He hesitates, and I grab my phone from the console and give it to him. “Check with Nate.”
He sighs and holds my phone up to my face to unlock it, and then he opens a text and shoots off the request. Nate has to already be asleep, what with it being almost two a.m., yet Coopgets a response within a few minutes, before we’ve even reached the accident.
“No go. His pilot is sick.”
“But maybe he’ll get better in time!”
Coop rubs my cheek with the back of his hand. His warmth makes me incline my head toward him. “Liese, I promise I’ll be okay. And my mom will be, too. You haven’t had a Christmas with your mom in two years, and you’re handling it better than I ever could. So I’m a couple of days late for Christmas with mine. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It’s not the same,” I cry. “If I could spend time with my mom, I would.”
“Yeah, me too. But I’ve spentyearshoping for miracles. Just because they haven’t come in the way I wanted, doesn’t mean they haven’t come at all. I have a mom who loves me, and I’m happy with that. I can’t keep killing myself to make things happen when they aren’t in the cards. I’ve done what I could to get home. It didn’t work out.”
He keeps his hand on my face, drawing circles on my cheek with his fingertip. It’s somehow comforting and new and exciting, all at once.
“Well, you’re not going to be alone on Christmas.”
I pull my eyes from the taillights in front of me long enough to see confusion on his brow. “But I can’t go home.”
“I know. But I can.”
He backs up. “You don’t mean what I think you mean.”
“I sure do. Get ready for a Fischer Family Christmas.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
COOPER
I’m not sure if I’d rather have frozen to death in the car or if I’d rather be impaled by one of the enormous icicles hanging from the house. Either fate is better than what awaits me in this house.
“Well, it’s been nice knowing you,” I mutter as Liesel enters the code to her dad’s garage.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” she says in a hushed voice as the garage door raises. “Come in.”
It’s almost 4 a.m., and I’m toting our bags as I walk between her dad’s Audi A8 and Toyota Tundra. Parked in the winding driveway are a Jeep and a Bronco. Her brothers’ vehicles, I’m sure.
“We both know that’s not true. Your dad is going to kill me.”
“He won’t kill you.”
“Yes, he will. I’m doing a walk of shame with his only daughter in theHome Alonehouse.“
“Stop. TheHome Alonehouse was two blocks over. And this isn’t a walk of shame.”
She opens the garage door, and immediately, there’s a loud beeping.
“Crap! The alarm!” She rushes into an entry room with white lockers and a matching bench with slate tile. She enters a code into a wall keypad while I panic, looking past the dark room for signs of life.
And by life, I mean my imminent death.
“Alarm off,” a creepy robot voice says.
And a dog growls.
“You have a guard dog??” I whisper yell.
“That’s just Bear,” she says, removing her coat and hanging it up in one of the lockers.
