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“How did you find this?” I asked.
He’d told me about his first concert, and it had led to me telling him how I had wanted to go to the Believe tour so bad. All the girls at school were going and talking about it. Then, when it was over, they all wore their concert shirts to school. I’d been so jealous.
“Let’s just say my masculinity suffered a little, and the guy I got it from didn’t look like he believed my story. If word gets out that I’m a Bieber fan, you know why.”
I pressed my lips together, then put the shirt down and stood up to go wrap my arms around his neck. Burying my face in his hair, I inhaled. I didn’t think I could love him more, but he was proving me wrong.
He fisted his hand in my hair and pressed a kiss beside my ear. “Just a couple more, and we will be to the 2023 gifts,” he whispered.
I let go of him and sat back down to finish.
When he handed me the first shiny red gift that was for this year, I felt my heart flutter. I was ready to give him his gifts even though what I had gotten him paled in comparison to what he’d just done for me.
The first gift was a butter-soft cream leather jacket with sherpa lining.
“As much as I love seeing you in my coat, I figured you’d like something more feminine.”
I had been happy with his coat, but this one was gorgeous. I loved it.
In a small box was a gold bracelet of linked hearts that had a red stone inside each one.
“The ruby will be the baby’s birthstone,” he said simply.
My eyes teared up again, and I sniffled, taking it out so that he could fasten it on my wrist.
“It’s beautiful, Saxon. Thank you,” I said, wiping at my face.
The next gift was a pair of riding boots, which he informed me I would need after the baby was born. But that I could break them in, coming to the stables with him and getting to know the horses. Followed by a gift certificate for five pregnancy massages and a Christmas ornament of a pregnant woman that had the year on it. He took it from me and hung it on the tree.
After I was finished, there was a pile of wrapping paper and ribbons all around me. I stood, stepping over it, and went to get the things I’d gotten him.
Turning back to Saxon, I smiled. “Your turn.” I placed them in front of him. “I don’t have an order to them, but I will be honest; I can’t compete with what you gave me. I don’t think anyone can. That was amazing.”
He took my hand and pulled me down to him. “Are you happy?”
I nodded. “Very.”
“Then, I got my gift.”
Holy crap. He had to stop. I was going to blurt out those three words I had been having trouble not telling him. He made it hard to keep my feelings tamped down. Although, after all this, I wanted to believe he loved me. What man did that for a woman he didn’t love? Was he waiting for me to say it first?
I looked down at the smallest gift and knew the inscription on the leather bracelet was pretty damn close to telling him without saying it.
He reached for the first box. It was the one Trev had helped me with. He opened it and took out the framed picture.
“I was at that game. It is one of the few football games I went to in high school. I remember watching you make that touchdown, and I wanted to cheer. I couldn’t, of course, since I was sitting on my school’s side. I think my crush on you started then.”
Saxon stared at me in disbelief. “You had a crush on me?”
I nodded. “To be fair, I think every girl in this county had a crush on you and Trev.”
“You had a crush on Trev?”
“No. Just you.”
He looked back down at the picture. “I can’t believe you were there.”
“Turn it over,” I told him.
He turned it over to see the other side was a picture of me. A friend of AJ’s had taken that picture with his phone.
“That was me that night,” I told him.
You could see the scoreboard behind me and part of the field.
“Damn, you miss a lot when you’re on that field,” he said. “I wish I’d seen you then.”
“Our worlds were completely different. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I can promise you, I wouldn’t have given a fuck about our worlds.”
I smiled at the thought but knew that my dropping out of school to work and take care of the kids had happened shortly after that game. We wouldn’t have worked at all. But it was nice to think about.
