She smiled even wider and tore into it, trying to keep the paper from falling to the ground. She broke the single piece of tape keeping the box closed and glanced up at him, searching his face before she pulled back the flaps.
When she gently picked up the item from inside, her brows knitted together, and she slid off the several layers of tissue paper.
She held up the gift—a wooden picture frame—and gazed at it, the moment stretching longer and longer without words. The frame held a photo of the two of them when they were young, doing one of their all-time favorite things together—snow angels.
Worry churned in his stomach, his ribs expanding. She was so quiet, maybe she didn’t like it. Leo had hoped the photo would remind her of their past, of happy times—in Pineridge and with him. He hadn’t taken the photo, so technically, she could argue the gift wasn’t his to give. But if he hadn’t downloaded it on his computer, edited it, and blown it up, she wouldn’t know it existed.
“You wanna say something here? You’re worrying me.”
She smiled, her eyes glossy. “It’s perfect.”
“Because if you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it. It’s fine.” He tried to wrestle it out of her grasp, but she gripped it tighter.
“No, no. I love it.” She sniffed, hugging it to her chest. “You’d have to tear it out of my cold, dead hands first.”
He chuckled, relief filling his chest. “Good, I’m glad you like it.”
She held it out again to get a closer look. “Loveit,” she corrected, her eyes tearing up slightly.
“Right.”
“How did you find this?”
“It was on an old roll of film I found in my mom’s stuff when we went through her things.”
“We must’ve been, what? Ten here?”
“Something like that. Ten or eleven,” he said.
She didn’t take her focus off the photo. “We’ve had such a long history.”
“We have. Almost all of our lives. Give or take a few years.”
Or ten. He wasn’t about to say that though.
“Leo…” she bit her lip, and he ran a jerky hand through his hair, his throat constricting while he waited for her to continue. “I go back home in two days. I’m worried about what’s going to happen…between us.”
His gut ached a little. The same worry had been assaulting him the last day or so as well.
He lifted her chin. “Me too. But I don’t plan on wasting what little time we have left being sad.”
She stood quiet for a moment, admiring the photo a bit longer before reluctantly placing it back into the box, wrapping the tissue paper over it. “You’re right.” She took the box from him and put it back inside his truck. “We should spend it doing something fun.”
She took his hand and led him to the middle of the yard. “Like making snow angels.”
“What?” He glanced at her, then back at the snow, dark brows raised. He could think of many fun things to do with Izzy. Ones that didn’t involve him freezing his ass off.
“It’ll be fun. C’mon, best snow angel wins.”
“Okay, you’re on.”
She laughed on impact, and he joined her, falling a few inches next to her. The two of them flapped their arms and legs as if they were swimming backstrokes in the snow. When the flailing and laughing stopped, he turned his head to watch her and found her staring at him.
“This was exactly what I needed,” she said.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve done this.”
“Me too.”
