And the dress… It’s still beautiful, technically. The bodice, now looser, is embroidered with tiny beads that catch the light. The skirt is a frothy sea of tulle and lace. The bottom six inches are gray with road slush, twigs and dead grass clinging to the delicate fabric.
I look like a runaway bride that tripped and face planted on the way out of the movie.
A laugh bubbles up in my chest, tangled with sharpness. I press my hand to my mouth, the locket cool against my palm.
“Gran,” I say, meeting my own wild eyes in the mirror. “You seeing this?”
It’s too much. The hotel. The aisle I didn’t walk down. My father’s voice on the other side of the door. The look that will be on Evan’s face when someone finally tells him I’m gone. The phone, tumbling into the snowbank by the highway. The endless stretch of road.
And now I’m here. In the McCoy bathroom. In my wedding dress. On Christmas Eve.
I grab the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening.
“One thing at a time,” I tell my reflection. “You can panic later. Right now, just… get out of the dress.”
It takes longer than it should. My fingers are numb and clumsy, fumbling with the tiny buttons and the built-in bra.When I finally manage to shove the bodice down and step out of the skirt, I feel like I’ve been wrestling a sea creature.
I strip off everything, dress, petticoat, the pretty white slip underneath, until I’m standing in my underwear, goosebumps racing across my skin. The cold hits harder without the insulation of the dress, but it’s also freeing. I fold the fabric as neatly as I can with shaking hands and drape it over the shower rod, watching the beads glimmer under the light like distant stars.
A soft knock sounds on the door. I jump.
“Faith?”
“Yeah?” My voice cracks.
“I left some stuff outside the door,” Dallas says. “Shirt, sweats. Socks. See if they’ll fit. There’s, uh, a robe on the hook too. My mom’s. She won’t mind.”
“Okay.” I swallow. “Thanks.”
I wrap one of the big pale blue towels around myself like a cocoon before cracking the door. A folded pile of clothes sits on the floor just outside: an old gray Buckhorn Rodeo T-shirt, a pair of navy sweatpants, thick wool socks. A flannel shirt rests on top. It smells faintly of cedar and something undeniably him.
I pull everything inside and shut the door again, exhaling.
Getting dressed in borrowed clothes feels oddly intimate, too. The sweats are too long, so I roll the waistband twice. The T-shirt hangs loose on me, the soft cotton skimming mid-thigh. The flannel is blessedly warm when I pull it on, sleeves swallowing my hands until I fold them back.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror again and almost don’t recognize the woman looking back. No more bridal costume. Just messy hair, makeup mostly wiped to shadows, drowned in Dallas’s clothes.
Weirdly, I feel more like myself than I have in months.
I tuck my grandmother’s locket back under the T-shirt, the metal resting cool against my chest.
“Okay,” I tell the woman in the mirror. “Now go explain to your childhood best friend why you crashed a car in a blizzard in a wedding dress instead of getting married like a normal person.”
When I step back into the hall, the house seems even quieter than before. The ticking clock in the living room sounds louder. Somewhere overhead, floorboards creak. The familiar settling of an old house.
Dallas is in the kitchen when I pad in. He’s standing at the stove, back to me, holding a kettle over one of the burners. Steam curls up, caught in the glow of the under-cabinet lights. He reaches up to the shelf where Maggie keeps her mugs and grabs two, setting them on the counter with a soft clink.
He looks different in his home space. Less the gruff stranger who fished me out of a ditch and more the Dallas I remember. Faded flannel, worn jeans, the slope of his shoulders familiar. There’s a new heaviness to him, though.
“Hey,” I say softly.
He glances over his shoulder. For a heartbeat, his gaze travels from my wet curls to my borrowed clothes. Emotion flickers in his eyes before he looks away, flipping off the burner.
“Tea okay?” he asks. “We’ve got coffee too, but if I remember correctly, you don’t like it bitter and twisted.”
“Tea is perfect,” I say with a chuckle.
He nods toward the kitchen table. “Sit.”
