I grinned. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t look great in a green hat.”
He didn’t roll his eyes, but it was close. That twitch returned.
“Cavil?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you think? Annual tradition? Lights, hot cocoa, sleigh bells, library cards?”
He exhaled, which was practically a paragraph from him. “Could work.”
I sat back with a satisfied smile, letting the silence settle—until it started feeling too wide.
“We could even?—”
“Callie.” Just my name, but it was enough to halt me mid-sentence. Not sharp, but firm. Like a quiet knock on a closed door.
I blinked, lips parting—but then he added, gentler this time, “You don’t always have to fill the silence.”
Heat crept up my neck. Embarrassment? Maybe. But also… something like gratitude. I nodded slowly, letting the quiet stretch a little longer this time.
Outside, snow drifted lazily past the windshield, and the town blurred by in soft, wintry whites and grays.
After a while, I cleared my throat. “So… where’s our next stop?”
He didn’t look at me, but I could’ve sworn the corners of his mouth lifted just a fraction. “Christmas tree delivery. Mrs. Winslow.”
I smiled, and this time, I didn’t say a word.
The moment Mrs. Winslow’s house came into view, I knew we were in for something special. Or maybe dangerous. It looked like a Christmas decoration aisle had exploded and no one had bothered to clean up. Plastic reindeer were balanced precariously on the roof, twinkling lights blinked in twelve different rhythms, and the front lawn was a minefield of inflatable snowmen swaying ominously in the breeze.
Cavil slowed to a stop, his gaze flicking across the chaos with something close to horror.
“This feels like a trap,” he muttered, eyes narrowed as if expecting one of the reindeer to charge.
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. “What, are you scared of a blow-up Frosty?”
“They’re always smiling,” he said, deadpan. “You shouldn’t trust anything that happy.”
I grinned as we climbed out of the van. “Noted. I’ll keep a lookout for rogue snowmen.”
He didn’t respond, but I caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile exactly—more like a silent acknowledgment that I was ridiculous, and he tolerated me anyway.
The front door looked like something from a greeting card, complete with a red wreath decked in gold baubles and a bow the size of my head. I knocked twice.
The door flew open so fast I nearly stumbled backward.
“Well, don’t just stand there in the cold!” the woman beamed up at us. She was tiny, maybe five feet on a good day, with white curls and a pair of sparkly reindeer antlers perched jauntily on her head.
“You must be here with my tree,” she announced as if we’d been expected for weeks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cavil said, straightening automatically like a soldier reporting for duty. “I’m Cavil Carter.”
“Oh, I don’t care about names,” she waved him off with a dismissive flap of her hand, patting his arm like she’d known him since he was in diapers. “Just muscle. Come on in!”
She turned on her heel and vanished into the house without waiting to see if we followed.
Cavil glanced at me. “This is how horror movies start.”
