by Esme Devlin
“Lewis?” The sound which comes out of my mouth is only just loud enough to be heard over the storm. I figure I’ll give it three tries and if he doesn’t wake up, then I’ll leave him be.
But he replies almost instantly, so fast in fact that I wonder if he was even really sleeping. “Whit?”
He sounds hoarse and fed up. Maybe he’s feeling as shit as I am. Maybe we can comfort each other, as any normal two friends who find themselves in shite circumstances would do.
“Are you awake?”
“Aye,” he says.
“I’m freezing.”
He sighs. “Aye, me too.”
I don’t say anything else. I feel like it would be too much to ask for him to go down to the basement and get more firewood.
A few moments pass and it’s awkward. Like we both know the other one is awake and thinking about what we can say next.
Fuck it.
“Do you want to share a sofa?”
He says nothing.
He. Says. Nothing.
He says nothing and I’m seriously cringing at myself.
And then I hear something, barely even audible over the storm.
Is he coming over?
I hear movement but he doesn’t come over.
A few moments later I hear the door opening and closing.
Fabulous.
I’ve scared him away.
What a bloody fool.
Or maybe he’s the bloody fool… I mean, he could have just said “Nah you’re alright, Isla.” Now it’s going to be hella awkward — as if it wasn’t enough already.
But then the door opens again, and he’s back. I feel another weight coming on top of me, like another cover.
He went to get me another cover? Relief washes over me about the fact that I didn’t weird him out or piss him off or force him out of the room.
He was just getting me another cover.
And then another one. He puts another on top and I feel like a little kid being tucked into bed.
“Scootch you’re arse over then,” he says.
I kind of half sit up, wondering what he means when I feel him climbing over me. He lifts the covers up and I get shunted towards the edge of the sofa while he comes in behind me. For a second I think I will definitely fall off, but he quickly catches me in his arms and pulls me back in close to him.
Well. This was unexpected.
I thought we would have topped and tailed.
This is unexpected, but not at all unpleasant.
I’m still wearing my Rudolph onsie, so it’s not like this is inappropriate or anything. I assume he’s wearing some form of clothing but I can’t exactly put my hand back to check, can I?
“Thanks,” I tell him.
It seems like the only thing to say.
I feel his warm breath on my neck and the rise and fall of his chest behind me. He says he’s cold, but he’s not, he’s warm. I’m still shivering but he’s helping more than he could ever know.
“Remember that night I told you if I won at pool, I’d take you wherever the fuck you wanted to go?”
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night. “Yeah?”
“That’s me squared up now. That debt is paid — you chose the couch. Don’t say I’m not good to you.”
I chuckle at him and he squeezes me tighter.
It feels strange… but good at the same time.
He’s still an arsehole, in my honest opinion. He’s moody and full of himself and thinks he’s better than me in every possible way. But I get the feeling that somewhere beneath all that there is a half-decent human being.
And right now he’s keeping me warm.
Chapter 9
LEWIS
Isla Strachan is a fidget.
If she wasn’t shoving her foot clean into my shin, she was digging her elbow into my ribs.
Did that stop the wee man getting excited about having her arse pressed up close to him?
Absolutely fucking not.
But as much as the wee man might like what he feels, getting in beside her last night was purely about staying warm. My head knows that, even if my cock doesn’t.
I pull myself out from under the covers and dive off the sofa before she notices just how excited the wee man is. The room is chilly as fuck, but a cold shower still sounds like it wouldn’t be half bad.
First though, I need to get Kimber sorted out. She’s pampered as shit and only eats raw food, so the shortbread we had last night wouldn’t have been any good for her. I plan to take her out this morning and let her have at it with a rabbit or a squirrel.
I’m shoving my legs into my jeans when I hear Isla stir behind me.
“Can you see my breath? I feel like I can see my breath.”
I turn around, fastening the button on my jeans and don’t miss her eyes moving quickly from my chest to my face.
“All I can see is your hair,” I tell her. I’m not lying — it’s fucking wild. She looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.
She giggles and sits up, trying to run her fingers through the tangled mess and uncover some of her face.
“I can’t hear the storm anymore?”
I cross the room to look out of the window. The wind has certainly died down, but the snow is still falling, maybe even thicker than it was yesterday.
“Aye, seems to have passed.”
“Do you think we’ll make it out today?”
I shake my head. “Doubtful. It needs to melt some before we have any hope of moving that tree.” Crossing the room, I grab my shirt and put it on. The thing’s freezing but it’ll not take a minute to warm up. “I need to take Kim out, she’ll be going stir-crazy stuck in here. I’ll sort the fire and make coffee when I’m back.”
She pushes the covers off herself and stands up.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Catch yourself on,” I say with a chuckle. “You stay here.”
“And do what?” she argues. “I’ll go just as mad as the dog stuck here alone. At least a walk will waste an hour.”
“Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
She puts her hands on her hips and sticks her chin out all defiant.
“That was different. You made me carry that big stupid axe — for no reason, by the way.”
I sigh and shake my head. I’d imagined a nice brisk walk with the dog — alone — not spending my morning listening to Little Miss Are We There Yet.
“We’ll take coffee with us to keep us warm. Maybe even some shortbread. It’ll be like a picnic,” she says.
This is a terrible idea. She’s going to be a nightmare, I can already see it clear as day in my head. But the defiance is gone from her, and she’s looking up at me with those doe eyes.
And I realize I don’t have the heart to say no to her.
Well, the heart or the balls.
“Alright,” I concede. “You make the coffee, I’m going for a shower.”
The wind has faded away to nothing by the time we leave the castle and head for the woods. It’s still snowing, but it’s not the full on blizzard it was yesterday. Every branch is loaded thick with powder, the ground buried in feet of it, turning everything in sight the brightest shade of white.
Isla’s still not dropped the reindeer suit and I can’t help wondering what she would look like without all those layers on. What she would look like, and what she would feel like, and if she still has that round arse that caught my attention all those years ago.
I took the shower to get those thoughts out of my head and it doesn’t seem to have worked. Yesterday she was just plain annoying. Today she’s still annoying, but I can’t help finding it fucking endearing.
Maybe I have that Stockholm syndrome. Like when you’ve only seen one person for such a long time that you start to find yourself liking them.
I laugh at my own thoughts. It’s been fucking 24 hours Lewis, pull yourself together.
“Don’t you worry she’ll get lost?”
She’s talking about Kimber, who ran off into the woods in front of us about ten minutes ago and hasn’t been seen since.
“What do you think she’s going to do? Run away and join a wolf pack? She wouldn’t last three hours before missing her old Dad and coming back with her tail between her legs.”
She giggles. “She calls you Dad, does she?”
I smirk. “All the time.”
“I’ll believe it when I hear it,” she says. “I’m just surprised you never called her Orkney or something.”
It takes me a second, and then I remember what she’s referring to.
My shite chat up line from that night.
A lesser man would be embarrassed, likely wishing the ground would open up and swallow him — but I own my shit and just laugh it off.
“I was so fucking smooth back then,” I tell her.
“Slicker than a boiled onion,” she says with a laugh.
“Aye well, it seemed to work on you, didn’t it?”
I look down at her and watch her cheeks go pink as she looks away.
“At the risk of you saying I told you so, I’m exhausted.”
There’s a field just over the other side of these woods with a fence surrounding it. I reckon that would make a decent enough seat and so we head for that.
“It’s like babysitting a child,” I tell her.
She pushes me. “Are you always so grumpy?”
“Me?” I argue. “You’re the one complaining all the time.”
Isla scoffs and picks up the pace towards the field. “You told me I couldn’t stay. Then you told me I could stay, but there was no fire, no heating and no hot water. Then you mimicked literally everything I said and did. Did I complain?”
“You’re complaining right now.”
I watch her march away as she shakes her head. She walks over to the fence and tries to push herself up on it but fails miserably. If it wasn’t for the flask of coffee in my hand I’d be stood with my arms crossed watching her. But she tries again, this time putting her foot up first and finally resting herself precariously on top of the fence.
“Can you pass the coffee over, please?”
“Come and get it,” I tell her.
She pauses for a long second and I wonder if maybe I’ve gone too far? I just wanted to see her struggle to get down and back up on the fence again. Comedy gold.
“Fuck you.”
Nope.
But I do it. I bring her the coffee and I stand next to her, leaning back against the fence and looking out at the field. I wait until she has a few sips before I speak again.
“Is that you finished with your little outburst?”
She turns around and looks at me. “Is that you finished being awkward?”
I want to say something snidey back, but there’s not much I can say. I was being awkward. So instead I shove my hand out and gesture for her to pass me the coffee.
“Come and get it,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I push off the fence and take the couple of steps towards her. “Now who’s being awkward?” I ask, eyebrow raised as my hand snakes around the flask. I’m standing near-enough right in front of her. A step forward and I’d be between her legs.
She doesn’t let go of the flask. I could pull it out of her little hand as easy as taking a bottle from a baby… but she’d likely topple right off the fence.
I think she knows this.
Little Miss Are We There Yet is testing my patience.
She raises her eyebrow as if to ask me what I’m going to do about it, and I smirk at her. Her eyes move from my eyes and rest on my lips.
She’s looking right at them while her own lips curve up ever so slightly.
Now, I’m not going to lie and pretend I’m the most experienced at reading women. I have no time for them, not since I took a chance on a certain brown haired wee vixen who led me down the path of narrowly avoiding a jail sentence.
That was eight years ago and I’ve never bothered my arse since then.
I might not be the most experienced, but I’ve seen enough sex scenes on the TV to know that when someone’s looking at your lips, it means they want to kiss you.
She wants to kiss me?
Fuck would she want to kiss me for?
Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe this is all just a game to her… wind him up and then make him go in for a kiss just so she can laugh in my face when she asks me what the fuck I’m doing.
Her eyes flick up to mine — likely to check I’m still watching her — and then settle back on my lips.
“Isla,” her name comes out on a hoarse as fuck breath and I fight the urge to clear my throat. I should have asked her what she wanted from me, but that would be admitting to what’s going on.
And I’m not ready to admit to that.
Not if she’s pretending, like she was in that pub on Christmas Eve all those years ago.
I’ve had my hopes crushed by her before, and I won’t do that again.
Chapter 10
ISLA
He’s looking at me like he wants to eat me. His brown eyes are normally so cold but right now they’re warm and inviting, just like they were that night.
It’s like I’m seventeen again. I know I should break this up, go back to the metaphorical table-with-my-friends… but I can’t stop looking at him. Just his eyes on me makes me shiver, and it’s not from the cold.
It’s something else.
That same undeniable thing that kept me stood there talking to him that night.
“Lewis.”
I say his name just because he said mine.
My eyes drift over his face, taking in every inch of it from his thick eyebrows to his straight nose to his full lips. I never got to kiss him that night, and I often thought about what kissing him would have been like.
I’m thinking about it right now.
Would his two-day stubble scratch?
I hear a sound in the distance and I know if I look away, then whatever this is will be over. And I don’t think I want it to be over.
Not before I find out if this is actually something.
But the sound is getting louder.
Closer.
He wants to look away. I can see it from the way his eyes are searching my face.
He’s asking me what I want but I don’t even know.
Kimber.
The dog runs right between our legs and he takes a step back to make space for her. She’s excited, bouncing around between us and rubbing herself up against him.
“Someone’s happy to see you,” I say.
He laughs before bending down to clap her.
“We should head back before you get unbearable again.”
Unbearable? I hop off the fence and nudge him but he just laughs me off and pulls the flask out of my hands. He takes a drink, still watching me while he does it.
“You know, you’d get way further with me if you just tried being nice.”
The words slip out of my mouth before I’ve even really processed what I’ve just said. And as soon as I realize, I cringe.
I’ve just insinuated he was trying to get somewhere with me.
What a fucking fool I am.
I start walking before he can notice the heat creeping up towards my cheeks.
Footsteps in the snow behind me — he’s following. And he’s laughing.
“I wasn’t expecting to get anywhere with you. But now you’ve just admitted I could.”
“I wasn’t saying that,” I shout back.
He chuckles and jogs to catch up with me, the dog sprinting out ahead.
“Sounded like it. Sounded like you just gave me the keys to the kingdom.”
I look up at him. “Sounds like you’re seriously confused.”
I’ll deny it until I’m blue in the face because I don’t want him to think I want him, unless I know for sure he wants me.
And I don’t know that.
He’s been a prick from the moment I set eyes on him.
And maybe he has reason to be, after what happened all those years ago.
“It’s alright princess, don’t fash yourself. Your secret is safe with me.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head.
If I’ve just turned him from moody and grumpy back to the cocky and arrogant man I knew years ago in the space of a single sentence, I’ll find a way to move the damn tree myself.
“I think we should get you home, before you become unbearable,” I tell him.
He lets out a throaty laugh and grabs a hold of my hand.
I look down at it, half of me wondering what the fuck he is doing and the other half mildly pleased that he’s actually made a move and saved me the cringe of being the only one.
Is this a move?
It feels like a move.
“You know what’s weird? It doesn’t even feel like Christmas Eve.”
He turns around and lifts an eyebrow, resting his hands on the counter and leaning back slightly. We’re in the kitchen, waiting on the stupid tea lights to heat the water for more coffee. I’ve realized this could be our life now for the foreseeable. Fifty percent drinking coffee and the other fifty percent waiting on candles to heat water so we can drink coffee.
Brilliant.
“What does Christmas Eve even feel like?”
He sounds skeptical.
“I don’t really know. Like exciting and magical and just… Christmassy.”
He chuckles. “Aye, maybe when you’re seven years old, Isla. Not twenty-five and thirty-three.”
“Och weesht,” I scold. “You know what I mean. It’s like an atmosphere. It’s not just a kid thing.”
“I’ve been staring at you dressed as Rudolph for the last two days. Believe me, darlin’, my Christmas spirit has reached dizzying new levels of high.”
I laugh at him, despite trying not to.
But I can’t say I agree with him. No food, no music, no tree. You wouldn’t even know it was Christmas Eve.
“Do you have any decorations in the attic?”
His eyes go wide and he turns away. “No.”
No? Why do I feel like he’s lying? Avoiding eye contact is like the biggest sign of lying there is.
I get up from the table and inch my way in beside him so I can see his face. He’s looking down at the tea lights pretending not to notice me.