Again, unfair comparisons, but my brain is wired for it.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Tomorrow is Christmas, and then I’m flying out the next morning. We have thirty-six hours left together. Thirty-six hours is nothing. It’s practically already over.
And yet…life can change in less than that.
Can I be honest with myself for thirty-six more hours? Honest with my feelings? Feelings that feel more like I’m not really scared of being with Boone. I’m scared of what my brother said earlier—the fear he’d unleashed audibly.
Loving someone means taking a risk, and it’s not that I love Boone now, but isn’t that the hope that comes with liking someone? And when you risk love, you risk loss.
Boone had already lost once, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to risk myself or him to that. If he’d even choose to love me when he really got to know me.
He may be right that we’re all not that hard to figure out, but the beginning of something always seems more magical than the middleof it.
Chapter Seventeen
My insides are bursting. Boone and I somehow whipped up what I would consider to be in my top five Christmas Eve dinners, and that’s saying a lot as my mother always has them catered in from some of the best chefs in the area. Not that our area was ever prominent in fine dining, but they were still home cooked and fabulous.
I’m lying on the floor, my head under the tree as I look up at its branches draped with the chicken-coop lights. It smells amazing. I never had real Christmas trees growing up. My dad would hang those silly pine-scented car air fresheners on the branches, claiming that it was just as good as the real thing. It’s not, I now realize.
Dog has curled up next to me, a welcome warmth as he purrs happily. Boone had even prepared the cat a small Christmas Eve meal with ham and mashed potatoes. He’d devoured it.
I hear Boone’s steady footsteps enter the living room from his bedroom. He’d taken a shower after dinner. I still have trust issues with the pipes and haven’t braved challenging them again.
“What are you doing?” Boone asks, as he crouches down to look at me under the tree.
“Appreciating the tree,” I answer.
“And you have to do it from under it?” he questions, his face rippling into wrinkles.
I smile more at myself than Boone. I reach my hand out at him, inviting him under the tree with me. “Come and gain a new perspective.”
Boone doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he grabs my hand and slides effortlessly under the tree with me. I can smell his soap that I never got to fully appreciate in my own shower when it attacked me yesterday. He keeps hold of my hand as he breathes out what seems like every ounce of air from his chest, relaxing onto the floor.
I roll my head over to look at him. “This is what Kevin and I do every Christmas Eve when we do Santa Secrets. It feels like we’re somewhere else, somewhere closer to the magic of Christmas. We used to think Santa had a better chance of hearing us if we could speak into the tree. It’s silly, I know. But there is something about lying here that makes the rest of everything feel far away. That somehow our secrets were safe under the tree together.”
He rolls his head over, his blue eyes gentle as they gaze into my green ones. “That’s not silly at all. It’s special.”
I smile at him. “What’s silly is two adults still believing it.”
He squeezes my hand. “So, let’s do it.”
“Let’s do what?”
“Santa Secrets,” he answers. “How’s it work?”
“We don’t have to tell each other all our secrets,” I say quickly. “I’m not sure you can handle all my deepest secrets, anyway. I’m a lot.”
“A lot of what?” he asks.
“You know what I mean,” I mumble. “A lot of everything.”
“Why do you say that as if it’s something that’s wrong with you? I’ve yet to be disappointed when there is a lot of something I like.”
“You can’t like me, Boone,” I state as if it’s a fact. As if I’m just naturally unlikeable, which statistically speaking, proves it. A lot of people have liked me and then fallen out of like fairly quickly.
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t like, Kate,” Boone argues.
“Well, then, let’s do this, and we’ll see if you still like me,” I propose.
