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I looked back at her. Her eyes begged me.

But I couldn’t do it.

I unlocked the door and let her out.

2

WILLIAM

“I’LL TAKE ANOTHER FLIGHT,” she said.

There was a woman sitting at the bar two stools down from me. She was pounding virgin eggnog shots.

I was at Holiday Spirits, the only pub in town. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” by Michael Bublé was playing. Again. It was four days before Christmas. The town was bursting at the seams as usual.

I hated it here.

A young man with a music-note tattoo on his wrist came over and leaned on the counter between me and the woman. “Hey, my brother and I need to close out our tabs,” he said.

“Calling it a night?” Sal said, sliding him his slip.

“Yeah.” The guy signed and took his card. “See you tomorrow.”

Sal made a finger gun at him.

The man left with his brother and the two women they’d come in with, so the eggnog woman and I were the only ones in the place.

I watched her throw back the next one.

“That kind of day, huh?” I asked, babysitting my old-fashioned.

“You have no idea,” she mumbled.

I scoffed. Same.

Nobody could have convinced me twelve hours ago that this was how my night was going to end up. Nobody could convince me of it now and it had actually happened.

We sat there watching Sal sprinkle cinnamon on her drinks. When he slid her eggnog over the bar, she grabbed the gingerbread man garnish off the plate and bit his head off.

They were good.

She glanced at me. “Do you live here?” she asked, holding her decapitated cookie.

“Me? No. Definitely not. You?”

“No.”

I looked her over while she ate the gingerbread leg. She was stylish. Slightly overdressed and out of place for Little Christmas at this hour.

I should talk—I was in a suit.

“Are you in town for the parade?” I asked, watching her chew.

“My friend and I are just passing through,” she said.

“And where is she?” I asked, looking around.

“She is in a quarter-life crisis.”