18. One Day at a Time

One Day at a Time

Benjamin

I felt proud of myself and couldn’t keep the smug look from my face when Lincoln and Grant came into view. They were leaning against the side-by-side we rented, pouting. The tree they cut down while I was stalking and fucking Nova was in the wagon hitched to the buggy. Nova’s steps faltered as we approached, and I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Carpe Diem, boys,” I said as we stopped before them.

Linc’s lips twitched before returning to their scowl as he glared at the twigs in Nova’s hair. “Cocky bastard,” he replied as he pushed off the buggy and moved behind her to pick the debris from her hair.

Grant laughed bitterly as he scrubbed a hand down his face. “I really hate you two, you know that?”

I ground my teeth together as I saw Nova pale and shrink into herself at his words.

“I was ready to carpe diem in my office,” Grant continued, not noticing Nova’s reaction, “and you two cock-blocking fuck wads interrupted us. It’s rather unfair. I have half a mind to run away with Nova and not return until I’ve had my fill, which could take a while.”

I knew his statement of hate hadn’t been about her, but Nova hadn’t. I was pleased to see her shoulders relax when she did. Even so, it needed to be addressed. “Nova? Did you think Grant meant you when he said he hated us?”

She looked at me guiltily and nodded. Lincoln stepped around her to see her face as Grant’s eyes widened in horror.

“I could never hate you,” he assured her.

“Why would you think that, Sugar?” Linc asked softly as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

Nova cleared her throat as she stared down at her hands. “I thought he was mad that Ben and I had sex while he was cutting down the Christmas tree for me.”

Grant stepped in front of her, causing Lincoln to step back. He lifted a finger under her chin until she made eye contact. “Understand something Little Star. I will never be mad at you for being with one of my dipshit brothers. Ever. However, I reserve the right to get pissy with them for it after they interrupt my time with you. Ok?”

Nova nodded and graced us with a smile. “This is all new to me. I’ve never considered this type of... situationship before.”

I bent down to kiss the side of her head. “This is new for us too. We’ve never shared a woman before.”

“We’ve never wanted to share a woman before,” Linc elaborated. “You’re special, Nova. Some wrinkles might still need ironing, but we’ll figure it out together.”

“That sounds good,” she agreed.

“Ok. What do you say we get this show on the road and decorate a Christmas tree?” I asked, ushering them toward the cart. Linc drove us back to the lot, where they wrapped the tree and secured it to the roof of my Jeep for us. I ensured that Nova sat in the front with me for the drive back to her house to prevent any fooling around while I drove. I was ok with the hypocrisy, which Grant spent half the drive lecturing me about.

When we got to her house, we carried the tree inside, and Grant and I got it set up in the corner Nova directed us to while she and Linc went to the basement to bring up the decorations. When they brought up the last boxes, I saw that Nova looked flushed and Lincoln looked too pleased with himself. That meant they had been naughty downstairs, and I honestly loved it. I loved how happy Nova looked and how relaxed my brothers were around her. How relaxed I was. When the four of us are together, we forget that we have a billion-dollar company to run and a million balls in the air. All of that fell away as we focused on living in the present. Lincoln figured it out first, but she is good for us. Walking away from her was a dwindling option.

I met Linc’s eyes as I took the box from Nova, and a grin split across his face. We set the boxes down, and he clapped me on the back.

“Good to have you on board, brother,” he said quietly.

“We have our work cut out to get Grant on board,” I replied.

“Oh, I don’t think it will be as difficult as you think,” Linc replied, nodding his head for me to turn around.

I did and couldn’t help but smile at the scene before me. Grant smiled at Nova, genuine happiness shining from within him that I wasn’t sure I had ever seen. Nova laughed as she tried to untangle herself from the Christmas lights he kept looping around her.

“Grant! They’re supposed to go on the tree,” Nova chastised playfully.

“They look better on you,” he replied.

“See what I mean,” Linc said low enough so they couldn’t hear him.

“Yeah, but he’s still hung up on that damn contract.”

“He’s more hung up on her. I can tell. The challenge is to get him to admit it to himself, stubborn ass.” Linc said the last two words loud enough for Grant to hear. His eyes flicked to us and narrowed.

The distraction allowed Nova to escape from her festive coils, and she whooped triumphantly as she scampered out of his reach. “Ha! Now we can put them where they belong and get this show on the road.”

He glared at us for ruining his game, then smiled at Nova as he handed her the lights, took the end, and draped them across the tree branches. Once Nova and Grant finished hanging the lights, I stepped forward with the garland and helped her hang the fluffy silver rope on the tree. Once we finished, we moved on to the ornaments, and Nova chatted excitedly as each one was pulled out. She shared the stories attached to them as they were hung, sharing a piece of her heart with us. I could see the sadness in her eyes at times, but she kept smiling as she brought her father’s memory to life for us.

“These must have a good story,” I said as I pulled a few plastic reindeer ornaments out of the box. The old ornaments had seen better days. The velvet “fur” had mostly been rubbed off of them. One was missing a leg; another one was missing an ear. Grant and Lincoln’s expressions matched my feelings towards the ratty ornaments: time for the trash.

Nova looked at them with adoration as if they were her most important treasure. “They have the best story,” she replied. Nova took them from me and cradled them gently in her hands. She stood silently stroking the one remaining ear on the one with her fingertip.

“When I was six years old, we were poor. And when I say poor, I mean we hardly had two pennies to rub together. Everything my parents earned went toward bills and food. That Thanksgiving, my dad pulled out our old Christmas tree and our few decorations so we could put the tree up, as was tradition.

“There is something about plugging Christmas lights in for the first time that instantly makes it feel like Christmas—an excitement shared with a grin between parent and child. Well, when Dad plugged the lights in that year to test them, they didn’t light up. After an hour of searching for a blown fuse or bulb, he finally conceded that the old lights must have reached their permanent demise.

“I was so young, but I knew we didn’t have many things like other families. I knew that we wouldn’t be able to have lights on our tree that year. So, I was stunned when my dad suddenly tossed the busted lights to the side and told me to get my shoes and jacket. He said that we were going to the store for more lights.”

Nova laughed softly as she paused in her story to hang one of the deer on the front of the tree.

“My mom tried to question him about it, urging him to think it through instead of making a rash decision. He told her it would be a cold day in Hell before he had a Christmas tree without Christmas lights. He took my hand, and we left. We sang Christmas carols all the way to Walmart, and by the time we walked through the doors, I was shaking with excitement. Hand in hand, we walked past countless items we probably needed until we reached the Christmas department. Dad looked at my wide eyes as we walked through the aisle and told me I could pick out three ornaments. I think he got additional boxes of ornaments and lights and then waited patiently as I made the most difficult decision of my young life.”

She hung the other two reindeer on the tree and spent time adjusting them so they hung just right before stepping back and admiring her work. “In the end, I chose these three reindeer. A mama, a daddy, and a baby,” she said, pointing to each. “One for each of us. I don’t know what got into him or how we could afford them, but Dad was a man on a Christmas mission that night. He had no idea then, and I’m not sure he ever knew how much that night meant to me or how it would become such a treasured memory.”

Knowing the memory attached to them, I looked at the ornaments with different eyes. They didn’t seem like they belonged in the trash anymore. Sliding my arms around Nova’s waist, I pulled Nova closer to me to nuzzle her neck. “Thank you for sharing your stories with us. Your dad sounds like he was an amazing man.”

“He was. Like everyone, he could be rough around the edges, but he did his best and loved me and my mother with everything he had,” Nova replied. She turned in my arms as she spoke and snuggled into my chest. Nova took a shaky breath and stepped back. She wiped away the tears that had slipped out and tried to smile. “I’m sorry. Here I am going on about my dad and my childhood and being sad when you guys didn’t have that, did you?”

“First,” Lincoln said, kissing her forehead, “don’t ever apologize to us for your feelings. You’re allowed to be sad about your dad without any guilt because we grew up in a foster home.”

“Second,” Grant continued as he sat on the ottoman and pulled her into his lap. “We never knew our parents. We were all in the system before we turned three. As we got older, we were moved to different families until we were ten. That’s when we were placed in the same house that became our forever foster home. Ultimately, we had a good childhood. It was just missing some of the more traditional things you experienced.”

“And our foster mom was an angel,” I chipped in. “She would have adored you.”

Nova blushed slightly and hid her face in Grant’s neck. Grant held her tighter and looked up at me with a panicked look. Something had just clicked in his head, perhaps his heart, and he was about to lose it.

“Linc, why don’t you and Nova finish the tree while Grant and I figure out where to order dinner from?” I asked, keeping my voice even and calm for Nova’s sake. Linc picked up the difference in my tone and gave me a questioning look before looking at Grant and snapping into motion.

“Love to!” he exclaimed, whisking Nova off Grant’s lap and back toward the tree.

I grabbed Grant and lightly shoved him toward the front door to get some air. As soon as the front door closed behind us, he bent over at the waist, his hands braced on his knees.

“Oh, God,” he croaked. “What are we going to do?”

“About what, buddy?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“Nova. What are we going to do about Nova?” He straightened, and the desperation in his eyes surprised me.

“Walk me through it,” I prompted, not understanding what had him so freaked out.

“You’re right. Mama Clair would have loved her. What are we doing here? We have a contract, but Linc has dropped hints that he wants more. I can see it in your eyes that you want more, too, but we have a contract. We don’t have time for a relationship. That’s why we had to make this arrangement to begin with.”

“Forget about the damn contract for a minute. What do you want? How do you feel?” I pressed. My brother had some hang-ups. He wasn’t the greatest with surprises. It’s why he was such a meticulous planner. He needed the structure to function. He told Nova we had a good childhood, and we did, but he left out the part where we each had some baggage when Mama Clair took us in. Grant had been through far more homes than Linc and I put together. Because of that, he developed an almost OCD-level need for everything around him to be perfectly planned. The contract with Nova was just the tip of the iceberg. It has served us well in business but sometimes wreaked havoc on our personal lives. He’s learned to manage it better as an adult, but stressful situations tend to send him into a spin.

“I want her,” he admitted somewhat aggressively. “And I don’t want to walk away from her after New Year’s, but...”

He trailed off, and after a minute of silence, I prompted him to continue. “Buuut...”

“But what if we hurt her?” The desperation in his eyes gave way to sadness. “We don’t know how to have a functioning relationship.”

“So we take it one day at a time. We don’t have to have it all figured out right now, Grant.” I hugged my brother. He was so bossy that I sometimes forget that his bossiness was a way to deflect others from discovering his vulnerable side and seeing the hurting little boy inside. He relaxed in my embrace for a moment before stiffening and stepping back.

“We can take it one day at a time, but I won’t agree to entertain a future with her unless I know we can do that. I won’t let us hurt her too. She’s too important,” he said firmly.

I shook my head and pulled out my phone as my brother walked back inside. It was good to see that his shields were operating at full strength again.

I chose a contact and pressed call, lifting the phone to my ear. “Charlie! I need to order some food, and I’m craving your salmon.”