I’m a full glass into a bottle of red when Jason arrives. His dinner at his mom’s house went a lot better than mine did. No surprise there, maybe. Anything goes better than Thanksgiving dinner with my family. For most of my life, I didn’t know Jason was the reason for the tension between my mother and father—or maybe he was a symptom of that tension. I don’t know when they started hating each other. And by the time I learned that my father had a son the same age as me, I was a senior in high school.

But everyone else apparently knew from the beginning that my father had gotten his secretary pregnant—an affair in a long line of affairs. And all the while, my mother took out her humiliation and bitterness on me. Jason’s never did on him. So he can go to Thanksgiving dinner and come away from it, and his only regret is that inviting me to join them would be too damn awkward. His mom sounds lovely but I wouldn’t ever ask her to add me to their family gathering.

So Jason and I get together afterward. It’s been six years now. Usually we meet up at his place, but this time we did at mine.

By the time I’ve finished with my second glass of wine, I’ve bent his sympathetic ear with every shitty thing my mother and father did and said. Halfway through my third glass, he’s passed out on my couch in a food coma.

But it’s okay, because I’m done. I’m truly done with them. And I don’t feel sad or upset, except that I spent so much of my life trying to be what they wanted. No more. And if today is a day for feeling thankful, I’ll be thankful for that.

And more thankful that I found Jason when I did. Thankful for Lowery’s bullets, too, in a twisted way. When I realized how close I’d come to dying, it had been almost stupidly simple to let go of everything that had hurt me for so long.

I’m thankful for Cole Matthews, too. In a very real sense, he saved my life that day—and not just by shooting Lowery. Maybe that’s why I can’t let go of him as easily as everything else. He’s the reason I’m alive, so a part of me belongs to him. Maybe a part of me will always belong to him.

Even if it does, it’s only a part of me. But the rest of me seems determined to hang on to him, too.

I shouldn’t blame myself for that. I shouldn’t call myself an idiot. If I want to feel like shit and hear someone tell me how stupid I am, I could just go back to my parents’ house. And really, who wouldn’t be a little crazy about Cole Matthews? Especially after being kissed by him?

No one. That’s who.

Except maybe my condescending iceberg of a mother.

More than a little tipsy, I lift my glass in a silent toast to her immensely cold heart, then carry the bottle of wine toward my bedroom, intending to find a heartwarming holiday movie to fall asleep to. I’m halfway across the living room when a knock sounds at my door. Wearing a flannel pajama shirt that hangs halfway to my knees and fuzzy red socks, I make a wavering detour and—because I’m drunk but not stupid—take a look through the peephole to see who it is.

And there he is. The one I can’t let go. His hair’s slightly disheveled. And he’s been pushing his leg too hard again. The dumb jerk won’t use his crutches as much as he should. His lips are tight, the edges of his mouth pale with strain. He shouldn’t be on his feet at all, let alone coming to see me.

But he’s not a robber, so I haul open the door.

Immediately his dark gaze runs all over me, from head to toe. Funny how much he does that now. I remember just a few minutes before Lowery started shooting, that I spotted Cole walking down the courthouse steps. Of course he didn’t see me. But I thought then, Look at me. Please. For once, just see me.

Only a few minutes later, he did see me—when he was bleeding on the ground. He looked up into my eyes with such wonder and awe that even amidst all the terror, my heart felt like it would burst. But that bullet to his head must have knocked something loose in his brain at the time, because he hasn’t looked at me like that again.

He’s not looking at me like that now. Instead his gaze is searching and intense, his voice gruff. “You okay?”

Because the last time he saw me, I was a mess. But I’m better now. “Mmm-hmm,” I tell him, showing him my bottle of wine. “Look. All good.”

That doesn’t seem to reassure him. He frowns. “You drank all that yourself?”

“I did. But don’t worry,” I add, suddenly realizing why he’s frowning. “I don’t make it a habit. I’ve seen waaaaaay too many livers.”

“I bet.” He glances past me. “Your brother’s here, too? You’ve got someone with you?”

“My brainless frat boy boyfriend.” I grin at Cole when he winces. “Jason thought that was hilarious. Before he passed out. Not from this”—I lift the bottle again—“but from all the stuffing and mashed potatoes. Everyone blames the turkey but tryptophan only gets to your head so easily because your body’s busy digesting all the carbs. Though the wine probably helps a little, too. Did you eat a lot?”

“Yeah, I did. Too much.”

“Did you have to loosen your belt? But you have really hard abdominal muscles. I bet you didn’t have to. While I was in training, I assisted during an autopsy on a guy who’d just finished Easter dinner. And he had a dozen eggs in his stomach. That wasn’t what killed him—he was stabbed in the neck—but a dozen eggs! Did you eat that much?”

“Not quite.” Laughter lights his dark eyes as he braces his shoulder against the door—taking the weight off his leg, I realize—and he holds out a small plastic container. “I brought this back for you.”

I stare blankly at the little food storage tub. “What is it? Are those leftovers?” Excitement zips through me. “I’ve never had Thanksgiving leftovers before.”

He shakes his head. “It’s a piece of your pie. Didn’t seem fair that you didn’t get any. So I saved you some. Heroically, I’ll add. I had to fight off Huertas and his kids when they went back for seconds—and his little girls are vicious. I barely survived.”

Touched, I take the container. “So they liked the pie?”

“It was fucking amazing. To tell the truth, I almost ate this piece instead of giving it to you. But Sofia wanted to wash your dish before returning it, so Huertas will bring it to work with him in the morning. And since I didn’t bring your pie plate back, I had to bring something. ”

I don’t care about the dish. “You should come in, then,” I tell him, stepping back and opening the door wider. “We’ll share this piece of pie and the rest of this wine, and you’ll sit and rest your leg like you should.”

He doesn’t move right away. Instead he stares at me, then groans and drags a hand though his hair. “I shouldn’t. You’re drunk.”

I frown at him. “What does that mean? Should I be afraid of you? Are you going to have sex with me while I’m impaired? That’s gross. And not heroic at all.”

His expression darkens. “Fuck no. But sex isn’t the only way a guy like me can take advantage of someone who’s drunk.”

“A guy like you?”

“I want to get into your head even more than I want to get into your panties, angel.”

Is that all? Joke’s on him, then, because there’s nothing in my head right now. Just mushy mush. “Jason’s here and can protect my secrets,” I remind him, then grab his hand when he still hesitates. “C’mon, Detective Matthews.”

I pull him into my apartment—somehow I’ve only got hold of his forefinger, but that’s apparently enough. He mutters something like, “I’m going to Hell,” but kicks the door closed behind him and lets me lead him into the kitchen…though he probably knows where it is.

“Does your apartment look just like this?” I ask. “Same layout?”

“Pretty much.”

I guess I don’t have a reason to keep hold of his finger then. Sadly I let go, then head across the kitchen for plates and forks. “Since Jason’s taking up the sofa, we’ll have to stick to these barstools. I haven’t put the dining set together yet.”

“Works for me. I don’t even have a dining set.”

No dining set? I blink and look back at him. “Do you want one for Christmas?”

“No.” With a laugh, he settles onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “Shit. Is this what happens when you drink too much? You become generous?”

“I’m always generous.” I set the dessert plate in front of him. “It’s a good thing, though. One day I’ll run the Bennet Foundation and give away lots of money for the betterment of the city. Whenever my father asks why I’m wasting time in the medical examiner’s office, I tell him that the best way to learn how we can improve every citizen’s life is to be intimately familiar with what’s killing them. Which is true, but not the only reason. And he thinks it’s a stupid reason, anyway, but I don’t. Do you want red wine or white or something else?”

“Water’s good.”

It takes an absurd amount of concentration to fill his glass with ice and water from the filtered pitcher in the refrigerator, and when I turn back to him, he’s looking over his shoulder at Jason. My brother’s sprawled facedown on the sofa beneath a blanket.

Cole glances at me again as I sit on the stool beside his. “What’d you mean when you said you were the second-to-last person to know you had a brother?”

“Just that.” Reaching for the plastic container, I pop open the lid. “I found out during a school dance, my senior year of high school. No surprise, my father sent me to St. Mary’s, so we had to invite boys from other schools. One of the girls invited Jason.”

“Why ‘no surprise’? You aren’t Catholic. And wait a second.” He stops me as I begin to lift the pie from the container. “Why don’t we just share it straight from the tub? Then you won’t have dishes to clean.”

“I like washing dishes,” I tell him and set the pale green slice onto his plate. Some of the decorative whipped cream has softened and lost its shape, but otherwise it all held together well. “And my father is a pompous, controlling dick-weasel. So he thought if I was at a private girls’ school, he could more easily direct my education and my social life.”

“But he couldn’t?”

“Not the education part. My social life…he was pretty good at controlling that. I didn’t have many friends.” Knife in hand, I frown over the slice, trying to figure out what’s wrong with the shape of it, but my brain’s not cooperating. “If I cut this in half, one side is all crust and the other half is just a point. That doesn’t seem even.”

With gentle fingers, Cole takes the knife and neatly cuts lengthwise down the center of the slice. “I don’t believe the other girls didn’t like you, angel.”

“Some did,” I admit. “But it was hard to trust any of them. Do you know that my freshman year, my father asked some of my friends to watch me? And tell him what I was doing and who I was talking to? And they did?”

His face darkens. “It sure as fuck doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yeah.” My throat tightens as the memory of that betrayal hits me again, but I shake it off. That’s all done with. “So I had friends, but after that, I always felt…a little distant from them. And of course that made some of the girls believe I was just a snob. They didn’t like me much. And one of those girls was the one who brought Jason. Because even they had heard the rumors about the son my father had with his secretary. And this girl thought I’d be embarrassed when he showed up, or I’d be put in my place, or something.”

“And what were you?”

“I didn’t even know who he was. Just some guy that this girl brought over to talk to me. It was weird, because I didn’t know her well. I thought maybe she was showing off her hot new boyfriend. I saw that he was embarrassed, but I was clueless. Then someone finally explained it, and my reaction…wasn’t pretty.” With my fork, I toy with the whipped cream, too mortified to look Cole in the eyes. “I suppose this is the part that I should be careful about telling you. If you want to get into my head.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“I won’t. Because I was horrible. I instantly hated him. So much. I thought his existence was the reason my father was never satisfied with anything I did, and why my mother was always disappointed in me, too. Because we weren’t enough—I wasn’t enough—to make my father happy. Not when he apparently had a perfect golden boy with another woman. So I said he wasn’t my brother, that if my father really cared about him, he’d have given Jason the Bennet name. Then I was glad that hurt him.” Sick shame churns in my stomach at the memory. “Then I ran out of there, bawling my head off—which of course got around to my mother, and then she was mad at me for embarrassing the Bennet name by being such a crybaby in public. And for acknowledging Jason at all. Sometimes I think she doesn’t care that my father cheats on her. She just doesn’t like being humiliated by everyone knowing about it.”

Cole’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Seems to me Jason eventually forgave you.”

Dull heat climbs up my face. “When I pulled my head out of my ass. And it turns out, Jason resented me, too, except he’d known about my existence for a lot longer. But he thought I was the princess who got all of our father’s time and attention. Only after we met again—okay, what really happened was I tracked him down and accused him of stealing my father—and we realized that our dear dad was just a selfish dickhead all around. And that I missed out on eighteen years of having a brother.”

“But you’re making up for it.”

“Trying to,” I agree. “I’m trying to make up for a lot of things I never did. Like making pies for Thanksgiving. Of course, I think that will go a lot better if I don’t include my parents in the future.” Listening to myself whine, I sigh. “But maybe I shouldn’t complain about crappy holidays. It’s not like I was hungry or didn’t receive any gifts. My parents were just…who they are.”

Cole’s shaking his head. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “You’ll do better without them. This is something I can tell you for sure, Mia. When I was a kid, we didn’t have shit. We were poor as fuck. And—”

“See?” My face is burning. “I’ll shut up.”

“Don’t you dare. Because if you let me finish, I’ll tell you that I had friends who were in the same boat. Didn’t have shit to their name. But they loved every damn holiday and Christmas, even if all they got was a pair of socks, because their families made something special of it. Just being together in that time was special to them. Me and my old man, though… Some years he had a girlfriend, some years he had a job, and some years that made it worse and some years that made it better. But I’ll tell you the best Christmas I ever had was the first one away from home, sitting alone at a Denny’s, eating their turkey dinner. Because I was away from all that shit. You get away from that shit, too. And it’ll get better. This Christmas, it’ll be better. Because you’ll make it better. And I’ll help you.”

His fierce expression wavers in front of me as tears fill my eyes. My heart’s aching as I slide off my stool, and a hot lump of emotion is balled up in my throat. With me standing and him sitting, my height is about even with his, but I’m not close enough to see him properly, not with my vision all blurry. His hands curve around my waist when I push closer, all but straddling his right thigh, my arms linking around his neck.

With my face right up to his, I whisper, “Is this hurting your leg?”

“No, angel.” He groans his answer, so he might be lying. Or maybe because I’m also making him hard in all the places he’s not already hard. His chest can’t get any harder. I’m pressed up tight against him, my breasts flattened against those steely pecs, and he’s warm and solid and so wonderful.

“I like your face,” I tell him.

I also like what telling him does to that face. He laughs a little, lines forming at the sides of his dark eyes, that smile making his mouth so wide and kissable. “I like your face, too.”

Unable to resist, I unlace my fingers from behind his neck and trace those smiling lips with the fingertips of my right hand. “And I like your mouth. Even when you look at me all frowningly for a long time.”

Softly he says, “When did I do that?”

“Last Friday. When Dr. Childers and I were working on Eldon Jameson. You were staring at me and looked so unhappy with me. Were you?”

A heavy sigh slips past my fingers. “Not with you. But I don’t like the idea of you down there, knowing the kind of shit you must see. It’s not all old men and natural causes. Sometimes it’s Hell.” Gently he skims the backs of his knuckles down my cheek. “And an angel doesn’t belong in Hell.”

That’s sweet. But he’s got it all wrong. “I’m not an angel.”

“Considering you were hovering over me when I thought I was dying, you better let me decide that.”

“Then I’m an angel,” I concede, since I can’t argue with that impeccable logic. “But maybe think of it like this, instead: Heaven’s already full of all the angels it needs. So Hell could use some more. Especially since I’ll be one of the last people who ever takes care of the dead. I’ll treat them with dignity and respect. And what we do is hard sometimes, but I’ll do right by them and their loved ones. Like you try to do. Are you going to stop investigating just because it’s hard sometimes?”

He doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t need to.

Suddenly exhausted, I lay my cheek against his shoulder. “Anyway, I can do that thing where you…separate yourself. Detach. Maybe I learned it from my mother. The difference is that I come back. Re-attach. And go out into the world like that. With all my feelings intact.”

“And that’s when you’re afraid of getting hurt?”

“Or of hurting someone else. But I’m not afraid in the autopsy suite. Maybe the best thing about dead people is that they can’t hurt you…and you can’t hurt them. You can hurt for them, and for the people they left behind. But on a one-to-one basis? No. You should take me to bed.”

“Mia…” My name trails off on a hoarse groan. His hands tighten on my hips. “Don’t think I’m rejecting you, because I do want you, but—”

“I’m so drunk, I don’t think I can make it there without someone beside me, keeping me steady.”

“Ah.” His deep chuckle sounds against my ear. “You didn’t eat any of your pie yet, though.”

“Because I don’t like pie.”

“You don’t like pie.” He echoes it flatly, like the words are gibberish he’s trying hard to understand.

“I don’t really like any sweets. I only like baking them. And giving them away.” I snuggle my face against his warm neck. He smells so good, with some kind of spicy cologne lingering against his skin. “But if I’d said that you could have the whole piece, I couldn’t have lured you into my apartment. You would have just taken the pie over to your place. So I said we’d share. But I’ll give my half to Jason.”

Amusement deepens his voice. “You’re a wily drunk.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” The whole world shifts and reels dizzily around me. I cling tighter to his shoulders. My voice rises in alarm as I realize what just happened and why I’m suddenly floating. “You don’t have to carry me. Your leg—”

“Can do this.” His tone allows no argument. “And the day I can’t is the day I don’t deserve to touch you at all.”

“You’re wrong,” I tell him. “So wrong, you stubborn jerk.”

But he’s not listening. And Cole might be a stubborn jerk, but he manages to carry me down the hall without dropping me or limping too badly. My room’s dark, only lit by a lamp on the nightstand. By the time he reaches my bed and sets me gently down, his taut features show the strain of his effort. So the last thing he needs to do is walk down the hall again.

I catch his hand. “Lie with me until I fall asleep.”

His gaze narrows, as if he’s wondering whether I’m being wily again.

“I’ll be out within five minutes. And the rest will be good for your leg,” I tell him before he can argue.

“Only five minutes, then.” A storm moves across his expression, leaving behind a dark cloud. “Because last time I was here, Mia, you slammed your door in my face. I don’t know why you invited me in here now and what changed, but I’m sure as hell not going to risk you hating my guts when you wake up, wondering if I took advantage of you being drunk…more than I already have.”

Self-recrimination edges the last with harsh bitterness. I roll over into the center of the bed, feel his long, hard body as he slides up behind me. “You didn’t get anything out of my head that I wouldn’t want you to know.”

“A few days ago, you didn’t want me to know anything.”

I yawn and punch my pillow into place against my shoulder. “A few days ago, I didn’t really trust you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Now you do?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Why?”

“Because you offered to stay with me to make sure I’m okay.” And I didn’t know men were so talkative in bed. “Now, shhhhhh.”

Frustration joins the laugh shaking his big body against me. “All right, angel.” His silence lasts only a few seconds, but in that time I fall almost completely under. Until I hear him say, “What kind of mattress is this? This is the most comfortable shit I’ve ever been on.”

“Like a cuddle from a cloud,” I murmur. “Do you want one for Christmas?”

His laugh shakes against me again. His strong arms pull me in tighter against his chest, and I feel the brush of his lips against my temple. “No, angel. That’s not what I want for Christmas.”

“Tell me what you do want, then.”

“Don’t buy me anything.”

“I don’t know if I’ll buy it. But I’m giving something to all my neighbors. Your gift is harder to figure out, though. You saved my life, so it should be something special.”

“You’ve got that backwards, angel.” His voice roughens. “You saved me, remember?”

“Not backwards. And shhhhhh.”

He finally shhhs.