#Mudderfudder

When Spence woke up, Colbie was gone. He knew it before he even opened his eyes; it was in the cold silence of the room. It was in the lack of joy in his heart. It was the pit sitting deep in his gut.

She’d left and it was going to be okay. He was going to be okay. Hell, he’d been okay only three weeks ago, right? Right.

So why did he feel like that time when he was five years old and his grandpa had told him, “There’s no Santa Claus, kid. No one’s ever going to hand you what you want—you gotta do that for yourself.”

Spence blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling. What did he want? That was the easy part.

But he didn’t want someone who could walk away from him, or someone he had to chase. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime, thank you very much. He’d go back to work and he’d be fine.

Just like always.

Colbie sat in the kitchen of her family home, the one that she’d bought with her first big royalty check. She’d settled everyone into it so that she could take care of them as she always had.

It was noon.

No, scratch that. That was California time, but she was in New York now. It was three o’clock here and she hadn’t slept—although blissfully, Cinder had and was in fact curled up on the rug in front of the kitchen sink because that’s where the heat vent was.

She was glad the cat seemed happy. But Colbie needed to find some happy herself. She was exhausted. She hadn’t been able to catch any z’s, not on the plane and not in the hour since she’d arrived.

There was good and bad news. Bad news—she ached for Spence. She ached for him like she’d ache for air to fill her lungs. Not exactly a newsflash.

Good news—her family had decorated. Yes, she realized this was a very small thing in the scheme of all the things, but hey, she had to celebrate the good stuff, no matter how small. Her brothers had pulled the Christmas boxes from storage and thrown everything up. It wasn’t in Colbie’s usual orderly fashion. The stockings had been taped to a wall instead of pinned on the staircase railing. The tree had been put up in a corner instead of in front of the window. And the lights . . . good Lord, the lights. They’d used the outside balcony lights to line the crown molding. The tree lights were on the balcony. And the mantel lights were on the tree. It was all wrong and looked a little bit like Christmas on crack but . . . it made her smile.

“What do you think?” Kent asked, standing in the doorway in nothing but boxers and socks.

“I like it,” she said. “You guys did it on your own.”

He smiled and headed into the laundry room off the pantry, where he grabbed a pair of sweats out of the dryer.

She opened her mouth to get on him about living out of the dryer, but she closed her mouth again.

Because he’d done his own laundry.

He came back into the kitchen and moved to the oven. He turned it off and pulled out what looked like a very loaded casserole dish, and put that on the stovetop.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Linner. Late lunch, early dinner. Put it together last night cuz it’s my turn to cook today and I only had time to make one thing.”

She stared at him. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

He grinned. “I know, right? And wait until you taste it.”

She tried to pull a piece of the melted cheese out and burned her finger. “Mudderfudder!”

He laughed. “You know that we’re legal adults now, right? That we’ve heard every bad word under the sun and have most definitely used them?”

“You use them?”

“All the time. Just not near you so we don’t have to pay.” He gestured to the swear jar on the counter, filled with money she’d put in it. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s time to retire that thing. You could probably go on another vacay with what’s in there.”

She sighed. “I was just trying to make sure you guys knew right from wrong.”

“You were the best role model we could’ve asked for. Of course we know right from wrong.”

She looked at him and he laughed. “Hey, knowing and doing are two different things. We had things to get out of our system.” Still smiling, he came close, pulling her out of her chair and into his arms. “You’re back,” he said quietly.

“I told you I would be.”

He tightened his grip and pressed his face into her shoulder and she hugged him back, feeling a ball of emotion in her throat at the way he was holding her. “You didn’t expect to see me,” she whispered.

Still keeping his face hidden, he shook his head.

She squeezed him, her heart so tight she could scarcely breathe. He, like she, had some abandonment issues, and she’d hurt him by running away. “I’d never just walk away from you guys.”

He laughed softly and lifted his head, flashing her that grin that she knew got him whatever he wanted. “We’d absolutely deserve it if you did.”

“Maybe,” she teased, and then let her smile fade. “But seriously, I was always coming back, Kent. Always.”

His eyes grateful, he nodded. “I’m glad. And not just because Kurt cooks like shit. Oh, and you just got a same-day delivery. It was left at the front door.” He gestured to the package on the table that she hadn’t even noticed. One glance at the return address—Spence’s—had her hurriedly opening it up, heart in her throat as she came to a pretty wooden box. Inside, it was jammed with a huge assortment of small note pads and stickies in every color. She stared at it and started laughing.

Had a man ever gotten her more?

“What the hell’s all that?” Kent asked.

“It’s blank notes for me to use to jot down all my random thoughts,” she said.

“Huh.” Kent shook his head. “You should marry that dude.”

“Can’t,” she managed around a clogged throat, shaking her head. “I messed it all up.”

“As badly as I messed up?” he asked. “I mean, you yelled at me and I got it. I know we’ve been slow on the uptake but we’re trying to change, I can promise you that. I also know it’s only been a few days but I can tell you that we mean it. I’m sure we’ll screw up more than a few times but we heard you, Colbie. And we’re working on it. Sometimes it’s that simple.”

“Not this time,” she said.

“Because you let your responsibilities here hold you back,” he said. “You let us hold you back. If San Francisco turns out to be your jam, we’re going to try real hard not to hold you back anymore.”

Her breath caught. “No?”

“No.” He laughed softly. “I mean, we might all follow you out there, but hey, that’s how family works, right?” He pulled free and smiled at her.

“Right,” she said and shook her head. “How did you get to be smarter than me?”

He ruffled her hair just as Kurt came into the room.

They looked at each other, his expression hooded. “Hey,” she said softly. “Nice to see you. I’m glad you’re here.”

“I told you I would be,” he said.

“I was wrong to tell you what to do,” she said. “We’re equals in this family. We take care of each other because we want to, not because we have to.”

“You really believe that?” Kurt asked.

“I do,” she said and looked at the both of them, so identical and yet so different. “I’m sorry I left the way I did, without coming to you and telling you what was wrong. But I’m not sorry I went. I needed it. I . . .” She broke off, her throat constricting at what she’d found for herself in San Francisco, a world away from here. “I loved my time there.”

“We know.” Kent pulled out his phone, accessed his photos, and brought one up of . . .

. . . Colbie and Spence. It’d been taken outside of the Pacific Pier Building where the paparazzi had caught up with them. She was staring up at Spence with a silly smile on her face. It’d be embarrassing except that Spence was smiling down at her as well, his eyes lit with humor and something else—affection.

The cool, calm, unflappable, stoic man who didn’t easily show his feelings was practically glowing with how he felt for her.

And her heart stopped. Just stopped. She didn’t realize she’d taken Kent’s phone into her own hands and zoomed until he nudged Kurt.

“See? I was right,” he said. “She does really like that dude, a lot.” He held out his hand.

Kurt sighed and went to the junk drawer, where they kept an envelope of petty cash. Mostly it was used for emergency convenience-store runs or tips for deliveries, and it was funded by Colbie. Or at least it always had been. She realized she’d probably left it low on funds and hadn’t given it a second thought.

But the envelope was full now. “Tell me you didn’t rob a bank,” she said.

“Overtime,” they both said in unison, and while she stared at them, Kurt pulled out a twenty and slapped it into Kent’s hand.

“You bet on my love life?” she asked with disbelief.

This was met with a stunned silence as they both gaped at her, mouths open. “Wow,” Kurt finally said. “You actually just said ‘my love life.’ You’ve never said anything like that before.”

“Okay, that can’t be true,” she said. “Can it?”

They both slowly nodded and she realized they were right.

“All you ever do is work,” Kent said. “You don’t do life, at least not yours.”

“Things change,” she said softly. And how. “I guess we’ve all done some changing and growing up, huh?”

Kent smiled. “What exactly happened to you in San Fran?”

“A lot.”

The front door opened, and in came Jackson, carrying bags of presents. Probably the presents she’d asked him to have delivered to her family via an e-mail before she left.

He didn’t expect to see her. She watched it cross his face, the surprise chased by a flash of something she’d never seen from him.

Uncertainty.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re here.” He sounded genuinely glad to see her. “Can we talk?”

Her brothers vacated the kitchen and she and Jackson sat and stared at each other across the table.

“I’m not sorry I left,” she said. “And I didn’t come back for you.”

“I know. Colbie —”

“But what happened between us is my fault,” she said. “I should never have mixed business with pleasure. And—”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s on me. I was wrong to do the same.”

She nodded, relieved they were going to be civil about this. “I appreciate that,” she said. “But this is my career, and I gave you too much free rein over it because all I wanted to do was write. It was lazy of me, and I shouldn’t have done that. I also shouldn’t have left you in charge of my personal life. That’s on me too. But I’m a writer, Jackson. Not a public speaker. Not a celebrity. I need you to get that.”

He started to say something, but she held up a hand. “I know what the books have become and what our world is like, but it’s not for me and it’s never going to be. I’m always going to want to leave the red carpet for someone else to stumble over. When I asked you not to book any live engagements for me, I was serious.”

He grimaced, and in the not too distant past she would’ve rushed to try to please him by agreeing to stuff she didn’t want to do. But no more. She was standing firm.

The problem was, her heart was aching for Spence so much right then that she could already scarcely breathe for all the emotions battering her from the inside out. But something good had to come from walking away from him. “I mean it,” she said. “If that’s the type of person you want to represent, we’re not going to work out.”

“Colbie —”

“And something else,” she said. “I like my new book. I know it’s a departure, but it’s flowing for me and I’m happy with it. And I think Andrea will be too because—”

“It’s good.” He reached for her hand and gently squeezed her fingers. “After I got over myself, I read the chapters again, and there was something there.”

She stared at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I called Andrea and she agreed too.” He stood and tugged her into him for a hug. “And I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said against her hair. “I knew how you felt about me and I was enough of an egotistical asshole to be flattered by it. I even egged it on because it seemed to make you write faster. You were right and I’m so sorry.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Thanks for saying that. You were an egotistical asshole. But I put a lot on you, asking you to deal with so much more than you should’ve had to. Let’s just move on, okay?”

“Considering that I was certain you’d fire me, I’d like that very much. But . . .” he paused “. . . are we really okay?”

“You mean is my crush over?” she asked dryly. “I can promise you it most definitely is over.”

“Good to know,” he said on a short laugh. “But I meant can you move on from San Francisco?”

She stared at him, wanting to say yes but unable to do so.

“Because I really thought you’d come back here just to tell all of us that you were moving there,” he said.

“I couldn’t just move.”

“Why not?”

She paused. “I . . .” Huh. She didn’t know.

He tugged on a lock of her wild hair. “We all deserve our happy,” he said. “And I want that for you. Think about it. Let me know.” And then he was gone, leaving Colbie in the middle of her kitchen, feeling more than a little lost.

She should’ve felt good. Her editor was happy. Her agent was happy. Her staff, her family . . . all happy.

But she wasn’t. Because her brothers and Jackson had been right. She needed to find it for herself. And she had. She’d just left it three thousand miles behind.

God, she missed San Francisco. She missed the people in it. She missed the Pacific Pier Building. She missed the courtyard and the fountain and writing in front of it, listening to the water falling to the copper base. She missed sex. She missed Spence.

She missed sex with Spence.

She really had fallen in love with him. The truth was, she’d never really thought about love before—the heart-pounding, can’t-live-without-you kind of love that grows in the pit of the stomach and spreads outward until you’re warm all over. The kind of love you know is real because you’ve got not one single teeny, tiny doubt that he’d be there for you, no matter what.

Maybe she’d never given thought to love for herself because she’d never seen her mom in that kind of relationship. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t really sure she believed in that kind of relationship.

But something had changed, shifted inside her, because suddenly she did believe in love. And more than that, she wanted it for herself. She wanted what she’d had with Spence. Only she didn’t want it just for a vacation from her life.

She wanted it for her life.

“I shouldn’t have run,” she said.

“You can’t help it,” her mom said, coming into the room. “It’s in your blood.”

Colbie looked up. “Hey, Mom.”

Her mom smiled and hugged Colbie. “I thought I was dreaming when I heard your voice!” She tightened her grip and Colbie patted her on the back, trying to drag air into her lungs. “Can’t. Breathe.”

“I know.” Her mom loosened her grip only very slightly. “But you came! It’s a Christmas miracle!” Stepping back from Colbie, her eyes filled with huge tears.

“Oh, Mom. It’s okay, don’t cry.”

Her mom cupped Colbie’s face. “Thank you. Really. Thank you for coming when we called. You didn’t have to, and we shouldn’t have asked, but it’s really great to see you—no matter why you’re really here.”

“What does that mean?”

“I had my cards read and was told that you’ve fallen deeply in love but that you ran from it.”

“Mom.” Colbie shook her head. “I told you to stop spending your money on that stuff. You don’t need to have your cards read to live your life.”

“Maybe not, but how else will I hear about your life? You don’t talk to me. So is it true, then? Did you run away from love? I mean, it would make sense, given that you’re here so quickly without any fuss.”

Colbie sighed.

“Oh no, Colbie. Really? I didn’t want to be right on this one, although I admit, it does make me feel better that you’re running away from your man rather than racing home to deal with us, who don’t deserve you.”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Huh. Shock. But maybe you’ll listen instead. Follow me.” They went to the living room, where her mom pointed to what she’d been doing before Colbie had come home.

Looking at old photo albums, like she did every Christmas. They were from the years before Colbie’s birth and right after. The old leather one on top was opened to a page that held an eight-by-ten picture taken on her parents’ wedding day.

They were smiling and looked happy.

And young.

“Mom,” Colbie said gently. “Why are you doing this to yourself? He left us. He doesn’t deserve your regrets and sadness.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” Her mom paused. “He didn’t leave us, Colbie.”

Colbie met her gaze. “I don’t understand.”

Her mom sighed. “Sit. Sit,” she said again, patting the seat of the chair next to her. “We met at a frat party.”

“I thought you didn’t go to college.”

“I didn’t,” her mom said. “But my friends and I were looking for our MRS degree. Do you know what that means?”

“That you were looking for husbands,” Colbie said, not liking where this was going.

“I met your dad at the first frat party I ever went to. He was trouble, of course, I could see it in his eyes, but I didn’t care.”

“And by trouble,” Colbie said, “you mean . . .”

“He had no interest in marriage or a family. Absolutely zero. But when I got pregnant that night, he actually stood by me. Married me to give you a name.” Her mom’s eyes overfilled and a few tears escaped. “We did our best, but you know how I am. I self-destruct my happiness, always have. I did the same with us. By the time I got pregnant again, we weren’t doing well. I knew it was over, that I had to leave. I told myself I was doing all of us a favor. I was leaving him before he could leave us, that’s all. Still, it was wrong. I know that now, and if he’d ever tried to see you kids, even once, I’d have swallowed my pride and let him be a part of your lives. But he never did.”

Colbie just stared at her in shock. “You left him.”

“Yes. And I know. Believe me, I know what a shitty mom I was to ever let you think otherwise. I was a shitty mom in other ways too. I didn’t teach you to enjoy life. Instead I had you always looking ahead for problems, letting you fix everything. But that’s not life. Life is in the little things, you see?”

“No,” Colbie said flatly and stood up.

Her mom caught her hand. “You gotta catch the moments, the precious, good, amazing moments of life. You gotta go after them and hold on for all you’re worth. And when someone comes along who loves you for you—and not because of what you do or because you’re lonely, but because they love you—you hold on, Colbie. You hold on like you’ve never held on before. Not because you need it for your life, but because it complements your life.” She stood up. She was a good head shorter than Colbie but she put her hands on her hips and managed to glare up at her daughter. “Now, I can see why you’d ignore any advice I might have to offer because your stubbornness is second only to mine, but if you trust me on only one thing, trust this. I’ve been there, done that, and stole the T-shirt, and it wasn’t all that much fun.”

“Mom —”

“So don’t walk away from what’s right for you,” her mom said, her voice more serious than Colbie had ever heard. “Although you ran more than walked.”

Colbie sighed.

“Baby, if you only listen to me once in your entire life, please, God, let it be this one time.” She swallowed hard. “Don’t make my mistakes. Okay? Don’t let happiness take a backseat. Happiness makes the world go around.” She held Colbie’s gaze, her own fierce and suspiciously shiny. “Don’t be a runner.” And then she gave one jerky nod and walked away.

“I’m not a runner,” Colbie said to the room.

But she was. And she didn’t like what that said about her. Maybe she’d known Spence for only a short amount of time but some things happened in an instant.

Things like . . . standing in a fountain, water dripping off your face as you fell in love with the man standing there with you . . .

Her phone vibrated with a text. Spence.

She stared at the words until they blurred. “I have to go back to San Francisco,” she whispered.

Her mom stuck her head back in, tears in her eyes as she nodded. “Yes! You have to go back.”