Chapter 16

Gabe had no idea what had possessed him to hold her there. Sure, she felt amazing on top of him. Like heaven. Like one million things he hadn’t had in forever. Or forever period.

He had to let her go. Partly because this was all too much and partly because he wanted more than he could ever allow himself to have.

Still he didn’t let her go. How could he when she sighed happily into his neck? When her fingers traced gentle, soothing patterns over his arms. She had no qualms about touching his scars or his burn marks. He hadn’t been with all that many women since he’d gotten them, and most of his partners had avoided them. Because sex then had just been…sex.

He squeezed his eyes shut and finally allowed his arms around her to loosen. “I should take care of the condom.”

She rolled off him fast as a shot. As though the words had broken her from some trance. Some trance he wished she would’ve stayed in.

“Bathroom’s in the hallway. You can’t miss it,” she said, weirdly overbright about the whereabouts of her bathroom.

He nodded and slid out of bed. He didn’t bother for clothes at this point. The fire was high and crackling, he was warmed all over, and she’d seen it all.

He entered the hall and the first doorway was open but dark. Still, he could make out a window, maybe the corner of some furniture. Definitely not a bathroom.

Colin’s bedroom—a stark reminder of so many things. Because he liked the kid, but he knew what being the kid of a single mother was like. He was aware of all the complications that came with your mom having relationships. If Colin ever found out about this…

Gabe couldn’t even let himself think about it. How it might sour Colin’s opinion of him. How it might change everything.

One of the things he liked so much about Monica was that she was a good mom. She would never, ever make Colin feel like a second-class citizen in his own home, but it could still change how Colin saw Gabe.

If Gabe was stupid enough to think this could go somewhere, he would be the second-class citizen. Yet again. Colin would always be first.

Which was right and good. It amazed him there was a mother out there like that. He hadn’t believed it.

Gabe couldn’t live that kind of life again, second fiddle to everyone else. It broke too many things, and he couldn’t bring himself to pretzel into a million pieces trying to fill those cracks only to lose. He would always lose.

Gabe forced himself away from Colin’s bedroom and found the bathroom. He got rid of the condom, trying not to dwell on the sex any more than he had just dwelled on idiot thoughts and what-ifs.

But the thoughts came at him anyway. How sex with Monica was somehow different than any other sex he’d had. He’d known on a kind of mental level that sex could be different. After all, there had to be some reason Alex and Becca wanted to be married to each other for the rest of their lives. Jack wanted to similarly shackle himself to Rose. Gabe understood there had to be something special about a relationship, even if he never wanted one.

But now he understood all that on a visceral level. Sex might be the same act regardless, but it didn’t involve the same feelings. It didn’t involve the same tangle of emotions afterward. When it was with someone you didn’t really care about, it was all transaction. You got what you wanted—and that was nice.

But it wasn’t like this. It didn’t fulfill or light up the world. It didn’t infuse hope where hope had no business being.

Gabe caught his reflection in the mirror. He could see the panic in his own expression and knew he had to get a handle on it before he returned to Monica. This was supposed to be a casual thing. There were no other options beyond getting sex out of their systems.

Getting it out of his system was never actually going to happen. She’d gone on about how they’d already kissed and how could the wondering be worse than the doing.

Oh. It was worse. So much worse.

He had to get a handle on his shit. There was no way he was going to let her see what a mess he was. How this had worked through him and changed him somehow. He felt like a different man. He didn’t like this new man. He wanted nothing to do with this vulnerable sad sack.

He looked away from the mirror and mechanically turned off the light. He counted the steps from the bathroom back to the living room, finding a center in the numbers.

She was snuggled under those ridiculous gingerbread man sheets, her hair a tangled mess, golden and youthful. She had this self-satisfied smile on her face that unwound all of the crazy emotions inside of him.

At least until she aimed it at him.

“I should probably go.” It sounded overloud in the quiet room, even with the crackling of the fire and the faint sounds of Christmas music still playing. “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

He grimaced.

She didn’t say anything to his proclamation. In fact, nothing about her changed exactly. She was lying there still.

He felt as though he needed to defend himself against something, which was stupid because he should go. That was the deal. Sex. Not sleeping together. “They’re going to ask where I was if I don’t get back tonight. You didn’t want anyone knowing about this.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said slowly, carefully.

What the hell was she being careful about? He didn’t want to know. “So, I should go.” He moved stiffly for his clothes. She just lay there, watching him, and he didn’t know what to say, so he got dressed. Avoiding eye contact.

Like a pussy.

“This was fun,” he offered. Lamely.

“It was fun.” She moved up onto her elbows. “We should, uh, do it again. You know, before Christmas. Just to ensure we do the things we, uh, didn’t get to.”

This side of her, unsure but braving through things anyway, utterly undid him. He found her completely irresistible even in the midst of his own slight break with sanity.

“Well, you’ve got me curious. What kind of things?”

She raised that chin as primly as a woman wrapped up in gingerbread men could be. “You know what kind of things far better than I do.”

“You sound like you have a few ideas in your head of other things we could do.”

She tried to scowl at him, but it failed, curving up at the edges. That always undid him too, little glimpses at her humor.

Every single cell in his body wanted to shuck his clothes and get back in that bed and do all those things tonight, all night long. He couldn’t imagine that being good for either of them. He had to go.

“How about tomorrow night?”

She nodded, smiling. “I’ll be here, so just whenever.”

“Will there be more cookies?”

“Undoubtedly,” she returned with mock seriousness.

“I’ll be here then.” He moved for his boots, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she grabbed her clothes and got dressed.

“I don’t have any nicer underwear. Just FYI.”

Gabe had no idea where that remark could have come from, and he tried not to look at her like she was crazy. “I don’t really care much about your underwear, Monica. I’m far more interested in what’s under it.”

“Well, that’s…good. I just… You know, when you’re a single mom, there’s no reason for pretty, lacy underwear. Except this kind of reason, and I don’t usually have this kind of reason, so—”

“I don’t care about your underwear. Period.”

She gave him a sharp nod. “Got it.” She tried to smile, but it was all twisted, and somehow that twisted him. An aching, awful thing.

He couldn’t give in to that. He found his coat and shrugged it on and considered for a second giving her a goodbye kiss. Except he wasn’t strong enough to touch his lips to hers, then walk away. It’d have to wait. Until tomorrow. He walked to the door and grabbed the knob.

“Gabe?”

He didn’t dare look back. “Yeah?”

She paused for the longest time, this endless series of minutes where his heart beat hard against his ribs and a hope for something he couldn’t possibly allow himself to have tried to overtake his body, his brain, his heart.

“Good night,” she finally said.

“Good night,” he repeated, wrenching the door open.

And then he nearly fell over something. Something cold and… Snow. The light from the cabin spilled outside, and all he saw was white. In the air, on the ground. Everything was a swirling, nearly indistinguishable white. They’d been supposed to get a blizzard tomorrow, but tomorrow wasn’t tonight. There had to be a foot of snow on the ground if not more. There was no way…

“I think that’s what they call a whiteout,” Monica said, her voice blank and completely unreadable.

“That would make sense,” he said, staring at the white emptiness in front of him. It was loud and eerie and—

“I guess you’re stuck with me.”

He glanced over at her then and tried not to feel the panic that was bubbling inside of him. Panic. That’s what it was. Not joy. Not anticipation. This was sheer and utter panic.

She grinned the kind of grin she must have copied from him. “We can probably find something to do.”

Panic or joy, it didn’t matter, because he was stuck, and she was here, this gorgeous, sweet woman he couldn’t have.

Later, in the future, he couldn’t have. But tonight, for as long as they were stuck in this storm, he could have her.

Gabe closed the door. “I guess we could.”

* * *

Monica woke up the next morning sure she was dreaming. Because the cabin smelled like coffee and she was sore in ways she wasn’t sure she’d ever been sore and something in her bed smelled like a man.

Not a boy. A man.

Her eyes flew open in a second of alarm before the night’s previous activities rushed over her. Her face went hot, and she pulled the sheets a little closer to her chin.

She was naked. Asleep and naked and her cabin smelled like coffee.

She hadn’t woken up to coffee already made since she’d lived with her parents. She hadn’t woken up naked in far longer than that, if ever. She had never, ever woken up to the smell of a man in her bed who wasn’t a man she was married to.

She blew out a breath, daring herself to open her eyes. She tried to take in her surroundings by only moving her eyes. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want Gabe to know she was awake until she knew where he was. Until she saw him and could determine…

Something.

“Morning,” he said casually.

She whipped her head toward the kitchen, where he was standing, back to her. She frowned at it. Military men. She should have known. He probably sensed it the moment she woke up in that weird, dizzying second of panic. “Morning,” she returned, peering over the bed to see if her clothes were within reach.

“Made coffee,” he said as she pawed the ground for her discarded T-shirt. “Didn’t see any breakfast food.”

“Cookies,” she said, pulling the shirt over her head.

“You can’t eat cookies for breakfast.”

She glanced at him again, and this time he’d turned to face her. His brown eyes dark and mysterious, his clothes the same as last night—jeans and a rumpled henley that hugged all those impressive muscles and the breadth of his shoulders. But he wasn’t wearing his boots, just socks. As if he were a normal man who would walk around anywhere in socks. Plain white socks.

She swallowed, because now she was staring at his socks and that was weird. She forced her gaze to move back up his body and tried not to catalogue every inch of him. Or think about how much she would have liked to have woken up with him naked next to her.

She cleared her throat. “Of course you can have cookies for breakfast. It’s no different than a donut or a muffin or a cinnamon roll.”

“All terrible choices for breakfast. Breakfast is supposed to have protein. It is the point of breakfast.”

Surely, she had something smart or arch to say to that, but she could only stare at him in her kitchen. There was a too-handsome-for-words man in her kitchen. She’d had sex with this man. Sex. She’d touched his naked body and welcomed him inside her naked body, and it was so surreal to stand here and just have to exist in that knowledge.

His mouth quirked as if he found her silence funny.

She sniffed daintily. “You’ve got a lot of opinions on breakfast food. I’d invite you to eat breakfast elsewhere, but I have a feeling that isn’t an option.”

He nodded toward the window. “Have a look.”

She was still mostly naked, and she knew her T-shirt wouldn’t even begin to be long enough to cover her if she got out from under the sheets. With her shirt now on, she could crane her neck a little farther out. Somehow her jeans were, well, not within reaching distance.

It was silly. She should slide out of bed and grab them. Hell, she should get out of bed and walk calmly and proudly half-naked to her room and change into sweats or something.

But this was the light of day. She could wrap the sheet around her, but that felt childish. As though she were ashamed to be naked in front of a man she’d already had sex with.

Well, ashamed wasn’t the right word. Nervous. She walked a lot, and only around Christmas did she indulge in cookies for breakfast, but she didn’t work out or anything. She was all soft, jiggly bits—jiggly bits that had once grown a child inside of her. He was honed muscle and perfection, day or night.

Then he was exiting her small kitchen and walking right toward her, and all she could think about was she finally knew what all that man looked like underneath his clothes. She knew what it felt to be skin to skin and breath to breath with him. She knew what it was like to feel him surge inside her and—

She seriously needed to get a grip.

He bent over a few paces from the bed and picked her jeans up off the floor. He held them out toward her, but just before her fingers grasped the material, he pulled them back and held them farther away. She couldn’t reach them without getting off the bed, and though it was more than possible to pull the sheet with her, she couldn’t get over the idea that it seemed rather cowardly. Somehow more cowardly than staying put on the bed.

So she held out her hand and donned her most imperious voice. “George Bailey, give me my robe.” He looked at her as if she’d grown a head, and she sighed gustily. “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

“What’s wonderful about it?”

“You’ve had to have heard of It’s a Wonderful Life.”

He shrugged.

“You really are a grinch,” she muttered.

“The grinch I’m familiar with. George Bayfield—”

“Bailey.”

“Sure, whatever. Never heard of him.”

“That does it.”

“Does what?”

“We’re going to make the couch, and then we’re going to get a big plate of cookies, and then we are going to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“I was planning on digging myself a tunnel out of here.”

“Sorry. No shovel.” She smiled sweetly up at him. “You’re stuck in the hellish depths of Christmas doom.”

“God save me,” he muttered, tossing the pair of jeans at her.

She caught them easily, cheered by the prospect of breakfast cookies and company to watch her favorite Christmas movie. She’d tried to force Colin into a viewing last year, and he’d complained so long and so loud about it being black and white that she’d finally shoved his handheld video game at him.

Monica shimmied into her jeans under the sheet. “God can’t save you here, Gabe.” She slid out of bed, then patted his cheek. “But if you’re a good boy, Santa might bring you a very, very nice present.”

He didn’t move, arms crossed over his chest, staring down at her with one of those unreadable expressions she’d never stop wanting to figure out.

“That sounds suspiciously dirty,” he said, some tiny hint of humor in his voice if not his face.

“There’s only one way to find out how dirty.” She walked over to the TV stand, where she had all her Christmas DVDs piled up. She pulled It’s a Wonderful Life off the top and held it up so he could see it.

“Oh, God, black and white? I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“Just be thankful I didn’t make a White Christmas joke. You don’t strike me as the musical type.”

Gabe grimaced. “That would definitely not be worth it.”

She raised an eyebrow at him until his mouth curved.

“Maybe,” he amended.

She had to turn away from that smile because she didn’t know how to react to it. There were too many big, warm, smooshy, and oh-so-vulnerable feelings fluttering around her chest, and he would see them. Probably squash them if he could.

Squashing might be best, but she wanted to revel in some smooshy feelings before she had to go back to being Monica Finley, therapist and mother…and sexless automaton.

She began to strip the bed, something to occupy her thoughts with. Strip the bed, fold up the bed, make it a couch and a living room again, and not think of all that symbolism.

“Well, if I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future, at least I can rest easy in the fact the Christmas-themed sheets are gone.”

“Don’t be silly,” Monica replied. “I’ll replace these with candy cane ones.”

“Well, at least those don’t have faces.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, affecting her most serious face. “Oh, no. They do.”

Their gazes held for the longest time, till it turned hot and heavy. Till the room seemed to shrink into this little pinpoint of vision between them. She suddenly felt as if she’d run a mile, and still they stood frozen, staring at each other.

“Monica,” he said, slow and sure and some dark, edgy thing in his voice.

“What?” she said, her voice a silly, breathless whisper.

“Don’t take off the sheets.”