“Well, I am going to have to go chop down a tree, and I can’t guarantee there’s anything in the cabinets that would make cookies. The decorations in the attic are old and dusty, and the closest thing I have to a Christmas movie is Die Hard, but yeah.” Connolly swept his thumbs over Jacob’s cheekbones, unable to resist popping a kiss on his slightly gaping mouth. “We could do all of those things or as many of those things as you’d want to do with me.”
Jacob gave a timid smile. “Can we maybe start with the first few things and go from there?”
Connolly nodded. “This is your fantasy. We can do whatever you want.”
“You’re really good at this husband thing,” Jacob said, his tone conversational.
Connolly’s laugh was brittle. “I have two divorces that say otherwise, but I’m glad you think so.”
Jacob’s expression turned serious, and it made Connolly feel weirdly exposed. “Maybe you just weren’t with the right person.”
This time, it was Connolly who swallowed hard, feeling like there was a lump in his throat.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Jacob stared at him for another thirty seconds and then began to bounce on his knees beside Connolly. “So, what do we do first?”
“Well, I have to bundle up and go find us a tree,” Connolly said, gazing out the window to the heavy snowfall outside.
“I want to come with you.”
“You don’t have the right clothes. You don’t seem to have any clothes, actually, but that’s a mystery for another day. I think you should scrounge through the cabinets to see what you can find that would work for cookies while I get us a tree.”
Jacob looked out the window, following Connolly’s gaze. “What if you get lost out there or fall and break your leg or get mauled by a bear?”
Connolly laughed. “You have plenty of food to weather the storm, and my cell phone works just fine. You can call your brother to rescue you if anything happens to me.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you. I should come with you,” Jacob said earnestly.
“What are you going to do, elf? Fight a bear?”
“I could do it. You don’t know me. I might be excellent at fighting bears,” Jacob countered.
Connolly couldn’t help but laugh at the stubborn look on his face. “I don’t want you to freeze to death out there. I know the perfect tree. I’m just going to go out there, cut it down, and bring it back.
Let me do that for you. I want to. Please?”
Jacob melted like a snowball, a hesitant smile forming on his lips. “Fine. I’ll stay here. But I know you only said please because I’m too nice to refuse it.”
A smile stretched upon Connolly’s face as he shook his head. “Guilty.”
Connolly set Jacob loose in the kitchen while he shrugged on his coat, boots, hat, and gloves, snatching his ax on the way out the door. The icy wind was like needles, piercing the warm bubble of fantasy taking place inside the cabin. He had no idea what was happening in there. It was madness.
He crunched his way through snow that almost covered his calves, his breath puffing out before him.
He’d woken with this tiny elf of a boy in his bed, and now, he was weaving some kind of spell over Connolly, knitting their lives together somehow like he was some magical creature.
Out here in the frigid winds, nothing about their situation made sense. They were strangers in every sense of the word, but in there, sitting in front of the fire, the taste of Jacob still on his lips, it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to tell him he’d brave a snowstorm to chop down a Christmas tree for him. Connolly hated Christmas. Hated it. It was the cruelest reminder of the one thing that had ever made him enjoy Christmas. Chloe.
Her name was a sharp stab to his heart. Somehow, enjoying Christmas seemed like the ultimate betrayal to her memory, but around Jacob, the pain of her absence seemed dull, more the pull of scar tissue than the open wound it once had been. How was that right? Did that make him a monster?
Wasn’t it his job to mourn her loss forever? He hadn’t always been the best father, but he’d always tried to show up, to be there when it mattered, especially after the divorce. He never wanted to be his father.
Even as his thoughts raced—the grief of loss warring with the strange throbbing warmth of knowing Jacob waited for him at the cabin—he chopped down the tree he’d had his eye on for weeks.
The tree he’d thought Chloe would have loved.
As he dragged the tree back towards the cabin, he lectured himself on how this couldn’t become a thing. This was a favor, a gift to a guy who’d had the misfortune of waking up married to Connolly.
