Because you like pissing my fiancé off by hanging around all the time, and you have no idea the Hell that’s brought down on me when another man even so much as breathes in my direction.
I didn’t dare voice the words in my head as I watched him reach into his jacket, pulling out a package wrapped in Krampus gift paper and topped with a silver bow. The wrapping was a design I’d seen often, one that all the souvenir shops on main street sold.
Our town was famous for its Krampus lore. Sure, Krampus originated from Germany, but it was said that Bigfoot roamed the other side of these mountains. Krampus sightings among the skiers and hikers over the last century occasionally popped into the papers. Probably too much boozy eggnog. And what else did the Leavenworth Gazette have to publish? It wasn’t like our town with a population of twenty-four-hundred had much else going on.
I eyed the Christmas present he placed on the counter for a beat before pretending to look for a hidden camera. “Am I being punked right now? I thought Bastion Weber doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas.”
“I don’t. It’s not a Christmas present. It’s just a gift. Take it.”
I blinked. “You’ve never given me anything before.”
“Not true. I gave you my candy cane in the third grade, remember?”
“You mean the one you stole from Tommy Brown and stabbed him with before handing it to me?”
“He bullied you. I made him pay. I’ll make any man who hurts you pay, Clara.”
Bastion was already protective. Too bad it would take more than a sharpened candy cane to deal with Hogan.
“You don’t like Hogan. That’s fine. You don’t have to. It’s almost like it’s none of your business. You know why, Bast? Because you’re my Christmas tree delivery guy.”
“I’ve known you since we were kids. No one else in this town seems to notice how miserable you are, no matter how much you put on that pretty fucking smile, Clara.”
“I’m not miserable, asshole.”
Bastion’s brow furrowed with doubt. He knew I was lying. The three year anniversary of my mom’s death had just passed, and everyone seemed to know my dad wasn’t coming into town for Christmas this year. Again. My dad was busy living up his new life in sunny Florida with his new girlfriend. Everyone in town had gotten his cheesy Christmas card of them posing in an orange grove, him dressed up like Santa with his girlfriend dressed as an elf, pulling two large oranges out of a big red bag labeled “Santa’s Sack.”
I’d be all alone on Christmas. Well, Hogan would be there, but that made the whole thing worse.
“Look. Just take the gift, okay?” Bastion’s mouth hardened into a line.
I stared at the package with a pit in my stomach. I wanted to take it, but if Hogan found out…
“I can’t accept it,” I told him with a shake of my head.
“Why?” Bastion challenged, his voice hard and full of ice. He knew the reason, but I’d never confirm it. I couldn’t let him, or anyone else, know that I was terrified of accepting attention from any man that wasn’t Hogan.
“I—I didn’t get you anything,” I replied lamely.
Bastion sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets and pulling out the gloves he wore to unload his trees. I watched him tug them on, trying not to drool at his huge hands and how good they looked wrapped in the bark-roughened leather. “I’m gonna unload the trees.”
He turned, leaving the package on the counter. I shouted at him but he pretended he didn’t hear me as he weaved his way through the tables covered in floral arrangements, pots and various planters. When he opened the door, the sound of Christmas carolers from across the street and the clip-clop of hooves from the horse-drawn carriages carried inside.
Bastion shot me a lingering backward glance. It seemed like he was going to say something but thought against it and settled for a smile that seemed to have all sorts of secrets tucked into the corners of his mouth. “You know I’m not the biggest fan of this holiday. But… Merry Christmas, Clara. If anyone deserves to have a good one, it’s you.”
“Um, yeah. You too.” I pretended to turn my attention back to my wreath but from the corner of my eye I watched Bastion unload the trees from his truck and arrange them in his dad’s old tree-caddy through my storefront window.
Movement drew my eye to the other window, and my heartbeat froze in my chest.
A man wearing a plaid fleece jacket—the one I’d gotten slapped for because I’d bought him the wrong color last Christmas—stood outside the window.
It was Hogan.
By the look of rage on his face, he’d seen Bastion—knowing full well it wasn’t a scheduled delivery day—give me the gift.
It would have been such an innocent gesture in anyone else’s eyes. But not my fiancé
Hogan was beyond possessive. He was a fucking psychopath, and not in the fun way like in some of those romances I read to escape my own shitty reality. In those kinds of books, the “hero” was almost always the villain that would burn the world down for his woman. Hogan, the hog farmer otherwise known as “the honied ham man” in town since he also opened up a pop-up ham shop during the holidays, was very much a bad guy. But Hogan wasn’t like the men in those books.
