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I regret snapping at her.

And I think there’s only one thing I can do to make it up to her.

Once everything is unloaded onto the floor of the kitchen—making it look quite a lot like the office before she decorated in there—I sigh, look up at the ceiling for strength, then say, “So, you could probably use a hand with the decorating, huh?”

CHAPTER 12

CAMI

“So, you’ve heard about mine. Tell me about yours.”

Patrick tips his head to the side to look at me around the curve of the tree. His face is flush, his hair standing up from all the times he’s run his hands through it. I want to reach out and pat it down, but I don’t.

“My what?” he says. “Hate to break it to you, but I’ve never actually been proposed to.”

I study his face. Does that mean he’s proposed to someone?

It doesn’t matter.

“Not that.” I roll my eyes and return to my job of tucking the lights into the boughs. Patrick circles around, his job being to hold the lights in a way that doesn’t let them tangle as I apply them to the tree. “Your Christmas traditions. Growing up.”

There’s a long enough pause after that I have to glance at him, only to find his face carefully and frustratingly blank.

“We didn’t have any.”

“You didn’t have any?”

He looks slightly pained, then takes a deep breath. “Our house was decorated by an award-winning team each year. So maybe that counts as a tradition.”

“You didn’t put up a tree together? Go to the farm and pick one out together?”

Patrick lets out a cold laugh, shaking his head. “No.”

I blink at the fake plastic needles surrounding my hands. Growing up, we always had a real tree. My grandmother’s dog eventually developed allergies and she had to switch to a fake one, but my family still goes strong with the real thing. I knew that was out of the question with Patrick, but I assumed he had at least had the experience of picking out a real tree, bringing it home for the season.

“My parents weren’t really big on holidays in general,” Patrick says, clearing his throat and carefully not meeting my gaze. “Christmas was no different. The nanny got a budget to buy me gifts up through tenth grade. After that, they said I was too old for the whole thing. We lived in a historical house, growing up, so there were a lot of protections around what I could and couldn’t change. Even the bed in my room had to stay right where it was. The Christmas decorations were only ever in the front hall, for the magazines that would come and take pictures.”

Patrick lets out a breath. I think this might have been the longest string of non-work-related words he’s ever put together around me.

“That sounds like crap,” I finally say, at a loss for something more diplomatic.

Patrick presses his lips together like eh, then says, “They were busy. I get it.”

“Like how you’re busy?”

His eyes narrow on me. “It’s not easy to build a company without work.”

“I bet.” A beat passes with nothing but the gentle rustling of the tree, the gentle tapping of Patrick unwinding more lights. “What did your parents do?”

“They both came from money,” he says, as though it’s something he needs to clarify. “But my father was a foreign diplomat. He was gone all the time, usually living in Germany without us. My mother was a surgeon.”

My stomach tightens at the was. Just like before, when he gave me the rings. I want to ask him about it, but I can’t tell if it will help. I’ve helped friends through their grief before, but I’ve been fortunate enough to never have lost someone I loved. Both of my parents are alive and thriving. One of my grandfathers and a great-aunt passed when I was really little, but that hardly counts.

I want to be there for him, but don’t want to force him to talk about it if that’s only going to make it worse.

So, instead of asking about it, I focus on our tree. It’s massive—taller than any tree my family has ever had—and it cuts an imposing figure in the towering front window. I can’t wait to go outside and see what it looks like from the street.

It’s not like my family was poor. We always had everything we needed, and enough for extras. But this—this is the kind of tree you see on Instagram. The kind that takes your breath away when you see it in real life. I always assumed you’d need a whole crew of people to put one together like that, but Patrick and I managed it with a ladder and strong determination.