“Obviously,” I echoed dryly.
“Then there’s my excellent taste in movies, my cooking skills, my ability to make the ugliest Christmas tree in the world look fabulous, and…oh! My amazing ass, of course.”
I gave it a playful swat. “Should have put that at the top of the list, baby. I could recite sonnets about this ass.”
“I think those are called dirty limericks—not sonnets—andplease don’t.” Her expression softened, fading into something more vulnerable. “Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Promise me we won’t lose this again. The laughing. The fun. Even when it gets hard—because it will—promise we’ll still find ways to be stupid together.”
The admission hit me square in the chest. We had a track record of fucking things up when shit got heavy. Of retreating to our separate corners instead of fighting for each other.
“Hey.” I cupped her face in my hands. “I promise to make embarrassing animal noises during sex for the rest of our lives if it makes you laugh like that.”
She swatted my chest, but she was smiling—a real one that crinkled the corners of her eyes. The same one I’d been chasing for thirty-six years. “That’s not what I?—”
“Know exactly what you meant.” I tucked her head under my chin, breathing in the scent of her hair. “But here’s the thing—we’re not the same people we were before. And this time, I promise you, no more running. No more hiding from each other and pretending we’re fine when we’re not. I’m all in, darlin’—”
“Even when you think I’m being ridiculous?” she whispered
I exhaled a soft laugh. “Especially then. Baby, I’d take your ridiculousness every day of the week over living without you again. Yeah, we’re gonna fuck up and piss each other off. But I promise you, Kels—I promise I’ll never stop trying. I’ll fight for it. For you. For us. Fight every goddamn day if I have to. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
Kelsey was quiet for a long moment, and I could practically hear her brain working, cataloging all the things that could go wrong.
I wanted to say something. Tell her how much I loved her, how there’d never been a single moment where I didn’t want her. Not a damn one. Not even at the end, when we were sleeping in separate rooms and speaking to each other through our lawyers.
Instead, I waited, combing her hair with my fingers, content to hold her while she worked it out.
She pulled back, her gaze finding mine. Her cheeks were blotchyand her eyes still red from crying, but there was a peace in her expression I hadn’t seen in years… or maybe ever. Her smile wobbled at the edges before she pressed her lips to mine—slow and sweet and tasting faintly of salt from her tears.
When she pulled back, she nodded to herself before whispering, “Okay. I’m all in.”
19
kelsey
The ceramic angelhad been crooked since 2019, when I’d launched her at Teddy’s head during an argument about—honestly, I couldn’t even remember what we’d been fighting about anymore.
Something that had felt earth-shattering at the time but was probably related to his spending either too much time at the club or the body shop he’d taken over after Phantom passed.
The angel had missed his skull by a solid three inches, thank God, and embedded itself in the drywall behind him with enough force to snap off her halo and crack her porcelain wings. Now she hung on the tree at a perpetual fifteen-degree angle, halo M.I.A., looking like she’d been hitting the communion wine a little too hard.
Like some kind of battle-scarred survivor of our marriage.
Which, I supposed, made two of us.
I reached out to straighten her, my fingers hovering over the gold-painted dress that had chipped away to reveal the white ceramic underneath. Then I pulled back. Let her stay crooked. She’d earned it.
Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows, turning the snow-covered landscape beyond into something that belonged on apostcard. The kind of light that made everything look softer and cozier.
If someone had told me I’d be standing in my ex-husband’s living room, wearing nothing but thick wool socks and one of his old Silent Phoenix T-shirts whileWhite Christmasplayed on the TV, I would have told them pigs had a better chance at flying.
But here I was, fiddling with a Christmas tree that was—according to Teddy—’Perfectly fine, Kels. Jesus Christ, stop fucking with it,’ while Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye performed “Sisters” in drag on the screen behind me.
A year ago, I would have been horrified at the lack of proper Christmas attire. That Kelsey had a closet full of holiday sweaters and blouses for every day of December. She’d insisted on picture-perfect family photos where everyone smiled just right, even when Levi was having a bad day, and Teddy was exhausted from work, and the girls just wanted to be literally anywhere but home.
That Kelsey had performed Christmas like it was an Olympic sport, and she was going for gold.
