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“I love you,” she whispers, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
I push the sticky strands of hair from her forehead and plant my lips to the damp skin there.
“You can claim all I have, Molly.”
Chapter36
Molly
It’sthe last day of the Hudson Olympics. Myles and Helene are our only competition. We’re tied by nine points each, with this last, unknown challenge being the deciding win. The duo stands a few feet away from us, huddled together, aggressively whispering out of earshot.
The other siblings aren’t even trying to win first place. They’re just avoiding doing the dishes on Christmas Day, a task that has been assigned to today’s loser.
We only lost the baking challenge because our peanut butter chocolate chips were missing— well, only the chocolate chips were missing. Courtesy of me. I made up for it the next morning during the lake-skating challenge, surprising even myself when I landed a triple axel.
I firmly plant myself on the ground, freezing my butt off, with snow falling all around. The Hudsons stand on opposite sides of me, smiling and nodding with encouragement.
I don’t have to be afraid of the future anymore. After Matthew shared a raw part of himself with me, I’ve never felt closer to him.
A part of me still aches about how afraid he was to tell me. Seeing the fear and hurt in his eyes as he explained what happened with Laura is a memory I won’t be able to easily shake.
I would never think of him as less than for something that’s entirely out of his control.
Having children is the furthest thing from my mind, but it’s nice to know that if I do ever feel the desire, Matthew is open to the conversation. However, at this point in my life, I just want my man all to myself.
Matthew stands beside me and gives me a wink. His game face is on.
Time to win this thing.
Even though I’ve fallen in love with every single person in Matthew’s family, I don’t want to play nice.
We will not be settling for second place.We both deserve this win today.
Jack speaks up. “Your last task is to make a snowman.”
“Oh, come on, we did this one three years ago,” Mitchell groans, holding the gilded Hudson family trophy in his hands.
“We know, and we’ve added a twist this year.” Mary smiles, sporting a vibrant purple snowsuit. “You can use any items around the house to embellish your snowman. The most magnificent design wins!”
“Wha—” Maya starts, but Madison cuts her off.
“Is there a theme?”
“No more questions; you have an hour.” Jack claps. “Ready, set, go.”
Panic ensues as everyone sprints off into the house, grabbing whatever they can find. Matthew takes my hand and pulls me upstairs to the second floor. “They’re trying to disorient us by giving us creative freedom.”
Out of the window in the hallway, we spot Myles carrying a ladder. Helene adjusts the fuzzy beanie covering her long brown twists and tosses a shovel over her shoulder.
“Let’s think outside the box,” I say, feeling like the world is spinning.
“They’re gonna go all out. Myles is building a yeti or something even more massive. We gotta keep it simple.”
“Tiny snowmen?”
“Perfect.” He nods, gazing down at the ground. “But how do we make it interesting?”
“All of us,” I blurt out.
