Page 32 of The Holiday Makeover

I blinked and blinked, caught in his gaze. I was at a total loss for words.

Then he did the worst ex-boyfriend thing ever.

He brought out my kryptonite.

Tate leaned in and pressed his lips to my forehead. He knew exactly how much I adored that gesture.

His warm lips on my skin made me temporarily forget that we wanted different lives. That I was supposed to be on the offensive. All I could think was:

I’m home. Tate is home.

The thought literally made me sigh out loud, and dang if that didn’t please him.

He leaned away, a tiny smirk playing on those lips that had just incapacitated me. He might as well have said, Game, set, match. Yeah, he was winning.

Then he hit me with another power play.

“I’ll meet you downstairs. I made homemade mac and cheese for dinner. It should be done any minute now.”

Ugh. I knew that mac and cheese was coming.

With that, he closed his laptop, slid off the bed, and walked out whistling to himself.

And I just watched him go, my resolve slowly crumbling like the topping on his stupidly perfect mac and cheese. I needed Lily to come over here and whip out the Why We Hate Tate list.

Unfortunately, I’d never actually hated him.

I loved him.

And his mac and cheese.

I needed to up my game fast. If not, I might actually start believing we could work things out.

Chapter Eleven

Tate

We sat in silence at the kitchen table for several minutes. The only sounds were the scrapes of forks and the hum of the old furnace kicking on. Rory did her absolute best not to make eye contact with me. That was fine. It gave me plenty of time to look at her.

I admired the loose waves that had fallen out of her messy bun, the ash-blonde hair framing her face. I loved the way she wrinkled her nose because she knew I was staring at her but refused to acknowledge it. Refused to acknowledge me.

I knew exactly what she was doing. And I didn’t blame her for keeping me at arm’s length. I’d earned that distance. But being in her room earlier—sitting beside her on that tiny bed, feeling her breath catch, pressing my lips to her forehead—I wasn’t giving that up without a fight.

She could pretend all she wanted. I’d heard her sigh. Even better, I’d felt it.

So she could sit there pushing her noodles around like they’d personally wronged her, but I wasn’t letting her push me away. I meant what I’d said earlier—I hated life without her. I always had. Even before we were dating and lived miles apart, something in me was always . . . off. Missing. Wrong.

She wasn’t going to be happy about it, but I had plenty more “distractions,” as she called them, up my sleeve.

“Would you be okay if I refinished this table?” I asked, cutting through the fork scraping. “I know the style doesn’t exactly fit with the new cupboards and countertops, but I can’t imagine the kitchen without it. This table holds a lot of good memories for me. I sat here a lot of nights with your grandpa, drinking root beer while he taught me how to draft a design. I miss his old sayings, like, It was slick as a trout. Or, Don’t ever take any wooden nickels.”

Rory kept her gaze locked on her noodles.

I wasn’t letting that deter me.

“And we made a lot of great memories around this table too. Remember all the times I used to kick your butt at UNO and Monopoly?”

Her head snapped up, scowl locked and loaded. “You’re remembering that wrong, and I know what you’re trying to do here. Just stop. I can’t take all your Tate-ness.”