To Fall for Winter

by Kelsey Kingsley

  She stood up, turned around with the tray in her hands, and her breath hitched with surprise. “Oh, hey.”

  I cleared my throat. “Hi.”

  Kinsey turned around from her work at the George Foreman Grill. “Hey Ry, you’re staying for dinner?”

  I nodded, glaring over at Meghan and her little grin. “Yeah, someone talked me into it,” I muttered, and I watched Patrick give her a low-five. I shook my head, biting my lips to hinder the grin that couldn’t be stopped.

  Dinner commenced, where Patrick and Kinsey did a fine job of playing matchmaker, sitting Snow next to me at the table. It had been proven pointless though, as she pushed my hand off her knee anytime I made a grab at her. Digging at my pride a little more every time.

  She was going to make sure I was sufficiently beaten and bruised before considering the possibility of taking me back, and that continued after the pork chops and roasted potatoes had been eaten.

  We sat around the living room. On the floor, Meghan ooh’d and aah’d over Snow’s tattoos in the way she would with mine; fresh material to ogle over. Kinsey sat in the recliner, tapping away on her tablet. Patrick sat on the couch, watching football recaps, and I sat next to him. Except, I watched Snow.

  She held Erin in her lap, squeezing the baby girl with gentle affection. She talked to Meghan, gushing over TV shows and music groups I didn’t even know she liked. She behaved as a friend one second, and like an adult the next. She smiled, she cooed, and she did it all so naturally and effortlessly. Not like some women, who had to push the motherly thing along like a boulder up a hill. And watching her, I felt something tugging inside me. Something uncomfortable and annoying, something waking up that had apparently been hibernating my entire feckin’ life.

  Christ, do I want kids? Do I want them with her?

  And then, that’s the shite I thought about, while I watched her.

  Kids.

  Mine—ours.

  I wondered if they’d have blonde hair, like mine, or—what color was her hair underneath all that black? If their eyes would be an icy blue like hers, or something resembling denim like mine. If they’d be tall, short, or something in between. If they’d be angry, cold, hot, crazy …

  My mind was pulled back to the real world when Patrick yelled something at the TV, and my eyes focused on Meghan holding Snow’s arm in her hands, pointing at one small tattoo.

  “So, when did you get this one?”

  “Oh, wow … That was actually my first one ever,” Snow said, looking fondly at the black ink on her left arm. “It’s the pawprint of my first cat. I got it when I was just a little older than you. I begged my parents for weeks until they finally caved.”

  My eyebrows lifted. It was the first time she had ever mentioned parents, or any family at all, for that matter.

  Meghan turned to her dad, who sat there with a look of disapproval plastered to his face. At the football game or at his daughter’s conversation, I wasn’t sure.

  “Daddy! I want a tattoo for my birthday!”

  “Yeah, good one, Meg.”

  “You had your lip pierced when you were my age!” she whined.

  “And where did you hear that?”

  “Kinsey told me.”

  “Traitor,” Kinsey grumbled from the recliner.

  I chuckled under my breath at how easily my niece threw her step-mother under the bus. “He had a mohawk too. Did she tell you that?” I threw in, and Meghan shot her shocked expression at me before shooting it back at her father.

  “You said I couldn’t dye my hair pink, and you had a freakin’ mohawk?”

  Patrick glared at me. “Okay, first of all, your hair is already red. That’s close enough to pink, as far as I’m concerned. And second of all, watch your mouth around your sister.” He gestured toward Erin.

  “Daddy,” she sighed impatiently. “Freakin’ isn’t even a bad word. Mommy lets me say it all the time.”

  Patrick returned her sigh with one of his own. “Yeah, well, when you’re around your little sister, you keep the language to a G-level, got it? If they don’t say it in a Disney movie, you don’t say it.”

  “She can’t even talk!” Meghan protested, her voice oozing with attitude and teenage hormones.

  “Your uncle can tell you all about the stuff he didn’t think he was teachin’ you when you were around Erin’s age,” Patrick countered, throwing me under the bus, and I fought back with a smack against his arm. “Go ahead, Uncle Ryan. Tell your niece about the things she used to say.”

  I chuckled. “Ah, come on, Paddy. They’re just words.”

  Meghan nodded enthusiastically, thrusting a hand toward me. “Yeah, Daddy. They’re just words.”

  “Meghan,” Patrick said, his voice sounding an awful lot like our own father right before sending us to our rooms. “Enough.”

  The teenager threw her head back and groaned, rolling her eyes toward Snow. “You see what I deal with?”

  “Hey, I’ve spent enough time with your dad to know he’s a pretty cool guy,” Snow said, shouldering my oldest niece and smiling. “Your whole family is pretty cool, actually, even if they don’t let you get tattoos yet.”

  “Uh-huh,” Meghan said with a roll of her eyes. “You’re just saying that because you’re dating Uncle Ryan. He’s the only cool one.”

  Dating Uncle Ryan. Leave it to the kid to bring up the huge goddamn elephant in the room. That giant proverbial arsehole, sitting in the corner of the room, just waiting for someone to point him out.

  “Yeah, well, don’t tell your Uncle Ryan, but he’s a pretty big loser.”

  Shocked, Meghan giggled, looking at me with those big, blue eyes. “Uncle Ryan is not a loser. Daddy is.”

  Patrick smacked the arm of the couch, turning to me. “Do ya hear this garbage?”

  “You live in a house full of women, dude. Nothin’ I can do to help ya. Have some boys. Build up your defenses.”

  Patrick glared at Kinsey across the room. “See? He agrees with me.”

  She looked up from her iPad, cocking her head. “Oh, that’s great, babe. Then you can have a kid with your brother. Because let me tell you … Thirteen hours of labor isn’t making me jump at the chance to have another one just yet.”

  Snow giggled so girlishly I wanted to poke fun at her, had I felt I held the right to. She clapped her hand over her mouth and turned back to me, truly acknowledging me for the first time all night. “I hope you’ll be very happy together,” she said through her fluttering laughter. “I guess Patrick will be wearing the pants in that relationship?”

  “Oh yeah? Come here and say that,” I growled at her, my eyes darkening with the reminder that I hadn’t gotten laid in four days. The things I would do if she just got a little closer.

  “What are you going to do to me if I do?” she asked, trapping her lower lip between her teeth. Proving to me that her desire was still there, even if it was buried under five inches of ice.

  Clutching the arm of the couch, I tipped my chin, glared at her through my lashes with carnal intent, and just as I opened my mouth to speak, Patrick’s voice collided with the dirty thoughts flooding my mind.

  “Well! Meghan, you have school tomorrow, and you need to get in the shower before bed. Kins, I’ll grab Erin, and you get her pajamas together, okay?”

  Kinsey jumped up from the recliner, eyeballing me with a warning glare. “You better behave yourself. I don’t want to have to douse my couch with gasoline tomorrow, got it?”

  “What?” Meghan asked, looking between Kinsey and me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Patrick said, nudging her gently with his foot. “Upstairs. Bed. Now.”

  I drowned out the Father-Daughter banter as my brother scooped Erin up from Snow’s lap and pushed Meghan along toward the stairs. I ignored their footsteps heading up, ignored the closing doors and whining teenaged voice echoing down to the first floor. Because I was sitting there, looking into her crystal eyes, begging her to open up and let me back into my chilly worl
d.

  “You’re good with kids,” I said to her, nodding with sincerity.

  Looking embarrassed, almost a little sad, she said, “I always wanted them.”

  “You still could.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’d make a great mother,” she laughed, but she was moved by the comment. She had dropped her gaze, picked at the hem of her tank top.

  “I think ya would.”

  “Stop it Ryan. Please.”

  I sighed, deflated. I touched her blanket, folded on the back of the couch. She had been sleeping there for the past four days, letting it collect her scent while it faded from our bed. I felt stupidly jealous of the damn thing, that feckin’ couch. Getting her all to itself.

  Who the hell gets jealous of a couch?

  We fell into silence for too many minutes. I was afraid to speak, afraid to move. Afraid to do the wrong thing, afraid to leave. So, I sat there, touching her blanket. She sat there on the floor, finding something interesting in the carpet, until finally …

  “Ryan,” she finally said, bringing my attention back to her.

  “Yeah?” I rasped and cleared my throat.

  “I, um … I’m sorry I left the other night. I know how much that freaks you out, and I shouldn’t have done it. It was such a bitchy thing to do.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek as I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, finally looking back up to me. Her apology searing through her glassy eyes.

  “Okay,” I said, submitting. “Why did you do it, then?”

  She sighed, pulling her knees to her chest. “Because I knew it would fuck with your emotions, and I wanted to scare you. I wanted to control you, the way you tried to control me.”

  “I’m not—”

  She shook her head, holding a hand up in front of her face. “You’re lying to me. You wanted me to talk to you. You demanded it.”

  “It’s not askin’ a lot to want my girlfriend to talk to me,” I countered.

  “No, it’s not, but Ryan, did you ever think that maybe I was waiting until I was ready to talk?” She shook her head, strands of black falling against her cheeks. God, how badly I wanted to just tuck them behind her ear.

  “You could have just said that.”

  “You wouldn’t let me,” she stressed. “And then, there was all that love crap, and—” She sighed, pushing her hands into the mess of her black hair. “You can’t make me say things I’m not ready to say. You can’t just snap your fingers and demand that I do things when you want me to do them. It doesn’t work that way.”

  I listened to her. I took in her words, and I sighed, nodding. “Then, I’m sorry too.”

  “Thank you,” she said, mustering a hint of a smile.

  “We’re both pretty messed up, huh.”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s kinda who we are, I guess.”

  Who we are.

  A big feckin’ mess.

  She sighed, chipping the polish away from her nails. “But, I think I’m ready to talk. If you wanted to listen.”

  I looked down to my lap, to my hands, and I smiled.

  Yeah, we were a big feckin’ mess. Unorganized noise. But together, Snow and me … Our mess, our noise … It was music, and it was ours. And I felt the faintest of winds blowing me back into my little wintry world of warmth and ice.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, hushed against the ticking of a clock coming from somewhere in the house.

  I looked over to her, found the hopeful smile gracing her soft pink lips. “Well, I’m thinkin’ I desperately wanna know your story, but first, I wanna take you home, because I’m fairly certain my brother would literally murder me if I made love to you on his couch.”

  “Oh God,” she groaned gutturally. “Don’t ever say that again, please.”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “You know what. We don’t do that. I might love you, but we don’t do that.”

  I grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet. She stood between my spread legs, and I wrapped my arms around her waist. “So, wait a minute … You might love me?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Ireland. I’m taking you home, we’ll pick up your bike tomorrow.”

  “My name’s Ireland. By nature, I’m pretty feckin’ lucky,” I teased, pressing my ear to her chest, listening to her heartbeat, and all I could think about was that word …

  Home.

  And I knew, from that point on, she was mine.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN |

  LONG TALKS & LAME SHITE

  “Good God,” she breathed, kissing me as she untied my wrists from the headboard. “For such an old man, you sure have a lot of stamina.”

  “Four days of nothin’ will do that,” I laughed, and passed her a smoke. My brow crumpled. “Wait a minute … Old man?”

  She laughed, taking the cigarette from me. “Old compared to me.”

  “I’m thirty!” I barked with a laugh. “Why? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine,” she said with a giggle, and I rolled my eyes. “Well, you are older than me.”

  “Hardly,” I grumbled, but I smiled. “Do you think it’s crazy we don’t know much about each other?”

  She shrugged, tapping the end of her cigarette against my chest. “It might be, but maybe it’s just us—our thing. And hey, we’ll learn as we go along, right?”

  Our thing. Our type of crazy.

  My smile broadened as I lit her smoke then lit mine. I stared at the ceiling as my arm curled around her shoulders. This was my favorite place in the entire world: lying there with her, sending our smoke streams swirling together into the chilled open-window air.

  Christ, I loved the feckin’ cold. Always had but being in love with winter certainly helped. You grow accustomed to the feeling of your fingers and toes always being cold, while your heart soars with the heat of a cracking fireplace.

  “Ask me.” She tapped on my chest.

  “Ask you what?”

  “You know.”

  I smiled. “Okay, okay ... What are you thinkin’?”

  “I’m thinking I’m ready to tell you what happened to me,” she said, releasing a tense breath of air.

  “I thought you said nothin’ happened to you,” I teased, brushing my fingertips over her ear and neck.

  Snow sighed, gently pulling from my grasp to sit beside me. “I wasn’t kidding. It was really nothing. Just … a nothing relationship that went absolutely nowhere.”

  I pointed my cigarette at her. “I knew it was a guy. It’s always a broken heart that screws us up the most,” and she nodded her agreement solemnly. “But it’s always someone else that helps us to fix it, too,” I added, and she bit the inside of her cheek.

  And so, she talked, the cigarette waving in the air as she spoke animatedly with her hands. “There was this guy … Dave.” She said his name with disdain, and I felt every bone in my body, one by one, tense at knowing who the arsehole was. “I met him at a bank I worked at in Florida.”

  I scoffed. I didn’t intend to, but I did. “You worked at a bank?”

  She pointed her cigarette fingers at me. “Hey, you’re a fucking secretary,” she teased with the slightest hint of a smile before she tapped back into her fractured heart. “Yes, I worked at a bank, and I didn’t like it, but I had gotten into some shit when I was younger. Did a lot of drinking, some recreational drugs, got into some trouble with the cops. Nothing too serious, but I was heading in the wrong direction. And the crappiest thing? I did most of it, because I was trying to impress some guy, or some friends.” She laughed at herself, shaking her head, and I plunged into the crystal lake within her eyes.

  “It happens,” I said, interrupting her again. “Most of the stupid shite I did only happened because my friends were doing it. Or because I wanted them to like me more. Lookin’ back, I wish I had spent more of my energy on my family. Ya know, people that actually matter.”

  Snow smiled, touched her hand to my face. “But they never stopped caring.
”

  My eyes squinted at her. “Your parents …”

  She took a deep breath of preparation. “They had an interesting way of showing they cared. Honestly, I think it’s more that they just didn’t know what to do with me. I was out of control, they were at their wits end, so they told me I had to get my shit together or else they’d kick me out.”

  My face turned to stone, my fist clenched. “They were going to give up on you?”

  She hung her head. “I don’t know if it was so much a matter of giving up, or if it was just that their way of helping was to scare me, and anyway, it worked. I didn’t particularly want to be homeless, so I got a job as a bank teller, and it sucked ass. But, it was a steady, decent paying job. And I mean, in a lot of ways, it was a good thing. It kept me busy.”

  She took a long drag from the cigarette, looking up to the open window like she wanted to be out there. Like being there, in that room, was suffocating her. I took a glance in the direction she looked, and saw the drifting of snowflakes, illuminated like twinkle lights from the gentle glow of the outside world, and in a moment of spontaneity, I jumped out of bed.

  “What are you doing? I’m still talking.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” I said, pulling on my sweatpants and then my boots. “But you can talk outside. Come on.”

  With a forlorn sigh and an affectionate smile, she nodded, and got dressed. I threw on a sweatshirt, grabbed her blanket and a couple of pillows. We climbed the stairs to the snowy backyard, and I made a bed out on the lawn and laid down.

  Her crystalline eyes twinkled with tears I hoped wouldn’t fall. “When did you get so lame, Ireland? Did I do this shit to you?”

  I glared at her. “Shut up and get down here with me.”

  She sighed, her breath sending a silvery cloud into the air around her face, and she sat down, lying herself back into the crook of my open arm. I pulled the blanket around us, forming a cocoon. Two unconventional people, trying to sprout their wings in a world of people wanting them to change.

  Feck the world.

  I kissed her hair, inhaling that herbal scent. “Okay. Continue.”

  Through my sweatshirt, I felt her smile against my chest, and her arm tightened around me, absorbing my heat into her forever chilly body. She wouldn’t admit it, but she loved that lame shite, and ya know what? So did I.