Chapter 5

Trevor

Meg's at it again.

She's playing Christmas music, humming along, and my house smells like sweets. It's all subtle—I can't see her, because I'm still being a lazy-ass and haven't gotten up yet, but I can hear her, and I can smell her, and I can see a rotating glow of colored lights from the crack under my door.

It's not all that different from the dreams that plagued me all night, with one singular exception.

In my dreams, Meg was doing all of this naked, and I couldn't keep my hands off her.

And yeah, hello, morning wood. It is not nice to see you. We do not get to think about our best friend's sister, we do not get to dream about our best friend's sister, and we do not rub one out while imagining it's her hands all over us.

What we do get to do, though, is get the fuck over ourselves.

We've known and abided by these rules for years, and we are not going to change that now.

I wince through warming up my shoulder enough to comfortably roll out of bed, check my phone, and instantly feel my heart drop.

I texted Jude last night.

Fuck.

I texted Jude last night.

That was not part of my dream.

But I did.

I texted him a confession that I had to walk away from his sister last night before I kissed the ever-loving hell out of her.

And he hasn't replied.

He saw it.

That little message under the text clearly says read.

But he hasn't replied.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I need to leave.

I need to go get a cabin in the woods for the rest of the Christmas season, possibly well into January, and stay the hell away from Meg.

And apologize to Jude.

Claim I was drunk, that someone else stole my phone, whatever it takes, no matter the lies I have to tell.

He's been the most constant friend in my life for my entire career.

And I just fucked it up.

Worse?

I still want to kiss Meg.

I do.

I want to kiss her.

Her insistence that I'd be great on the Fireballs' staff? Her belief in me when I've been nothing but an ass the past few weeks?

I believed her. She made me want to go back to baseball as a coach.

And I want to kiss her.

She's a grown-ass woman. I don't need her brother's permission. Neither does she.

But the fact that getting involved with her could ruin the longest friendship I've ever had if it doesn't work out—yeah, I'm sweating.

I take longer than necessary in the shower, and not because I'm jerking off.

That part doesn't take long.

And not taking long is a solid reminder why I shouldn't kiss Meg.

If I kiss her, and she kisses me back, and we end up in bed, and I come as fast as I did in the shower as soon as her face popped into my head, she'll be all that's okay, I know it's been a while and you'd be better if we did it a second time, which I'm probably not in for, because this was just a pity fuck for both of us, but I won't say anything bad about you to anyone.

That would basically destroy the little bit of ego I have left.

But if I kiss her and she kisses me back and then we both have the best sex of our lives with each other, and then I want to finish decorating a tree with her, and fantasize about fireplaces and hot chocolate and gingerbread men…

I shake my head, tweak my shoulder, stifle a grunt, and then I pull my head out of my ass and decide to be a grown man who owns this house and can handle having an attractive but off-limits, cheerful, holiday-loving woman making herself happy in my kitchen.

And now I'm imagining Meg naked, with her hands between her thighs, and didn't I just get rid of this boner?

"Head in the game, Stafford. Head. In. The. Game."

I text Jude an apology—a very sincere, I would never do anything to fuck up our friendship, and I promise not to make Meg uncomfortable and will probably just head up to visit some friends in the mountains for a few days to get my head back on straight apology. Then I make myself think about my career in the toilet. And follow it up with that one Christmas when I was little and unfortunately watched a snowman ice sculpture get taken down by an angry chef with a kitchen torch, and my junk gets itself under control.

Good thing too, because I think it would break if it was already hard when I walk out of my bedroom and down the short hall to the kitchen.

Meg has her back to me as she's bent over the counter, shaking her heart-shaped ass, which is wrapped in tight denim. She's still using the reindeer towels and the multi-colored light rays are coming from a miniature tree on the counter. Even from this angle, I can tell she covered her tight red sweater with an apron dotted with candy canes.

And she's making cinnamon rolls.

Cinnamon rolls.

"Hey, Trev! Happy morning. That's not a new baby Christmas tree in the corner. It's an unfortunate superstition that's necessary when I work with yeast. And these are not Christmas cinnamon rolls. They're birthday cinnamon rolls."

"It's your birthday?" Dammit. Why didn't someone tell me that?

"No, it's someone's birthday. I have no idea whose. I just know that I wanted them, they seemed Christmasy, but also, I'm respecting your Christmas boundaries, so we're celebrating a random stranger's birthday. Surely someone named Jennifer is turning some year older today. That's why it says Happy Birthday, Jennifer on that pan over there."

"You don't have to?—"

"I'm not avoiding Christmas on your behalf. I'm meeting you halfway."

I open my mouth to answer, and that's when I hear it.

"Carol of the Bells" is playing.

But those are not traditional words.

It sounds like?—

No.

No way.

Meg is not playing corrupted Christmas tunes.

I lift a finger in the air. "Is that?—"

"‘Penis of the Bells'? Yes. Yes, it is. If you stick around long enough, you'll hear ‘Penis Bell Rock' and ‘Joy to the Penis' too. Also, I have all of the Avengers movies ready to run, so since you don't have PT today, and I don't have to be anywhere, we can watch bad guys try to annihilate the world by the light of our wimpy-ass but beautiful pasta tree while I build a fire in your fireplace."

I rub my ear.

There's no way I heard all of that right.

"Also, I found your Halloween lights, so I put those on the tree too," she adds. "It's a general-purpose festive eyesore."

I glance into the living room.

Sure enough, there are jack-o-lanterns lit up all over the lopsided tree. And sure enough, the music just switched from "Penis of the Bells" to "Penis the Snowman."

Or should I call it "Frosty the Penis"?

The only word anyone's singing is penis, so it could go either way.

"Meg. You don't have to ruin your Christmas on my behalf. Look, I was thinking I'd head up to?—"

I cut myself off as her lush lips spread in a wide smile, and I swear I go light-headed at the beauty of it.

She literally made me forget how to talk because she smiled.

I have it bad. I'm pretty sure I always have. I've just been very good at denying it until this very minute.

And I don't know what I'm going to do about this.

"I am not ruining my own Christmas," she says. "I'm expanding into testing other ways of celebrating."

"But tradition?—"

"Can change. You want a birthday cinnamon roll? They're best hot. Also, I think I need to take some to your neighbors. Or probably to Joey and Zeus, but Zeus could eat the entire pan himself, and that wouldn't leave any for the rest of his family, so maybe not?"

"Do you always make cinnamon rolls for the holidays?"

"No, I'm a mood holidayer."

"What does that mean?"

"Some years it's cinnamon rolls, and some years it's chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, and some years it's honey puff pancakes, and some years it's waffles, and this one year, Jude got an itch for breakfast soup." She pauses and bites her lip, then adds in a rush, "But cinnamon rolls are my favorite."

I swallow.

Hard.

They're my favorite too.

Leave, I order myself. Do not sit and have cinnamon rolls with this woman who always believes the best of everyone.

But she makes me believe in myself in ways I haven't in months. Maybe years, my heart whispers back.

Fuck.

Meg's gaze wavers as she studies me. "You…don't like cinnamon rolls either," she says softly.

The oh, god, I fucked up again in her voice breaks me.

She hasn't fucked up.

I have.

And I'm done fucking up.

"I want three." Preferably served on her bare belly so I can feast on everything I'd like to devour at once. My voice goes a little hoarse. "Put them on a plate like they're a snowman."

She scratches her nose as she studies me like she's trying to decide if I'm serious, leaving behind a smear of icing right at the tip.

I want to lick it.

I want to lick the icing off her nose, and then I want to kiss her until I can't breathe, and then I want to feed her cinnamon rolls while I strip her naked and do things to her body that are probably illegal but that will make us both feel so, so good.

And she's your best friend's little sister, dummy.

Finally, she turns to the pan of cinnamon rolls with Happy Birthday, Jennifer scrawled across it in pink frosting. "If you're doing this just for me, you really don't have to. But if you're doing it so that you can make some happy holiday memories and maybe one day look forward to them for yourself, I'm in."

"You're making this the best Christmas I've ever had."

The raw honesty is hard.

But it's necessary.

I've been a dick.

She deserves better, and more, I want to be better.

I want to be the kind of guy who deserves to date his best friend's sister.

She's gone totally, completely still.

Fuck.

She doesn't believe me.

"This year's sucked," I say over the penis carol. "I don't feel like I earned that World Series ring. My career's over. I know there's more to come, but I'm not ready. I will be. One day. But I'm not done mourning what I had. And now we're heading into the time of year when I remember all the ways the holidays never lived up to the hype and the expectation, and I wanted to hide from all of it, but you're here, meeting me halfway, making it fun, pushing me to get the hell outside of my own head and let it be fun. So thank you. And I'm sorry I've been a dick."

She slowly turns to face me, three stacked cinnamon rolls wobbling on my basic white plate. "I've had a crush on you since you gave me the last piece of fried chicken at Jude's college graduation picnic," she whispers.

"Meg—"

"It's okay. You don't have to crush on me back. I won't ever say anything about it again. I just wanted you to know, because people shouldn't hide it when they think other people are awesome. But you're down, and I'm trying too hard, so I'll stop. I promise. I'll see if Zeus and Joey will let me—oh."

Oh.

It's the last thing she gets out before my mouth crashes down on hers.

Something clatters to the floor. She makes a soft whimper, then she melts into me.

Into my body. Into the kiss.

Into everything.

I'll probably regret this later.

But right now?

Right now, I need this woman to know she's just as worthy as she thinks I am.

Moreworthy, in fact.

No matter what other relationships I might be putting in jeopardy.