It’s everything that is right about love.
“I love you so much,” I say.
“I love you, too,” Aiden murmurs.
As he leans in and kisses me, as I feel the love this man has for me, I vow that next week my parents will understand this.
They have to.
Chapter Thirty-One
It’s a glorious late afternoon in Miami, and I’m walking with Mom on Lincoln Road, an eight-block shopping area in South Beach. The area is bustling the day before Christmas Eve, and I’m out with Mom doing some last-minute shopping. The skies are a brilliant blue, very few clouds, and the temperature is mild. The feeling is festive, as the stores have up all their holiday displays.
This has been my tradition with Mom no matter where we lived. I always go out with her the day before Christmas Eve and do some last-minute shopping, get a coffee, and then get ready to go to the game if Dad’s team is playing. Tonight the Manatees do have a game, and it’s the last one before the two-day Christmas break.
The last game before Aiden and I come clean to my parents.
“Let’s go in here,” Mom says, pausing outside a high-end kitchen store. “I always love seeing what they have on sale.”
I nod, wishing I could share with her the surprise gifts I bought Aiden. I got him a basket of all kinds of Cuban coffees. A framed picture of us together. A Miami Christmas tree ornament, to put on our tree. I was invited to a Christmas cookie exchange party over the weekend thanks to Georgie, so I made cookies, received some, and kept some hidden away in a tin for him.
My favorite gift, however, is an embroidered T-shirt with the date of Casino Night in Roman numerals on the left chest, then, on the cuff, our initials. I know he’ll love that. My man has a romantic soul, and that will speak to it.
We wander around the store as an upbeat Christmas soundtrack plays overhead. I look at the aprons, and Mom pauses next to me. “I always feel like I should have a good apron, but I know I’d never use it,” she says.
I turn and study a table stacked high with last-minute gifts and find a box of peppermint crème-filled cookies dipped in dark chocolate.
Merry Christmas to me,I think, picking them up.
“You and your peppermint,” Mom says, smiling fondly at me.
“I love it, but it’s the best with chocolate.”
“Here, give it to me. It can be another stocking stuffer for you.”
“Mom! No, I can buy my own cookies,” I say.
“Give it to me,” she insists.
I shake my head. She groans. “Scarlett. Don’t make me irritated on the day before Christmas Eve.”
I sigh and hand her the box. “Thank you. I appreciate it. And you.”
“I know, sweetheart. And … you know you can tell me anything, right?”
My brain goes on high alert. “Of course I do.”
She moves over to a display of cookie cutters, acting like she’s studying them, which is exactly what she is doing—pretending—because she hasn’t baked Christmas cookies since we were all kids, and then it was of the slice-and-bake variety.
She picks up a copper snowflake and turns it over. “Maybe I’m imagining things,” she says slowly, “but I saw you staring at Aiden during the family skate last week.”
My chest immediately tightens. I pick up a peppermint-striped spatula as if I don’t have a care in the world and this kitchen tool is the only thing I want to contemplate.
“Aiden,” Mom continues, her voice soft, “is not an option, Scarlett. Even if he were interested. But I know Aiden, and he’s not the kind of player who would ever pursue you. He knows better than that.”
I resist the urge to tell my mom she has no clue what kind of man he is or the type of decisions Aiden would make because of whoIam. I want to rage that it doesn’t make him a shady character because he chose to date me.
In fact, it’s the opposite. Aiden would not risk all of this unless he saw something incredible in me.
