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CHAPTERSEVEN
“You haven’t given her a chance or the benefit of the doubt. She hasn’t done anything wrong and yet you’re sure she’s going to. You’re betting on her to fail, and you don’t even know her.” -Walt, defending me to Viv in Nate’s kitchen (Once Upon a Billionaire)
Dee
I can’t stop shaking.
Walt unlocks the door, bleeps the car’s locks, and shuts us inside the house. I take in his warm and homey space. The living room is decorated simply but with nicer furniture than he owned before. Leather couch and recliner. Side tables. TV mounted on the wall. It’s not neat, though. Walt’s not neat. He’s not a slob, but his sneakers are in the middle of the room, a blanket wadded on one side of the sofa. A laundry basket full of clean clothes is resting on the kitchen table, waiting to be folded. An old habit I remember from the days I stayed with him.
A tabletop Christmas tree is sitting on one side of the kitchen table, a string of lights laid at its base. Unlit. Undecorated. He didn’t set up the tree for the holiday. Was it because he didn’t see the point? Has he struggled with melancholy like so many of us do every year at this time? I hate picturing him sad.
“I wasn’t expecting company.” He stashes the basket on top of the washer and shuts the accordion doors, hiding it from view.
“I’m not company.”
“No. You’re a gift.” He snags my hip with one hand and pulls me so that his front bumps my front. Even through the bulk of my outfit, I can feel the hard ridge behind the fly of his jeans. Sense the impatience in both of us. Sex with Walt was always good, and the one area where we excelled. I never liked sex before I had it with him. I imagined I’d never like it again if he rejected me. But he didn’t. He loves me.
He loves me.
Tears threaten again, but I dam them. I am not going to waste time crying while I’m here. I’m going to have fantastically hot sex with the man I’m in love with on Christmas Day.
A zing of effervescence bubbles away in my chest. My star wish came true.
His lips lower to mine, his hands squeezing my body. A crinkling sound stops him. He tilts his head and redirects his attention to the pockets of my Santa coat. Then he squeezes again. Crinkle.
“What the—” His hand disappears in the red velvet and comes out with a stack of Post-It notes. They’re not perfectly sticky now that each one has been peeled and re-stuck to the one beneath it, but they are stacked as well as I could stack them. I had them bound when I was at the airport but discarded the rubber bands since. I planned to stick them on every available surface in Nate and Viv’s house while reading them to Walt. He foiled my plans.
He flips through the jagged stack in his hand, bent corners and all, and sends me a quizzical grin. “What’s this?”
I reach into the other pocket and come out with more Post-Its. More and more and more. My wallet too, and my keys. Moving to the table, I drop everything onto the surface, too impatient to have him in my arms to go through with my planned theatrics. “This is your Christmas present from me.”
I nervously prop one of the notes against an artificial branch and it falls to the one beneath it before it hits the table, facedown. Walt still hasn’t said anything, but I hear him flipping through the notes. I can’t watch while he reads them, so I busy my hands untangling the light strands and, with shaky fingers, begin to drape them on the tree’s branches.
“‘I miss your eyes,’” he reads. He unsticks one note and then reads another. “‘I miss the way you used to touch me like I was made of glass.’” He peels that note off and reads the one after it. “‘I miss sleeping next to you, my lips against your neck, your arms around me.’”
More paper rustling. More silence. I continue stringing the lights, refusing to look over my shoulder to see how he feels about his gift. Is it too little, or too much?
A heartbeat later, heat blankets my back, a strong arm wrapping around my front. He tosses the stack of Post-Its onto the table, creating a breeze that knocks a few of the others to the floor.
“What the hell is this?” he rumbles against the sensitive shell of my ear.
I shut my eyes, pull in a steady breath through my nose. “All the ways I missed you over the last year.”
I take in the Post-Its that are face up and read a few silently to myself.
I miss the way you burn chicken.
I miss the promises we made.
I miss your body inside mine.
I miss your lips gliding along my breasts.
“I wrote one every day,” I confess as he turns me to face him. No hiding now. I lift my chin. His whiskey-brown eyes are as warm as honey, wicked intent flashing in their depths.
“You missed me every day?”
“Yes. I was too afraid to tell you. So I wrote it down.” I shrug. Was this a dumb idea?
His hands return to the black belt around my Santa coat. “And the outfit?”
“I was trying to be festive.”
He laughs, the rich sound sending chills over my arms. Or maybe the chills are because he’s worked the jacket off my shoulders and exposed my bare skin to the cooler air of his house. He drops the coat to the floor, his eyes flaring like a hearthside fire when he sees I’m wearing lingerie underneath my costume.
