

Nick

She doesn’t answer right away, and I’m shaken by the play of emotion that burns through her burnished whiskey eyes as, finally, tipping her little chin up at me, defiance settled in her eyes, she demands, “Are you lonely?”

I’m familiar enough with deflection to spot it anywhere. “I’m not an easy man to spend time with.”

She raises her brows, clearly surprised by my reply. “You seem fine to me.”

My laugh is dry. “Stick around a while.”

“Is that an invitation?”

My heart kicks. Do I want her to stay? Maybe. Fuck.

I shrug.

Her eyes widen. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. I’m not easy to spend time with.”

“I don’t understand,” she huffs. But I can see she’s trying to.

What I want to know, is why? Women don’t bother with me—haven’t bothered with me since the accident. After Patricia, I stopped trying.

I feel my hands curl into tight fists. “I’ve been alone for three years.”

“So?”

“I don’t know how to spend time with people anymore.”

“You don’t spend time with people at all?” She sounds disbelieving.

“Not really. No.”

“You don’t have friends?”

“I have a few buddies.”

“Okay,” she lifts both shoulders, shaking her head. “You don’t see them?”

“We meet for poker, beer and chips,” I admit. “Once a week.”

She rolls her eyes. “So you have friends. You see people. You can’t be that difficult.”

I hadn’t thought we were talking about people. I’d been talking about women. Men were fine with me. They were cool with the scars. Women on the other hand either wanted to pity fuck me or were disgusted by me. I wasn’t cool with either.

And now, I’m pissed again. I’m pissed because thinking about women wanting to pity fuck me enrages me.

But thinking about Sadie wanting to pity fuck me—that kills.

I push away from the counter and move into the living room. I’m done with this conversation. It doesn’t take her long to follow me. I hear the soft thud of her ridiculous socks on the floor close behind me, and I think she’s braver than I gave her credit for. I know she knows I’m mad. Anyone with an instinct for self-preservation would know. Still, she follows. And she follows close.

Then, bizarrely, she asks, “Are you going to set up a tree?”

I spin to glare at her. “A tree?”

“Yes.” She dips her chin in a cute little nod, her hands moving to her hips. “A tree. For Christmas.”

I give my head a firm shake as I force my gaze to climb from her tiny body with all its gentle curves to her face. The things a man could do to her body—the things I could do… “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want a tree.”

She balks. “What are you, the Grinch?”

“I don’t see the point of bothering with a tree.” Why am I getting into this with her? My chest feels tight.

“The point is the tree is beautiful. It’s—it’s a part of Christmas. You can’t have Christmas and not have a tree. Even I have a tree in my tiny little trailer at home. It’s small, and it’s pathetic. It’s worse than Charlie Brown’s, but it’s a tree.”

I narrow my gaze on her. “I’m not putting up a tree.”

“Fine.” She shrugs. “Be a sad, mean Grinch.”

The way she’s standing, glaring up at me, I almost want to laugh at her. This surprises me. I don’t laugh much. She’s made me want to laugh more than once since she arrived. And fuck, but as she stands there in her sweater with her shoulder exposed to show off golden skin, I feel a sharp urge to lean forward and taste that skin. Her pouty mouth. Other parts of her.

She’s beautiful.

And she’s not mine. She’ll never be mine.

I close my eyes slowly, tiredly, to block out the vision of her and get control of myself again. But I open them as I ask, “Are you going to spend your Christmas with Katie now?”

Her eyes shutter and I find myself leaning forward without any intention of doing so. I want to unwrap her. Every secret, every thought, I want to unwrap them all.

Emotion rattles her voice, and she shifts on the spot, nervously tucking a strand of hair behind a cute as fuck elf-like ear. “No.”

“Why?” I hear myself demand roughly and she flinches. I swallow a sigh as I wait, studying her as she lifts her little pointed chin, her full, pouty lips parting.

“Because the last time I spent my Christmas with Katie, her family looked at me with pity the entire night.” There’s a crack in her voice, a splinter in her facade of strength I want to poke at. I want to chip away at her pain until I uncover the source—and then I want—fuck. I don’t know what I want. Her? To fuck her? To sink deep and lose my misery inside something soft and warm and bursting at the cracks with sunshine? Her voice brings me back from the insanity of my thoughts. “That hurts more—feeling the pity—the weight of it—it hurts more than spending the holiday alone.”

There is nothing she’s said since I opened my door to find her beautiful and stunned on my doorstep that resonates with me like these words. Pity. She knows the sting of pity.

And suddenly I want to know—need to know… “Why would they pity you?”

She looks out the window, her eyes focused on the snow that darts against the glass. She’s looking, but I know she’s not seeing.

She doesn’t seem to notice when I move closer at the sight of wet glassing her eyes.

I want to touch her, to pull her close. I want to hold her. My hands twitch where they hang at my sides, she looks so small in her pain and it’s been so long since I’ve longed to truly comfort a woman, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to begin.

She saves me from the turmoil as she drops onto the couch, pulling her knees into her chest. She looks even smaller like this as she swallows hard, her eyes still fixed on the window. Her tears don’t fall when her pink tongue pokes out to quickly wet her lips. Even like this, even through her hurt, I want to taste her mouth. I want to kiss away her pain, pulling it inward, shouldering it. Devouring it.

She hugs her knees tighter, seeking a comfort I itch to give. “I lost my mom and dad a couple years ago. It was close to Christmas. A drunk driver.” She whispers the last words as I feel my body tighten. “I spent that first Christmas alone. I didn’t want anyone around. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to cry—I needed to grieve and—my whole world had been torn away but the world was still this cheerful, jolly place. I couldn’t deal with it. I closed my doors, and I cried through the holiday. I screamed my grief into my pillows, I cursed God,” her voice quiets as she admits, “I hated God.”

“I’ve been there,” I tell her, and when her eyes come to mine, explain, “Hating God.”

“Oh.” She forces a smile. “I suppose we all have once or twice.”

“What happened the next Christmas?” I have to know.

Her eyes shine. “I wanted to be happy. For them. For me. Because I was still alive, and I didn’t want to disappoint them by living like I’d died too. I did my best to be happy.”

“And?”

“I failed,” she says simply, so simply. “I agreed to spend that Christmas with Katie. She loves me, I love her. Her family loves me, and I love them. But they were all worried about me. I get it, I do. They pity me, and I get that too. But that just hurts so much worse. It makes the pain fresh again. This is my third Christmas since they’ve been gone, and I wanted—I just wanted to make it good. For me and for them.” She pulls in a deep, sharp breath as her eyes pin mine. There’s determination and strength in the deep of her whiskey eyes as she says, “So, no. I won’t spend Christmas with Katie and her family this year. I don’t want to. I would rather spend Christmas alone in my tiny trailer, with my tiny Charlie Brown Christmas tree than to spend it with a family I don’t belong to who looks at me with pity because I don’t have my own to spend it with.”

She’s so much more than she appears at first glance. And at first glance, she’s breathtaking. Still, all I can say as I stand there towering over her as she sits, tiny and beautiful and breathtaking on my couch is, “Right.”

I’m a damn fool.

I know I’m a fool when she pushes up from the couch and I catch the warm scent of vanilla spice as she moves away from me. “Well, I’m exhausted. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed early.” Her voice lowers, “Maybe tomorrow the blizzard will have relented enough you can drive me into town. Or I can catch a taxi.”

As she disappears, the scent of vanilla spice lingering in her wake, I find myself hoping we get snowed in for the next week.