“Let them.” She smirks, then backs me against a massive fir. “Give them something worth talking about.”
She kisses me, her hand firm at my cheek, her body flush against mine. When she pulls back, my lips are swollen, and half the lot pretends not to stare.
“Wren!” I hiss, laughing. Despite that, I’m slightly mortified.
“What? Can’t kiss my girl at a Christmas tree lot?” Her grin is devastating. “Come on, let’s find our tree.”
We pick a beautiful seven-footer that barely fits through her front door. By the time we wrangle it into the stand, my arms ache from laughing too hard and tripping over the tangle of lights she insists sheknowshow to fix.
As we decorate—her on the ladder, me untangling ornaments from a shoebox—I feel something evaporating from my soul. Maybe it’s that old part of me that thought I had to apologize just for existing.
“What?” she asks, catching me watching her.
“Just thinking,” I say.
“About?”
“How different this is from last Christmas. Nick had his tree professionally decorated. Wouldn’t let me touch it because I might ruin thesymmetry.”
“His loss.” Wren pulls me in front of the slightly crooked tree, our reflections twinkling in the glass ornaments. “This is perfect.”
My phone buzzes on the counter. A text from an unknown number.“You’re making a spectacle of yourself. The whole town is laughing at you.”
Wren plucks the phone from my hand and deletes the message without hesitation. “No more phones tonight.”
“But what if—”
“No phones.” She sets it aside and cups my face, her voice soft but unyielding. “No outside world. Just us, this tree, and that couch, where I’m about to show you what Christmas miracles really look like.”
And she does.
As dusk falls and the rain kinda-sorta looks like it might turn into snow on the street outside, Wren’s hand finds mine beneath the glow of the tree lights. The town can gossip all it wants. Let them. Because for the first time, I’m not ruining anything.
Chapter 8
Wren
Christmas morning arrives with Edie wrapped around me like a big bow. She’s wearing one of my old band tees and nothing else, hair tangled against my pillow, lips parted in sleep. The bruises I left along her throat and collarbone have darkened overnight, little constellations of proof that she’s mine… and that she wanted to be.
“Stop staring,” she mumbles against my chest, her voice still raspy with sleep.
“Never.” I discover a line down her spine, watching goosebumps rise beneath my fingertips. “You’re too beautiful.”
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re perfect.” I tilt her chin up and kiss her. “My perfect, beautiful mess.”
My phone buzzes on the nightstand for what feels like the hundredth time. Mom again. She’s been texting since seven about brunch.
“We should go,” Edie says, glancing at the screen.
“We should stay in bed,” I counter, dragging my fingers beneath the hem of her shirt.
“Wren.” She sits up, the sheet slipping away to reveal a flash of soft skin and half-healed love bites. “She’s trying. That matters.”
“She’s trying to smooth things over so she can post a perfect Christmas family photo.”
“Or,” she says, gently, “she’s trying to accept that her daughter’s happy.”
