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Every joyous laugh that rings out in the beach house feels like nails on a chalkboard.
My chest aches with a pain I can’t quite explain as memories of his sad black eyes flood my mind. I smile through the discomfort, masking my true feelings behind a facade of being too busy with work to join in their holiday merriment.
Of course, I’m able to fool almost everyone except for one person—my mother.
I have been feeling her questioning gaze on me for the past few days whenever I lift my head from my phone, like right now.
She’s pretending to water the various plants on the porch, but I can feel her throw glances at me, waiting for me to open up to her on why I’m here, and Trent is back in Boston.
“What?” I ask when it gets too much for me to ignore. “What’s wrong, mom?”
“I should be asking you that question,” she signs with a frown. “You usually don’t work on the holidays. What changed this year?”
Nathan and Lottie.
That’s what changed.
In all the years Lottie has been dating Cooper, she never once asked him to spend Christmas with her family. It was all very church-and-state with her.
But then Nathan walked into Love Moore Agency, desperate for her help, and then suddenly Lottie is chucking out all of her self-imposed rules, inviting him over to spend the holiday season with us even when her actual boyfriend never got an invitation to do so.
If that’s not saying that Coop’s days are numbered, I don’t know what is.
But having to witness them so madly in love and not being able to be together has been too heartbreaking to watch.
You could feel the push and pull between them.
Whenever Lottie thought Nathan wasn’t looking, she would sneak little peeks at him like, in her eyes, he could do no wrong. And then, when he eventually caught her in the act, he’d throw her a shy smile like she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
A few months ago, I would have been freaking ecstatic that my best friend finally found a man worth being with her, but now? Now, it saddens me to see how little things can get in the way of true happiness.
How I’m getting in the way of my own happiness.
The way Nathan stared adoringly at Lottie made me miss that same spark in Trent’s eyes when he looked at me.
Fuck.
He loves me.
He truly loves me.
And what did I do?
I pushed him away, terrified of loving him back.
It’s so fucked up.
Why am I like this? Why can’t I just enjoy what I have for as long as I have it?
Because the misery of losing such love is too painful to even think about, much less survive its loss.
That thought alone feels like a fist strangling my airway, making it hard for me to breathe.
“I’m going for a walk down the beach,” I sign over to my mother as I jump off the porch, needing some time alone to process what my life is going to look like when I return to Boston in a couple of days.
Trent hasn’t called.
He hasn’t even sent a text wishing me a Merry Christmas.
