Page 34

I didn’t know what I’d expected Snowflake Lane to be, but it wasn’t this. The entire street had been shut down and transformed into something that didn’t look real. Every storefront was covered in lights and not just a strand or two, but thousands of them. Lampposts wrapped in garland and ribbon lined both sides of the sidewalk, and between them stood life-sized toy soldiers in red and gold uniforms, painted grins frozen on their wooden faces. Vendors sold hot chocolate and roasted chestnuts from carts that looked like they’d been pulled out of a Dickens novel. And above all of it, mounted on wires strung between the rooftops, machines pumped a steady fall of fake snow down onto the crowd below.

I’d grown up around holiday displays, but nothing like this. The Gordon family Christmas party was a black-tie event at the country club with ice sculptures, a string quartet, and enough champagne to fill a swimming pool. But those displays were designed to impress. Christmas with the Gordons wasn’t about family. It was about maintaining status.

Snowflake Lane was designed to make people smile. This was what the spirit of Christmas was supposed to be about. People were smiling at strangers and holding doors to the local businesses open for others. My parents would’ve scoffed if they were brought here. I could practically hear my father calling it too pedestrian for the likes of a Gordon, but I got the joy of it. There was something a little magical about being bombarded with Christmas lights and giant toy soldiers.

“Pretty wild, right,” Eric said, appearing beside me with a drink tray holding four cups of hot chocolate. He handed me one and gave another one to Sam. “You look like you’ve never seen fake snow before.”

I smiled. Eric reminded me a little of a golden retriever trapped in a nineteen-year-old’s body. “I grew up in Connecticut, so no need for fake snow when we often had the real thing.”

Eric let out a sigh. “Man, I’d love to experience a white Christmas. We’re lucky if we get any snow in December. Usually we have, like, one storm in February and it’s more ice than snow.” He took a sip of his hot chocolate. “But even if it’s fake, this place is pretty cool, huh?”

Eric had been talking about Snowflake Lane since yesterday, when we’d finally finished decorating the tree and he’d announced the next item on Sally’s twelve days of Christmas itinerary. The drive from the house to Bellevue had only taken about twenty minutes, with Greg and Sally driving in their car while Jordan drove the rest of us in his. Sam and I had sat in the back while Eric claimed shotgun. She’d surprised me when she came down for breakfast wearing my CFU hoodie again. Sitting beside her in the car while she’d been wearing my clothes was fucking with my head worse than anything else.

There was only so much a man could take.

And apparently Sam in my clothes was bringing me dangerously close to my breaking point.

Sam had been quiet all day. Quieter than the already-too-quiet version of herself that had existed since we’d arrived in Seattle, which was saying something. No one had acknowledged the heaviness that had settled over the house after the moment with the ornament yesterday. They’d all just pretended like everything was fine when it was very obviously not.

I’d truly thought my parents were excellent at faking it, but I had to give the Lowe family credit where credit was due. These people knew how to pretend better than some of the elites I’d grown up around.

I glanced to where Sam was standing next to me, her face tilted up toward the falling fake snow, and the look on her face made my gut tighten. Her blue eyes sparkled and her lips were lifted in a subtle smile that transformed her entire face and only punctuated how little she’d smiled since we arrived in Seattle.

Fuck, she was gorgeous.

Even with the weight from these past few days that had settled on her shoulders, she still held herself with grace and poise. She was still the brightest light in every room she walked into.

At least she always was for me.

The family started moving down the block together, drifting with the crowd. Eric fell into step beside Jordan and started giving him a hard time about how Jordan’s coat looked like it belonged to a middle-aged accountant. Jordan told him to grow up. Eric told him to loosen up.

Ahead of them, Sally had slowed near a vendor stall selling scarves, and Greg stopped beside her with his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently like he’d learned decades ago that browsing was nonnegotiable.

Beside me, Sam’s pace slowed, and I matched mine to hers until her family was several feet ahead of us in the crowd.

She didn’t say anything or even look at me. But she leaned into me—just barely, just enough that I could feel the heat of her through my coat—and the contact was so different from every other time she’d done it this trip that it made my pulse stutter.

Because her family wasn’t looking. They were way ahead of us, absorbed in their own conversations, and Sam had no reason to lean into me. No one to perform for. No role to play.

She did it anyway.

I let out a slow breath. There it was again—that bone-deep quiet that only ever happened around her. The rest of the world didn’t disappear, but it stopped mattering. The noise, the crowd, the lights all faded to nothing against the warmth of her pressed against my arm.

“We used to come here every year,” she said after a while. “All six of us, plus Mira once Bryce started dating her. Bryce hated it when we were teenagers.” A small smile crossed her face, sad, but real. “Thought it was cheesy. He’d complain the whole drive and then spend the entire night taking pictures of Mira in the snow because he thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.”

I could understand that. I was having a very similar thought about Sam right now. The lights almost gave the street a romantic ambiance, and despite the stress I knew this trip had made Sam feel, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.

“Has your mom always done this Twelve Days of Christmas tradition?”

“Yeah.”

“What was your favorite event? Or do they change every year?”

“They’re mostly the same every year although some things change every so often. Snowflake Lane has always been part of it and the tree decorating. I didn’t look at the list, so I’m not sure if they still do all the other events we used to do, but usually making gingerbread houses and decorating cookies is on there somewhere.”

“So, which event was your favorite?” I pressed, not missing that she hadn’t answered that particular question.

She hooked her hand into my elbow, leaning a little closer, like she needed my strength. “We’d go ice skating,” she said, her voice low and filled with a mix of sadness and what almost sounded like longing.