I groaned, hauled myself to my feet, and held out a hand. “C’mon, you traitor.”
Ellie took it, and I brushed snow off her shoulders, her back, her hips—maybe a little more than necessary.
She looked up at me. “Pretty sure your team is losing.”
I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Nah. I got exactly what I wanted.”
The rest of the morning passed in a blur. There was wrapping paper everywhere. Gracie had screamed over some glittery pink karaoke machine Dotty and Trent apparently thought she needed, and Caleb parked himself next to his mom and later curled in Colt’s lap. Noah and Dorian were arguing over which pancake toppings were superior, and my dad kept hollering like a man who’d won the lottery with every gift he got—even a three-pack of thermal socks that, according to him, might as well have been gold.
It was…perfect.
I'd always loved the holidays. My mom had made them feel like magic—she was the kind of woman who started playing Christmas music in October and cried during every holiday movie. She loved hard, big, and loud. One minute, she waswrapping gifts in the living room, making pancakes on the weekends, always coming to every one of my football games. The next, she was gone. No warning, just an ordinary day that broke our world wide open.
When she passed, that magic cracked, but somehow, my dad held us together. With trembling hands and tired eyes, he found a way to keep the traditions alive, and it showed on days like today. Christmas was a piece of her, and he knew we needed that.
That time in my life marked a turning point. I became the comic relief, the one who made people laugh, who kept it light, who deflected before the silence got too heavy. It started as survival, and then it stuck. For a long time, I thought that was all I was—the funny guy, the human distraction.
But sitting here now, coffee warming my hands and Ellie curled against me on the couch, I realized I wanted to be more than that. This morning wasn't perfect because I loved my family, or even because Ellie fit in so seamlessly. It was perfect because it reminded me of what Christmas always meant to me and what I wanted it to mean again.
I’d watched my siblings fall headfirst into love. Real love. You could feel it just by being in the same room. It was the same love my parents had before my mom passed.
And fuck, I wanted it too.
I wanted the woman who made me smile so hard, my cheeks hurt, who smelled like something better than freshly baked cookies and had shown up in my life and made me want things I never thought I'd deserve.
I didn't know if this whole fake dating thing had made a dent in her the way it already had with me, didn't know if she'd ever want something real with me.
But I think she mademewant it.
TWENTY-THREE
Sawyer
We spentthe day after Christmas doing absolutely nothing. No plans, just the two of us in my house, wrapped in blankets, surrounded by snack wrappers, taking turns forcing terrible movie picks on each other.
There wasn’t anyone around to pretend for, but Ellie curled into my side all day.
After movie number four, she stole the last of the popcorn and then had the audacity to deny it to my face.
I let her, obviously. She smiled every time I fake-glared at her, and I wasn’t about to trade that for popcorn.
Around four in the evening, she grew restless beside me. Not dramatically, but enough that I knew she was getting antsy. I knew exactly what she was waiting for. A part of me was stalling. I wanted to spend time with her, and I didn’t want to run off the day after Christmas chasing some maybe-lead to some maybe-Lauren.
I had told Ellie we should wait until later in the day—not just for logistics, but because if it was the right Lauren, she deserved at least a scrap of holiday peace. But I knew Ellie had been waiting all day for this.
“You ready to go?” I asked.
She nodded, brushing popcorn crumbs off her hoodie. I grabbed the keys to my grandpa’s old pickup—not my usual ride, but it felt right for the occasion.
Ellie climbed into the passenger seat. The sky had gone pale and cloudy, with leftover snow softening the world around us. She pulled her sleeves over her hands, and I pretended not to notice how adorable she was.
We didn’t talk much on the drive. She stared out the window, her fingers twitching against her thigh like they wanted something to hold on to. I kept one hand on the wheel and let the other rest near the gearshift—close enough that if she reached out, I could be there in a second.
It took about twenty minutes to reach the edge of town, where the paved roads got rougher. The address led us to a small neighborhood tucked behind a run-down gas station. Rows of manufactured homes lined the narrow road, most with patchy lawns or broken fences, a few decorated with old holiday lights.
The home we were looking for was at the very end, with faded yellow siding and a porch light barely hanging on. There was one sad folding chair out front, next to a recycling bin that had clearly lost a fight with the wind and never recovered.
“This is it,” I said as I parked a few houses down.
