Chapter 1

Jakob

Bam.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

“Hello, this is EmerCall. Are you all right?”

The robotic voice echoed through the interior of my car. This was not the magical experience I was hoping for today.

“I’m fine. Please call a tow truck.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Calling a tow truck now.”

“Thank you.”

“Emergency contact notified.”

Gah. Did anyone remember to update their emergency contact info as adults? I couldn’t even imagine being so on top of the minutiae of life that updating contact information for a service you weren’t supposed to need made the top ten—or even the top hundred—on a person’s to-do list.

I quickly assessed myself, and the only thing in significant pain was my right hand. The airbag had deployed upon impact, and my hands had been at ten and two, just as my driving school instructors demonstrated, so I suspected perhaps my fingers were sprained from the force of the bag.

This was…suboptimal.

“Are you okay? Sir! I need you to answer me. Are you okay?”

I turned to my open car door—when did that happen?—and looked into the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen. With flecks of gold and green, hazel was a better description, but they were outlined by long, thick lashes. I wondered if the crinkled corners were from laughing or frowning. His brows were strong, straight, not too dense, and furrowed in concern. I reached up to smooth the lines, and holy smokes, that hurt. His brown hair was cut short like he didn’t have time to mess with it and wanted the easiest option possible.

“Hey, let’s start with something easier. Can you tell me your name?”

What a lovely voice. It was deep and burly but kind. The kind of voice that would be perfect to read you a story and tuck you in. He was crouched in the door opening while I sat in the driver’s seat. The truck in front of me didn’t seem damaged, but the front end of my car was crumpled.

“Jakob. I’m Jakob with a K.”

“Jakob with a K, it’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s like this though.”

“I don’t think this can be my lucky day.”

“Was it supposed to be?”

“Yeah. It was my first Christmas. That ought to be lucky. I made a wish for it and everything.”

“The day is still early. There’s still time for it to turn around.”

In the distance, I heard the approaching wail of a police car and a second siren I couldn’t place. The EmerCall robot voice droned on about something, but there was no chance I’d pay attention to that when I could watch this man instead.

“I’m Reed, with a double E,”

he said as he gently manipulated my fingers. He asked a few questions about pain and motion, but it was hard to remember my answers. “At some point, we should probably exchange information.”

He looked up with those pretty eyes of his, and I got a chance to pay attention to the rest of him. He was older than me, probably by close to a decade, and wasn’t big and bulky. If I were to guess, he was most likely about my height, maybe a few inches taller. He was dressed in scrubs. Convenient. His smile tried not to show it, but I could tell he was tired and more than a little rumpled. I’d probably ruined his day.

“Why?”

“Because our insurance companies will need it?”

He said it like a question but it wasn’t. Ugh. I had crashed into him.

“It was your truck I hit?”

This truly was the unluckiest of days. Now that my mind had cleared the fog, I realized how much this would set back my plans. Step one of the Best Ever Holiday Extravaganza was to have a Christmas tree, my first ever, in my temporary home. The crash had knocked it loose, and now the branches and whatnot were messed up. And I had no idea how I was going to get it back to my hotel room.

“Yeah, it was.”

“I’m really sorry. I was trying to turn up the radio and got the buttons confused. I was looking for the right one and took too long.”

His brow creased in confusion at my jumbled explanation.

“Why not use the volume control on your steering wheel?”

“Oh shit!”

At his raised eyebrow, I corrected myself. “I mean, shoot, I forgot about it.”

Reed, who obviously wanted me to call him by his name, or he wouldn’t have given me it, laughed. “Your language isn’t my problem, but you forgetting where the volume button is on your radio might be everyone’s problem.”

He smiled when he said it, so maybe he wasn’t super mad about me crashing into him.

The police showed up before I had a chance to respond. Reed laid my hand back down and talked to the police officer, but it was hard to follow with all the chaos. He stepped away and that was the last I saw of him near my car. The cop said something about something. I wasn’t listening because all my thoughts were taken up by worry, and I only knew two things for sure. The first was I needed to reconfigure my Christmas planning, and the second was my hand hurt like a bitch.

#

“Mr. Winslow, thank you for being patient. The emergency room is a madhouse today,”

The doctor said as he swept into the room and grabbed a backless stool from the corner.

“Isn’t it usually?”

As luck would have it, the closest hospital happened to be where I worked. Suboptimal. I was in the research lab area, not the ER, so it wasn’t surprising no one knew me down here, which was maybe the only bright spot. Fingers crossed—well, not my own because that would hurt—that meant I could get in and out without a fuss from anyone I knew. I sometimes ate my lunch in the park across the street and took a shortcut through the ER to return to the lab. No matter when I popped through, it was always busy, as far as I could tell.

“You’ve caught me there.”

He chuckled at his joke and returned to his examination of my fingers and wrist. They’d already done a mobile x-ray, so it was just a matter of waiting. As it was, my fingers were swollen and starting to bruise. They would hurt in the morning, but I wasn’t convinced anything was broken. “So, your fingers will be sore for a bit. We are waiting for the x-ray confirmation, but my best guess is that nothing is broken. Though you’ve jammed your fingers pretty good.”

“Is there anything to do for that besides resting it?”

“Unfortunately, not really. Rest it, wrap it, and ice it. I’m going to give you some stronger pain medication because your body might be sore for the next day or two from the impact, but after that, over-the-counter meds will work fine.”

He looked up before he added, “But we still have to wait for the radiology to sign off on it. When the radiologist knows we’re only waiting for a reading, they move pretty quickly.”

I nodded since that was really the only thing I could do. For the first time since I left my parents’ home, I wished they were here. Of course, they’d fuss and tell me this was why I needed them, but at least they’d know what to do. Who knew where my car was? Or how to get it back? Could I even rent a car at only twenty-three? My PhD didn’t do a damn thing for me when it came to real life.

“Of course he wants to see us. We’re his family, and he’s only a child.”

Did I conjure the woman? The conversation from the nurse’s desk might as well have been next to me. My mom’s voice carried.

“Child? Our records say he’s an adult.”

I appreciated the nurse’s efforts, but it was a losing battle. “He’s a minor?”

“Well, I mean, not technically, but he’s my child, and that’s all that matters.”

The nurse lasted twice as long as I expected, but my mother was a force of nature. She swept into the room with Dad right next to her. He was slightly less loud but no less forceful.

“Jakob, how could you wreck your car? Weren’t you paying attention? Dale, didn’t I tell you this would happen?”

“You did, Denise.”

“I’m glad you didn’t kill anyone. Where did they take your car?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Did you get the insurance information for the person you hit?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How can you not be sure? It’s a yes or no question.”

Mom stopped to take a breath before saying what I knew she’d been waiting to say since she got the call. “Jakob, don’t you think it’s time to stop this foolishness?”

“What foolishness, Mom?”

I sighed. It was only a delay tactic. I could recite verbatim what came next.

“This ridiculous idea that you needed to move out. And it’s not even an apartment. It’s a motel. Why is a scientist with a PhD living in a motel? It’s absurd. You’re wasting your money, I might add. It was snowing today, and you were out driving. What on earth could be so important that you needed to drive in the snow?”

“It was only flurries, and they weren’t even sticking.”

“Answer your mother. Why were you out?”

“I was getting a Christmas tree.”

“A Christmas tree? For your motel?”

Mom and Dad, in surround sound, made my head hurt more than my body by a long shot.

“We’ve never had one, and I wanted one. They’re pretty.”

“They are useless bits of nothing that take up space and drop needles on the floor. They are for children. You aren’t a child, are you?”

“Even when I was a kid, we didn’t have one.”

“Oh, Jakob, people like you have better things to do with their time than bother with silliness like Santa and trees and whatever. It would be a shame to waste your genius.”

“I don’t see how a tree or Santa would have wasted my brain.”

“Because nonsense would have distracted you from your studies.”

Mom paused to gather herself before the finale. “Is this about you being gay?”

“More than gay people like Christmas, Mom.”

“Don’t be obtuse. The moving out, Jakob.”

“That’s right, son. We do care about you wasting your time. You’re twenty-three, but the silly things you want to do tell us that you have every intention of not taking your job at the lab seriously. It’s an outstanding opportunity for you, and you’re going to throw it away,”

Dad chimed in.

There wasn’t a reason to argue with them because I’d have a better chance of winning against a brick wall. I lay back on the bed and thought about the handsome man who was so nice, even though I’d crashed into him. If I had any sense, I would’ve at least gotten his last name. There must be a ton of men named Reed in the city. He was wearing scrubs, so I could narrow it down a little. That meant he could be a nurse or a veterinarian or, I don’t know, a preschool teacher. They had messy jobs and dealt with bodily fluids, but why would he be working on the weekend? I was taking that one off the list.

My parents didn’t need or want my input, so I closed my eyes and imagined what Reed would do if he were here right now. He’d probably double-check my fingers like he was doing on the roadside. Possibly, he’d be the one to drive me home and fix my Christmas tree.

My plan had been to get the tree today and go to the Christmas market downtown tomorrow. I’d read about all the booths they had, and surely, I could find something for my little hotel room, which was really an extended-stay place for business travelers. It wouldn’t kill my savings to stay there for a month. It’s not like I had anything to spend my money on anyway. My education was paid for by grants, and I didn’t have any friends, pets, or hobbies.

I was so focused on tuning out my parents that I almost missed the knock on the sliding glass door to my treatment cubicle.

“Come in,”

I called. My parents were deep into a discussion about my foolish choices and didn’t notice the knock.

“Hey, Jakob.”

Reed.