Chloe never cried. Never, ever, ever. She swore, she yelled, she bit her lip until it bled. But she didn’t cry, because crying made her feel like shit.
There was nothing worse than being so sad she couldn’t keep her emotions inside, and then being alone to bear all of that on her own.
Except she wasn’t alone.
Tom was right behind her, she could feel him, and she didn’t know what to do with that, either.
“I’m going upstairs.” Not looking in his direction, she grabbed the afghan off the couch, and the novel she’d been reading. “With my blanket and my books. And my…” She looked around for the saltines. “Crackers.”
Silently, he grabbed them and held them out. Whatever she wanted. Whatever she needed.
Her arms overflowed as she stopped at the base of the stairs and looked in his direction, although not right at him. “I need some space. I needed all of this space, but then you showed up.”
“I understand,” he said quietly. “I’ll stay out of your hair.”
And he did.
She curled up in the quiet master bedroom and tried to distract herself with the book. It took flipping through fifteen unread pages to calm down. Then she fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the weak, blizzard-filtered light had shifted to the other side of the house. Long shadows stretched across the bed, and for a second, she didn’t know why she was upstairs.
Then she smelled the chilli wafting up from the kitchen and remembered losing it on Tom and stomping upstairs.
She rubbed her gritty eyes and looked at the ceiling, trying to process what the hell was happening inside her body.
Downstairs, dishes clattered in the kitchen. The sound ricocheted through the empty house, easily carrying up to where she lay.
She was struggling to process what was happening here in this cottage, too. Maybe the first step in her own journey to real honesty between them was admitting what she didn’t know, what made her anxious.
And what she did know. What she’d experienced growing up.
She stopped in the washroom to pee and wash her face, then she went to find the chef. The father of her future child.
Her unwanted but not unappreciated roommate for the duration of the blizzard.
She found him stirring their dinner.
“That smells really good,” she said as she eased her way into the kitchen.
“Hey.” He glanced over at her. “You’re up.”
“I guess I slept for a while.”
“The whole afternoon. Full disclosure, I came up to check on you. I’m not sure where that falls on the spectrum of giving you some space, but…”
She made a face. “I deserve that.”
“I was prepared for you to throw something at me. Not a book. Maybe crackers.”
That made her laugh. “Those are almost as valuable as books!”
“Do you want some with your chilli? We might want to ration our bread a bit.”
What had she gotten them into that they needed to carefully measure out food to last through a blizzard? “Are we going to be okay here?”
He waved his hand. “Oh yeah. I’ve got hard rations in the truck if we get desperate.”
“Do I want to know what those are?”
“Vacuum packed things that approximate food popular in the fifties.”
“Gross.”
“Better than going hungry.”
Her pregnant stomach wasn’t sure about that, and she made a promise to herself to make the crackers last as long as possible.
“Can I ask how you’re feeling now?”
She blew a raspberry, and he laughed. Then she sighed. “This is a crazy rollercoaster of emotions. I don’t say that as an excuse, just a statement of fact.”
“I don’t know what to say to make it better.”
“You don’t need to say anything right now.” She held up her hand. “I do want to talk. Tonight. But let’s eat first.”
He grinned. “I won’t stand between the pregnant lady and sustenance. Coffee and food always come first, I promise.”
Tom served up chilli into their mugs, then gave her the spoon from his camping pack, and he took the fork.
She watched him pull the utensils apart with interest. “You don’t have one of those sporks? I mean, I’m not complaining. This way we both get something to eat with, so that’s great.”
He shook his head. “Never did understand those. They’re a crap spoon, and a crap fork. What are you saving, an ounce or two in weight? Carry both and eat properly.”
“Huh.”
“I have strong opinions about most things sold at outfitters to rubes from the city.”
“I’ve never stepped foot in an outfitters,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile.
We’ll have to change that, he wanted to say, but now was not the time. He was painfully aware of how precarious their relationship was. Suggesting outings was way down the map, and he hadn’t even started drawing the damn thing yet. While he’d been chopping wood, all he could think about was that somewhere along the way, they took a wrong turn. It wasn’t enough to just look at last week and how much he screwed up what should have been a good-but-surprising-news moment. They needed a whole new plan, but first he needed to put a hard pause on what he wanted so he could figure out what she needed, wanted, and was going through. Until he figured out what set her off and what kind of reassurance she needed from him, there would be no flirtation about future dates.
Hell, there hadn’t been any dating in the past. That had to be reckoned with as well.
“Uh, okay, I’m going to get my crackers,” she said. “My contribution to dinner.”
He carried their food to the coffee table and set it down. While she’d slept, he’d cut and decorated the mantle with evergreen boughs from outside, and he quickly adjusted those before she came back.
When she did, she stopped and breathed in the scent before sitting down. “Merry Christmas,” she said quietly as she stared into the flickering flames.
He smiled. “I thought we weren’t celebrating today.”
“I won’t force my humbug attitude on you.” She touched his hand. “You slaved over…everything, after all. Thank you.”
It was a peace offering, and given her wariness, it was more than he expected.
Today hadn’t gone as he’d hoped. She hadn’t fallen into his arms and allowed him to make grand promises. But she’d shared some hard truths about how she felt, and pushed him to be honest in the same way with her.
It wasn’t what he’d come for, but it was progress in the right direction.
While she’d slept, he’d been able—after much cursing and refreshing—to pull up a forecast for the next thirty-six hours. The storm was only going to get worse. He couldn’t have asked for better news, not that he’d frame it that way to the woman who wanted to run away as fast as she could. But he was grateful tomorrow would be another opportunity for him to show her he wasn’t going to flake.
“I’ve never been a big Christmas person,” he admitted. “My mother is…”
Chloe cleared her throat. “Particular?”
That was an understatement. “Well, you know my mother. She’s intensely Italian for someone who has no Italian blood. Growing up, it was all about mass on Christmas Eve, and big meals around that. Christmas morning we had presents, but the biggest effort was over and done with. And by the time I was a teenager, we’d basically merged Christmas Day with the Fosters. What do fourteen-year-old boys get each other?”
“Smokes? Booze? Porn?”
He laughed. “Yeah, pretty much. And video games. So it’s a day I’m happy to upgrade to chilli and a fire, let’s put it that way.”
“Same here, to be honest.” She stretched her legs out. “My favourite holidays were spent in the Caribbean. That was an annual tradition for a while, but I haven’t been able to do that since I moved up here. Junior librarian on the totem pole doesn’t get the sweet week off between Christmas and New Years—until this year, ironically.”
“When did you start travelling for Christmas?”
“College. When you’re willing to fly last-minute and you aren’t picky about what kind of resort serves you rum, you can get some sweet deals. And I got pretty good at figuring out which textbooks I could sell back mid-semester to find the money.”
He frowned. So that meant she hadn’t spent a holiday with family in almost a decade. He knew she wasn’t close to her family—hadn’t gone back to visit them in Toronto in the year they’d been hooking up—but this was a new layer of distance.
She dug into the chilli, ending the conversation about Christmas traditions or lack thereof, and he joined her. It was simple food, and not really heavy, but he’d managed to make it taste good and she finished her whole mug.
“Delicious,” she said as she pushed it away. “I’ll clean up, Gordon.”
“I’ll add some wood to the fire and think of some turn-of-the-last-century entertainment options for our evening.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I brought a dozen books. Do you want to read one of them?” She pointed to the stack she’d set on the mantle, then picked up their dishes and cleared them to the kitchen.
While he waited for her to come back, he perused the collection, finally choosing an erotic thriller. But he didn’t crack the cover, even after she returned and started reading herself. Curling up on the couch and reading sounded lovely—for a different night. Tonight he didn’t want to hide with pages in between them. Minutes ticking by with so much left unsaid.
Book in hand, he paced around the room, trying to figure out how to put that in a way that didn’t come off as pressure. Then he saw, high on an otherwise empty bookshelf, a deck of cards. He snagged it and spun around, holding them out.
Chloe scrunched up her face.
He shrugged and put them down. Fine.
She sighed. “I guess I retreated into a book without discussing anything, didn’t I?”
“Little bit.”
“I honestly wasn’t avoiding talking. I was a pretty solitary kid growing up.” She gestured to the stack of books. “I come by my profession legitimately. I spent a lot of time in the library when I was little. And then when I was not-so-little, too.”
The way she said it, he got the impression she was sharing this information with a purpose. He sat down. He was eager for any glimpse behind the Chloe curtain. “What was the first book you remember reading?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember not reading, honestly. But I think I remember the first book I signed out from the library.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Gordon Korman’s No Coins, Please. Did you ever read him?”
“Bruno and Boots?”
“Yep, exactly. So I’d already read the MacDonald Hall books, or a couple of them, anyway. I wanted to read Live at Nickaninny, and my mother wouldn’t buy it for me. She thought it was too old for me. So I went to the library, and asked about his books, and the librarian encouraged me to read No Coins, Please.”
“Aw, that was nice of her. She got you a new book and stuck to your mom’s rules.”
Chloe snorted. “Hardly. Live at Nickaninny was signed out by someone else. As soon as they returned it, she set it aside from me.” She leaned over and poked Tom in the chest. “Never underestimate the subversive nature of a librarian, Mr. Law and Order.”
He caught her finger for a second and smiled. “Noted.” He let her go, and she flopped back.
Looking up at the ceiling, she took a deep breath. “Did I ever tell you my parents are divorced?”
“I think so.”
“They weren’t married long. A year.”
“That’s pretty short.”
“They got married because my mother got pregnant—with me.”
Ah, for fuck’s sake. His chest ached for little Chloe, and big Chloe, too. “You grew up knowing that?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded slowly. “So that’s how you see it going for us?”
She kept her level gaze on his face, but she didn’t answer the question directly. “How do you see it going for us? Based on actual evidence in our…relationship. Not some rose-coloured glasses hope for what might be.”
“If I’m bound by past actions, then I guess I don’t know what to think.” He took a deep breath. “Is this why you’re leaving? Why you need to get away? Because you think people will think we’re just together because of the pregnancy?”
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t need to be like that. Nobody knows, and it’s nobody’s business—”
She groaned. “Enough people know about us. And those that don’t, will soon enough. And yeah, that’s a big factor—the biggest—in why I’m getting the hell out of Dodge.” She rolled up to sit, wrapping her arms around her legs. Her next words spilled out fast and furious, but not angry. Resigned, and he hated that for her. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how this goes down. You’re the stud, and I’m the slut. I was good for a fuck, until I got knocked up, and now you’re doing ‘the right thing.’ You said as much yourself, and I don’t want that.”
They were hard words. Course words. Brittle. Meant to hurt, meant to protect herself. He could see the wall she was building again, but it didn’t matter. He could build ladders even taller.
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wouldn’t. What we have between us is private and nobody’s business, but if anyone were to ask me, or if I were to hear anyone talk about you, I’d be clear that your company was always the best part of my day. That’s the actual evidence you asked for. For a year, you were the best thing that happened to me, day in, day out. I felt lucky to have any part of you.”
She didn’t say anything. No more harsh words.
So he built the ladder a bit taller. “Tell me more.”
“About what?”
“About any of it.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she sighed. “I don’t know where to start. Jenna knows about the baby. I needed to tell someone. And Olivia knows I’m moving, so I’m sure it won’t take long for her to figure out the rest.”
He gentled his voice as much as he could. “And the world is still standing. Look at that.”
“Don’t make light of my fears.” Her face turned white, and his heart did a free fall. Not gentle enough.
Maybe he could never be gentle enough, but he was going to try. He held her gaze. Trust me. It was too soon to ask that of her. He had a lot to show her first. “I’m not. I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders lifted and fell in a helpless shrug. “We can’t re-write history. We were what we were, and that’s not something I want to bring a kid into.”
We were what we were? She had no idea what she meant to him. His mouth ran dry, and he rubbed his hand over his face. But this wasn’t the time to correct her. “Maybe we can use this time to figure out what we’re going to be.”
Her lips twisted in a sad grimace, but she didn’t say no.
He leaned into the couch, relaxing next to her. Showing her he had all the time in the world for her to sort out her feelings. He could give her space again, too, if that’s what she wanted. “Should I go chop more wood?”
She laughed quietly. “It’s dark out.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m a pretty good orienteer and the stump is like fifteen feet from the door.”
She sighed. “You know what you can do?” She turned and looked at him. “You made dinner, and that was lovely. I napped the day away. The least I can do is play some cards. You can deal, mister.”
“Uh…” He hadn’t been expecting that. “Yes. Absolutely. What do you want to play?”
“How about Slap? Or War. Something simple.”
They sat across from each other at the coffee table, and after he shuffled, he admitted he didn’t know how to play Slap. Chloe held out her hand for the deck of cards. As soon as she was holding them, she squared her shoulders, cleared her throat, and launched into a precise set of instructions on how to play the card game.
So precise it would make a military instructor cheer.
He’d never fully appreciated her skills as a teacher before, but that was probably a big part of her role at the library.
Again, not the moment to be asking about that.
Tom was realizing he’d missed a lot of moments over the last year. To ask about her job, her family, her thoughts on major holidays.
And then when two major things happened in her life, he was not there for her, not the way he should have been.
So when they finished their third round, her winning the last round to take the best two of three, and she stood up to say good night, he didn’t argue. He wasn’t in a place to argue. He’d come here uninvited to convince a woman to give him a shot at something bigger than he probably understood—and the more he thought about it, the more he realized he’d never really gotten to know her.
Not beyond how much he enjoyed their time together, which had been primarily physical.
Christmas night was a weird time to realize you’d been a bit of a dog toward the woman carrying your child.
“Good night,” he said as gently as he could. “Sleep tight.”
“I will.” She glanced at the couch. “Uh…”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I only brought the one blanket…”
“I don’t need a blanket.”
She smiled. “Good, because I wasn’t offering to share it.”
“Good, because I wasn’t asking.” He grinned back.
“Great.”
He stepped towards her, herding her to the stairs. “Great.”
She took one step, then another. Slowly.
An old feeling tugged hard in his gut—a pulse of awareness that she was reluctant to leave, that he didn’t want her to go upstairs alone. He’d spent a year chasing magic at the end of that rainbow with her. Now look where they were.
But it didn’t stop him from turning his body, opening his arms up for a hug. If she wanted, he’d wrap her in his arms. It would kill him to let her go, but it would feel so good, it would be worth it.
“Night,” she whispered.
“Chloe…”
She reached for him. Not a hug, just her hand. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm and squeezed. That was enough for his entire body to react as if she’d used a defibrillator to hard reset his heartbeat.
Could she feel the jolt? Her eyes flicked up to his face and she held his gaze long enough he wondered if she’d been rocked in the same way.
“See you in the morning, Tom.” And then she was gone. Climbing the stairs, carrying that feeling away with her.
He was left standing in the quiet living room with literally nothing. No blanket. No woman, no clue, no plan.
He’d see her in the morning. He’d really see her. He’d watch and listen and pay fucking attention, because something needed to change in a big way.
Turning away from the stairs, he took a step, his toe colliding with a box. The entire room was empty, and he was normally light on his feet. How the fuck had he missed something big enough to trip on?
Cursing under his breath quietly, he stepped back and looked down. Sticking out from beside the newel post was the box of presents he’d brought in, the gifts that had gone untouched and fallen by the wayside in the tension.
The bottom of his stomach dropped out, and he was tempted to kick the box across the room. Instead, he threw himself on the couch and stretched out, ignoring the chill of the air on his skin. He’d slept in trenches and outside. He had a sleeping bag in the car, but he wasn’t going to get it.
Maybe this was the penance he needed to pay. Maybe he should go upstairs and stretch out on the hardwood floor outside the master bedroom. Show Chloe that he would suffer for her.
That doesn’t make any sense.
Did any kind of grovelling gesture ever make sense, really?
Tom rolled over, trying to get comfortable on the couch as he listened to the silent house, on a silent night. What a strange Christmas this had been. A truly spectacular disaster of a holiday, but he didn’t miss any of the other options for today—a friend’s house, a sibling’s home. He didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Except for upstairs.
He should have asked her which book she recommended from the stack she’d brought. That’s what he wanted to right now. He wanted to listen to her voice as she talked about something she knew inside and out. He wanted to fall asleep being told what was what by Chloe Dawson.
Instead, he fell asleep feeling like a lonely fool.