“It might not be entirely cheerful,” she says.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad. If it is? Well… We’ll figure it out.”
Aimee smiles weakly but nods before unmuting her phone. “Mom? Set an extra place at the table. I’m bringing a date.”
This time, I hear her Mom. She cheers so loudly Aimee has to pull the phone away from her ear.
“A date, huh?” I ask, with a smirk, after Aimee ends the call.
“Yes. A date,” Aimee says then pulls me in by the front of my coat to finish the kiss we started before her phone rang.
Her lips are hot and sugary sweet, still coated with the Christmas cookie I gave her before we left the cottage.
Even though she started the kiss, she starts to pull away almost immediately.
I’m not having any of it.
Quick as a wink, I wrap an arm around her back, holding her plush waist in one hand and gripping the back of her neck with my other hand, tangling my fingers in her long wavy locks. Our tongues meet when she parts her lips and despite the cold, she melts into me.
“We should get ready to go,” I say stopping the kiss before I can’t. Before I drag her back to my cottage and keep her in bed all night instead of taking her to her parent’s house for dinner.
“Do we have to?” Aimee asks and I wonder if maybe that’s her plan.
“You’re not getting out of this. They need to hear the truth. From you.”
Aimee huffs. “Fine.”
“Good girl. Now let's go have that cup of cocoa. Then you can take that first step on your way forward.”
“With you by my side?” she asks but she doesn’t need to question it.
“There’s no place I’d rather be.”
CHAPTER4
Aimee
“Maybe this isn’t such a great idea,” I say when Killian parks his Jeep outside my parents’ house. “The roads weren’t great. We could say we couldn’t make it tonight. Come by tomorrow.”
“All that will do is give you more time to come up with a new way to avoid them. Let’s go in there. Rip the Band-Aid off, then you can all move on.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t make the task any easier. To be fair, I don’t think anything will make this easy. Even if I wait until my dad finds out some other way, there will still be blowback for not telling him myself.
“Alright, then. Let’s get this over with,” I say and climb out of the vehicle. Snow crunches under my feet so loudly that I wince hoping it won’t alert my parents to our arrival.
“Remember, whatever happens, I’m here for you, Aimz. I’ve got you.” Killian cups my face in his gloved hand before leaning down and kissing me so sweetly standing on the porch in the twinkling Christmas lights wrapped around the supports and the wreath on the door.
It just feels right. Familiar and fresh all at once. I can’t help falling into it. So deeply I forget where I am and why I’m here until my mom’s voice shrieks beside us, “I knew it. And it’s about time too. I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to fake a medical emergency or something to get you two in the same place at the same time again.”
“All it took was a snowstorm and a little bit of Christmas magic,” Killian says, embracing my mom.
And a lot of fear. Don’t forget about the fear.
“Come in. Come in. Dinner is on the table,” my mom says, ushering us in. We kick off our shoes and hang our coats, then she leads us into the dining room and announces, “Donald, look who’s here.”
My dad is already sitting at the candlelit dinner table set with an extremely elaborate meal for only four people. It’s the usual spread; turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pies. So many pies. Pumpkin, apple, cherry, and pecan. As good as it all looks with the pine garland weaving through the dishes running from one end of the table to the other, my sights and stomach are set on the large punch bowl full of my mom’s world-class eggnog.
Don’t mind if I do.
