You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology

by Karina Bliss

  So he stroked her body, profoundly happy to be able to, yet sad, too, because—well, he knew what day their third try was supposed to be born as well as she did. He was glad she was sleeping through midnight. That damn miracle birth hour. He’d had to turn off the radio the day after Halloween last year and listen to nothing but classical music and audio books—usually on dealing with grief—to get him through until January. All those fucking songs about a sweet child cherished by a tender mother, laying his head to rest in a manger and all that. Fuck God, that’s what he had thought. You can get a virgin to give birth to your kid, but you can’t let my wife have ours? Fuck You.

  Fuck Santa Claus, too, while he was at it, and all the songs about him. He would have liked to play Santa Claus. See a little kid’s eyes light up at all the presents under a tree. Fuck.

  Those hydra heads rose, and the anger was catching at him, trying to drag him under, when Kai drew a deep breath and started to sing.

  Very quietly, her voice so soft. “Silent night—”

  Oh, fuck, Kai, don’t. Don’t sing that. Don’t rip us to shreds again. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to me, God damn it.

  “Holy night—”

  Oh, shit. He tightened his arm around her waist. But she didn’t stop, her voice trembling just a little bit. And so he laid his tenor under hers, giving her voice that support because what else could he do? He couldn’t carry the baby. He couldn’t drown under a tidal wave of hormones when he lost the baby. He could only support.

  “All is calm, all is bright.”

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, settling his body more closely against her back. His voice nearly gave out on him at the line mother and child. But hers didn’t, soft and quiet and sure.

  “Holy infant, so tender and mild.”

  And very, very softly at the end, their voices blending: “Sleep in heavenly peace. Slee-ep in heavenly peace.”

  A white light from the Christmas tree sparkled once over her golden hair as her voice faded away, a tiny caress of light that only he saw. When he tried to touch it, it was gone, and yet his fingers tingled from it. She gave a very long, slow sigh and turned her body into his, nestling into him and wrapping her arms around him.

  And then she really did sleep. And so did he.

  Chapter Eleven

  Morning dawned quietly happy. The happiness stayed cautious, clinging closely to them, afraid to fling itself about too joyously on this delicate day. And yet, it was there—in the air, in the touch of hands, in the way they didn’t look each other too long in the eyes, in case they scared it away by staring at it too hard.

  Kai made hot chocolate and French toast, and Kurt did the strawberry hearts, proving that the model crafting child could branch out from stock paper and glitter when he wanted to.

  Then he gave the strawberries funny faces, and then he set a line of them marching across the whipped cream like little strawberry soldiers to attack her French toast fortress, on the snow-cream top of which her heart was guarded.

  She started to laugh, a sound that made his face relax in relief, and kissed him. “Merry Christmas, Kurt.”

  “Merry Christmas, sweetheart. I love you.”

  For their Christmas present to each other, they curled up on the couch and looked at all their old photos of happy times, and Kurt talked softly and persuasively of that old trip idea of his. Could we now, Kai? Could we please? Just the two of us, escape somewhere crazy, for, I don’t know, a month, two, pack our lives with something vivid and fun. Hell, we can take a year and do a whole world tour if you want. Ride elephants. Get chased by rhinoceroses. Set a prayer wheel spinning on top of some Tibetan mountain.

  He braced after he said it, doubtless still remembering the way she had screamed at him the last time he suggested this idea. But that level of rage, at least, had faded a long time ago, as her hormones rebalanced.

  The hurt hadn’t left with the rage, of course. If anything, the rage had been a protective shield against the fullness of that hurt. Even six months ago, it would have been too soon still to bring up this trip idea. Some wounds couldn’t be “fixed”, no matter how much someone else might want to fix them; sometimes they just needed a lot of time to heal. But now—

  She nodded, firmly, and his face lit, and they called up maps and guidebooks and plotted where they would most like to go. It was a little difficult—anticipating fun and life felt all rusty—but it got better with practice, as if each little touch, each little smile, each photo of a possibility was another drop of oil.

  When his mother called and asked Kurt if he was coming to Christmas dinner, and he asked Kai, she said yes a little warily, because it was her first step back into the world. Still, the thought of his mother’s cool control was a relief compared to her own family’s chaos of wrapping paper and playing nieces and nephews. She could start back into the world with baby steps. “Although I never could figure out what your mother meant by letting me have this cabin. It’s almost as if she wanted us to be separated.”

  Kurt was silent for a moment as he helped them off the couch. “I always thought it was proof that my mother actually has a heart.”

  Kai whipped her head up to stare at him. People close to Anne rarely suspected her of having a heart, Kurt least of all. And she didn’t see how the cabin proved the contrary.

  “I was seven and nine when she had her own miscarriages,” Kurt said very quietly. Shock ran through Kai, a strange woman-to-woman current of pain, of understanding. Oh. Oh, you know, too. It was as if there should be some little sign, a woman’s hand touching her belly maybe, this secret code of a sorority of sorrow. “I didn’t really understand back then what happened to her, why that cold crept in on her and she got even more controlling, so difficult my father just left her.”

  Oh, Anne. Kai saw the frost-blond bob, the strong jaw and ever-controlled profile, felt against her cheek the little air-kisses of the woman who never let herself get too close. Whose media presence and role of perfectionism was its own force field around her, creating a bubble where she could get everything right.

  “I just knew I couldn’t reach her myself,” Kurt said low. “And never have been able to reach her again. Not so I could tell.”

  Oh, Kurt. Kurt, Kurt, Kurt. The sudden, incredible realization that he had braved the greatest pain from his childhood, for her: that of having his world fall to pieces, of being shut out. He must have been as helpless against that destruction then as he had been when his life was destroyed a second time as an adult, and yet, for her—he had still tried his hardest to fight it. He had still faced it.

  “I think she gave you what she needed for herself back then and never had, because there were too many things she couldn’t step away from. But of course, given that it’s my mother, it’s hard to tell.” His mouth twisted wryly. “She did agree to give me an excuse to come up here, though, when I asked her. And she was the one who made the decision to leave us here alone—without warning me, I should mention. I had planned to have people here for more padding. More”—he flexed his fingers, almost as if he was testing the fit of a glove—“armor.” He shook his head and closed that hand firmly around hers, warm and sure. “Stupid armor,” he murmured so softly she didn’t think she was meant to hear. “As if you ever got to wear any.”

  She hesitated and gestured around to the snow-covered mountains, the isolated cabin.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Maybe if you can’t have armor, you do need a lot of distance from the world. When you’re—wounded.” The oddest look crossed his face. “My mother—the person who understood.”

  “My family never could,” she said. “They were too—happy.”

  “Yes, I thought of that, how happy your family always was. I had had to learn how to deal with my parents’ divorce. And, you know, my mother. She takes a certain amount of strength. But you never had any practice at all, did you?”

  No. Happy childhood, happy family, easy time in school, happy marriage to the most wonderful
man . . . it had been so easy to have a beautiful life, up until then. She had thought working in top kitchens was the most brutal thing possible in life, and she had shifted away from that brutality into the calmer intensity of food styling, easily enough. She had had no idea. How could she not have the babies she wanted? She was—she was happy. Unhappy things were for—unhappy people.

  What an idiot she had been.

  A happy idiot, though.

  Images flashed across her mind of all the women in her support group, of her own mother-in-law, the cool, distant Anne. One of the leaders of her support group often said that they weren’t supposed to think about deserving and not deserving, that it was a cruel concept made to hurt. But Kai struggled with it, as with everything else.

  In her bedroom—their bedroom now?—she touched her jewelry box, stroking it a moment, eyeing him sideways as he buttoned a pressed, white shirt. She had always found it so hot when he dressed for dinner with his mother. It had always made her palms itch with the desire to unbutton him again, to wrinkle his shirt, to tousle his hair, to make him late, but to make him late laughing, every cell of his body sated and relaxed.

  His wedding ring glinted from time to time as his fingers moved on the buttons.

  She swallowed and looked back at the jewelry box. And then, on a breath, she opened it and reached into the little secret compartment in the back. Beside her, Kurt’s hands went still on his buttons.

  Taking the rings out, she bit her lip, looking up at him. And then she held them out to him tentatively, afraid to ask, despite everything he had said and done, still afraid to hope that much for forgiveness.

  But he fisted his hands and thrust them into his pockets. “I didn’t take them off in the first place,” he said low and harshly. “If you want them back on your finger, Kai, you put them the fuck back on. You make the choice.”

  She stared at him, and then her eyes filled with tears because he was so right about that. She started to slide them onto her fingers, wedding band first.

  His hand closed suddenly over both of hers, stopping the act. “But if you put them on—they stay on,” he said roughly. “You promise me—you promise me—that if ever anything like this happens again, you’ll let me take you to counseling. We can put it in writing, if you want, so I can hold the damn contract up in your face when you balk and make you stick to it.”

  Kai laughed despairingly. “You can’t—I can’t put you through this again. If this happens again, you have to find someone else.”

  He stared at her and then suddenly grabbed her chin, too hard, to force her to look at him. “Kai, no, I don’t. We don’t know what might happen. You might decide one day that you want to try one more time, and we don’t know how that might work out or how much it might hurt if it doesn’t. We might adopt, and something happen. One of us might get cancer. Someone might get in a car accident and have brain damage or lose a limb. We don’t know anything. We’re not the same people who couldn’t imagine much worse in our lives than maybe breaking a toe playing Frisbee. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, God.” He flung his hand away from her chin. “That’s what I promised to love you through.”

  She bent her head, her eyes stinging, so humbled by him. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “I just—I just couldn’t drag myself out of it.”

  “I know. Kai, I’ve read every book there is to read on the subject. I may never feel it the same way you feel it—it hurt you so much worse than it hurt me—but I understand. I would have done anything I could to make it better. That’s why I let you go, in the end, because it was the only thing left to do. The only thing you thought would work.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as if she could never say it enough.

  “So am I, Kai. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help. I’m sorry that I couldn’t bear it for you. I’m sorry that all I did was make it hurt you so much worse, until you had to get away from me. My God, I’m sorry. Do you know how fucking small it is, to be a man, and watch my wife be destroyed for my sake, as she tries to have my kid, and not be able to do one damn thing about it? I’m sorry. And I’m angry. And like you, I just have to get through that. To the other side. But Kai—” He stretched across the distance between them and closed both hands strongly around hers. “There’s no point in getting to the other side, if it’s not with you.”

  She took a deep breath, sucking in all his strength, all his persistence. “I know. That’s one of the things that was so hard, after I started getting over the depression. Knowing I didn’t deserve you any more.” Oh, damn, there was that word again, that her support group tried to stop themselves from using. “That I’d lost you.”

  He stared at her. “You don’t—deserve—fuck, Kai. Are you kidding me? You didn’t come back to me because you didn’t think I’d take you? God, Kai. I would have crawled on my hands and knees. You were so damned brave. You tried so damned hard. I was worthless. I don’t even know what you think the word deserve means.”

  Her throat knotted. “You’ve never been worthless, Kurt. Never. Never. I’m so sorry I—”

  He placed his hand over her mouth. Gently this time. “I think you’ve said that enough, sweetheart. All I needed to know was that you were sorry you left me and ready to try again. Now let that go, Kai. You suffered enough, without spending the rest of your life beating yourself up for how hard the suffering was for you to handle on top of it.” His gaze ran from her face to her belly, and he hesitated, but then he curled his hand gently over her abdomen, pulling her in for a careful hug with his hand protecting her womb. “Forgive yourself,” he whispered to her hair. “Kai, sweetheart, not one single thing that happened was your fault. Not one—single—thing. Remember that, honey.”

  Her mouth twisted, bittersweet and weary, but with that whisper of hope. “You sound like my support group.”

  “Good, then, I’ve gotten one thing right.”

  She buried her face against his chest. “Forgiveness hurts,” she admitted very low.

  His hand rubbed her hair heavily. “It all hurts, honey. I would take it from you, if I could. But all I can do—all I’ve ever been able to do—is my best to share it.”

  I love you so much, she thought into his chest. But the hurt of the words this time was a sweeter, gentler ache, as if a mass of toxins that had gotten caught in the idea of love had been squeezed out and rinsed clean. She stepped back enough to look into his face and touch his cheek. “Kurt. Don’t beat yourself up either. You did everything you could. I just wish—I hadn’t hurt you so much. I still don’t understand how you can be willing to try again, when you know how unhappy it can be.”

  He shook his head. “Kai. What did you think it meant, when I said I loved you? That love was just this bright, happy thing?”

  She hesitated and shrugged a little, opening her hands. Kind of, yes. Wasn’t that what it was? Brightness and happiness? Or at least what it was supposed to be?

  His hand curved around her face. “So did I, maybe,” he said quietly. “But when it wasn’t so bright or happy—that didn’t mean I wanted to let it go.”

  Her eyes filled.

  “Or let you go,” he said very softly.

  The tears spilled over.

  “Kai.”

  “I just still don’t understand,” she whispered. “How you can love me even now. There’s a whole huge part of me that doesn’t believe you can ever love me, ever again. Not really. How could you?”

  His thumb traced one of her tears away. “Because you didn’t know I could still love you, when you weren’t laughing, when you were ugly and desperate, when your life was hard?”

  She shook her head, crying openly now. No, she hadn’t known that. She still didn’t understand it.

  “Well.” He bent and kissed her, tasting the tears off her lips. “Now you do.”

  The End

  Copyright © 2013, Laura Florand

  Thank You

  Thank you so much for reading Snow-Kissed! For more stories from me, chec
k out my website: lauraflorand.com

  And make sure to sign up for me email of new releases here: lauraflorand.com/newsletter

  And for some more glimpses of Kai and Kurt, check out Sun-Kissed, the story of Kurt’s mother:

  Sun-Kissed

  They called her the Ice Queen.

  Anne Winters. Self-made billionaire. Household name. Divorced single mom. Convicted felon. She didn’t let anyone or anything get to her. No one was allowed to breach the walls around her heart except for her own son. She had only one trusted friend: her vacation house neighbor. They’d been walking the beach together for twenty years. Not that this gave him access to her heart, of course…

  They called him a man who got what he wanted.

  Mack Corey. Self-made billionaire. Dominant world player. Widowed father of the bride. No felony convictions yet, although his daughters had come close. He’d transformed his family company into one of the top 500 by the age of thirty. He’d raised two daughters who dumped him for idiot arrogant French chocolatiers and went off to live in Paris. Hell, he even managed to tolerate his dad. But that Ice Queen act Anne Winters had going was really starting to get to him…

  They’d been best friends for twenty years. Could they become lovers?

  Could a frozen heart be kissed by the sun?

  Available now!

  Christmas Eve: A Love Story

  by

  M. O’Keefe