“Where are you going?”
“The field,” she said flippantly, and Kol realized he should trust her, but worry settled like regifted fruitcake in his gut.
“Can you slow down? Please?”
She said nothing, but it was only a few moments until they broke out of the treeline and were indeed in a field, secluded and private. Untouched snow stretched for at least an acre, dull and smooth under a sky heavy with clouds blotting out the last of the sun. All the magic and glittering lights of Santa’s Village were left behind, and a light fog hovered in the nearest trees.
“All right, Pipsqueak, will you finally tell me what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” She turned swiftly back to him. “What’s wrong is that I’m a fraud! I’m lying to my entire family, even to my best friend for the split second I actually got to see her, aboutyou.”
Kol felt thatyoustab him right in the chest, but how he could be the source of her problems despite trying to find her solutions, he didn’t know. Is was every other asshole in her life that caused her misery after misery. “So, what—you want to break off our deal?”
“I didn’t say that!” Piper’s gloved hands clenched at her sides. “It’s just going to be harder now because of Lacey. Sheknowsme, and she’s going to know…”
“She’ll know what?”
Piper glared at the snow around her boots, lip bitten in frustration.
“That you’re faking it?” Kol pushed.
She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “She always knows when I’m not actually fine, and when you’re gone…”
Kol waited, but the rest of the words wouldn’t come. It had seemed so easy for her the night before, but she might not even remembered any of that. Or she did, but the clarity of the morning made her realize she felt differently—that would certainly explain how cold she’d been all day.
Kol sighed. “Well, when all this is over, I’m sure you’ll be able to fake being sad about a fake breakup as well as you fake being happy about a fake relationship.”
Her eyes flashed with anger as they snapped up to his. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not going to…”
He held out his hands. “To what?”Come on, Piper, give it to me.
“Oh, my god, you’re so…so…so…”
“I’m sowhat, Pipsqueak?”
Piper shrieked the most frustrated noise he’d ever heard, but she did it through a mouth shut tight against itself. She couldn’t even allow herself one moment of true catharsis to scream at him, but there she was, squeezing her arms around her middle even tighter, refusing to open up at all.
He wasn’t going to let her hold it in. Even if it was vicious and she ended up enraged with him, he had to coax out whatever she insisted on holding onto. Kol folded his arms over his chest and gave her his best condescending look. “You probably won’t even have to deal with any of this—from the sound of things, you ignore your supposed best friend anyway. I’m sure you’ll find some task to finish or someone else to cater to so you can keep avoiding the actual thing you want because you’re afraid of actually getting it.”
“Excuse me?” She stomped a foot into the snow, no pleasant crunch, just a mucky mess on her boot. “I’m not afraid of finally getting what I want!”
Kol waited, watching her grow more red-faced and angry. Something prickled at the back of his neck, something like magic, but the warning of one’s intuition was strikingly similar. “Well?” he finally spat. “What do you want?”
“I just want to be normal!” she shouted, and there was a flutter of wings from a nearby tree as startled birds took to the sky.
That…hadn’t been exactly what Kol was expecting.
“I don’t want to always feel likethis. I don’t want to always be so sad or so angry or so damn disappointed that I’m not where I’m supposed to be in life, but I’m so far behind, and I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up! I’m just not the person who I was supposed to be—the person Mom and Dad expected. I didn’t get my degree, I don’t have a real job, or my own place to live, no husband, no baby—the dog isn’t even mine!”
Kol took a breath, heart sinking. “You…you want to have a baby?” This was going much farther south than he’d anticipated.
“Ugh, no!” She dropped her head back. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I am a coward. It’s just that pretending with you shines a huge spotlight on every one of my failures, including the fact that I’m alone.”
I’m not pretending, he wanted to say, and,You’re not alone, but yet again, Kol was struck by his too-big feelings—those were not things he could just lay at her feet and expect to be picked up and taken care of. He breathed in deeply, the cold stinging his lungs. “You’re not a coward, Piper.”
“But you said—”
“I wasn’t being…fair.”
