“Is that Sam Autry?” she asked, breathless, already pushing away from Steve. “Sam Autry all grown up?”
Steve’s eyes narrowed at the abrupt competition. I wanted to crawl beneath my car and ask Teagan to run me over.
“Okay?” Sam asked, pulling me into a hug, ignoring the female predator appraising him. He nuzzled his face into my hair, inhaling deeply. “We can go,” he whispered against my skin. “We don’t have to stay here.”
My mother’s gaze evolved from hungry to horrified as she took us in. My arms had fallen around him like he was a lifesaver, and I was drowning at sea. His arms had curled around me in the most protective, familiar sort of way. It had only been a few weeks of dating, but this hug felt like something lasting, something permanent, something . . . perfect.
“I’m okay,” I told him, finding a backbone at the bottom of my childhood trauma. “I’m okay,” I said it again louder, meaning it.
We stepped apart, and I met my mom’s eyes confidently. She had a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth, and her long, overly decorated acrylic fingernail was in the air, making circles, as if she had an invisible mustache to twirl.
“Wait . . . is this . . . are you two a . . . thing?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
My confidence trembled. What were we? I was struggling to make heads or tails of my own feelings for Sam. I had no idea how he felt about me, let alone what he thought about us.
But before I could stumble through a nonchalant, half-hearted explanation, Sam said, “We are a thing.” He looked at me, his eyes scanning my face. His brow lifted in a silent question. “A very good thing.”
I nodded, agreeing. My lips lifted in a smile I couldn’t have stopped even if I wanted to.
“For how long?” she pressed, her tone unhappy and cynical.
He purposefully misunderstood the question. “Forever, hopefully.” His grin was shy, nervous.
My mother’s eyes bugged. “Forever?” Then a haughty laugh. “Since when?”
In the background, Linda yelled, “We should go!” None of us moved.
Sam looked from me to my mom. “Since I kissed her under the mistletoe.”
CHAPTER 16
And to All a Good Night
Hours later, we’d been to church, lit candles, sung Christmas carols, feasted around the Meyers’ table, laughed and told stories, and tolerated Steve’s inability to understand anything the first time he heard it, and now we were relaxed and reclined in the living room. I sat next to my mom while Sam nodded along to Steve’s insurance salesman woes.
“I’m surprised you’re back home, Holly Jolly,” my mother said, a cup of boozy eggnog dangling precariously from her fingertips. “You couldn’t wait to get out of this damn town. Now here you are.”
I had always hated her nickname for me, although it was better than Cooper yelling “Balls!” every time he saw me.
“It’s not so bad, though,” I said thoughtfully, my voice soft, tired, a little drunk. “I was just always afraid of . . .” Maybe I was more than a little drunk.
My mother linked her elbow through mine and pulled me closer to her, so that my head rested on her shoulder. We hadn’t sat like this in years. I hadn’t realized how tense things had gotten between us while I was with Hudson. And even though Sam should have intensified the distance, he was so kind, so easyto talk to, so . . . gracious with everyone, that he, miraculously, eased the rigidity and strife that had built between us.
This was the most relaxed I’d been around her since I could remember.
She made a humming noise in the back of her throat. “You didn’t want to end up like me. Is that right?”
“No, Mom, that’s not what I meant.”
“I love my life, Holly. I love it. It’s fun and spontaneous and it’s perfect for me. But that’s why it’s my life and not yours. You could stay in Denver or move in with Hudson, or move home here, and as long as you’re living your life and filling it with things you love and people who bring you joy, you are at no risk of becoming someone else.”
“I didn’t mean that,” I told her seriously. “I’m not afraid of becoming you.” At her knowing smile, I repeated myself. “Really, I’m not. But I also don’t want to step on your toes. And I don’t want you to step on mine. The last year I lived here with you felt . . . strained.”
She nodded as if she knew exactly what I meant. “I promise not to kiss Sam ever again.”
My cheeks heated with emotion and mortification and secondhand embarrassment. “Why did you?”
“I was drunk?” Her tone was a question, evidence of what I’d always suspected—she didn’t know why. She claimed to love her life and live it how she wanted, but I also knew she wasn’t perfectly at peace. Christmas Eve Steve wouldn’t be here if she was. At my frown, she added, “It was a shitty thing to do. I’d known you were in love with him. Had been for as long as anyone could remember. I just . . . I don’t know. Sometimes I do shitty things.”
