I’dbeen different.
This is the room where they first kissed me.
Where Grant’s hand found the back of my neck as he pulled me in and whispered something that made my pulse stutter.
Where Dean’s laugh broke against my mouth right before he kissed me under that mistletoe until I forgot my own name.
Where Callum had looked at me with that steady intensity that stripped me bare long before he ever touched me.
This was the room where I stopped beingjust Noelleand found myself becoming something more, something holy when they breathed my name against my skin.
When their mouths moved in sync with our bodies, when every whispered praise felt like a promise that none of us knew how to keep.
And now, six years later, here we are again. Standing in the same space, surrounded by the same warmth but with a chasm of time, and pain, and unspoken things stretched between us.
“You’re here!”
Eli bursts into the room, his PJ top backward and one leg of his pants pulled up to his knee.
He chatters endlessly as they unload their gifts onto the coffee table, his eyes widening when they present him with a few of his own too.
His small hands tear at ribbons and paper before I can tell him to slow down, but for a moment, as he lifts his new set of race cars and tracks into the air, all feels right in the world.
Callum’s voice pulls me back. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing hard. “You too.”
For a moment, none of us speak.
The only sounds are the pop of the fire and Eli’s laughter as he sits on the floor and starts unboxing the tracks to put them together.
I force myself to move before I get stuck permanently to this spot on the floor and head into the kitchen to check on the roast turkey.
It’s the only thing I can do to keep busy and pretend the ground under my feet isn’t trying to swallow me whole.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” I call over my shoulder before the emotion in my voice gives me away.
Behind me, I hear Dean murmur something to Grant, followed by the sound of Callum’s quiet exhale.
And as I lean against the counter, trying to catch my breath before having to walk back in there again, I realize something terrifyingly simple: no matter how much time has passed, no matter how angry or guarded or rational I’m trying to be, being near them still feels the same.
I still want them just as badly as I did back then, and just as badly as I did less than a week ago.
Maybe that makes me a fool. Hell, more than a fool.
It’s pathetic, really, after everything that’s happened. I should’ve built walls high enough that even the memory of their touch couldn’t reach me anymore.
Cutting them off was supposed to be my big change, but standing in this kitchen with their laughter spilling in from the next room, all I can think about is how easy it would be to fall again.
Maybe I’m addicted to the chaos they bring, the way they make the air around me feel alive.
Maybe it’s because, for all the fear I feel and the mistakes I’ve made to lead me to this point, being with them is the only time I ever truly felt like myself.
Dinner comes and goes in a blur of laughter and contentment I didn’t realize I’d missed until it was right there in front of me again.
For a few hours, it almost feels like old times.
But as the night wears on, the sugar crash hits Eli like a freight train.
