by Kaci Rose
I nod and turn to look at the house that holds some of my best childhood memories. It’s been months since I’ve been here, and this is the first Christmas without my grandma. Seeing the house done up with the lights and decorations, it almost feels like I’m going to walk in and the house will smell like her famous chocolate chip pecan cookies and she’ll be there to wrap me in one of her hugs, and demand I tell her everything going on at school.
I don’t realize I have tears running down my face until Denver walks up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist.
“I hate your tears, tell me what I can do to make them stop,” he whispers in my ear, before turning me to face him. He uses his thumb to wipe them off my face and then kisses my temple.
“I wish I could promise there won’t be any more, but this is my first Christmas since she died, and this was her favorite holiday. She loved it so much it was infectious. It is my favorite holiday because of her.” I take a deep breath and paste on a smile. “You ready to see the house?”
Gina’s eyes light up and she heads to the door, Denver takes my hand as we follow. I don’t know how hard it will be to walk these rooms again, but I’m hoping having Denver here will make it a bit easier.
Chapter 11
Denver
I hate seeing the tears on Avery’s face, but I get it and I am so happy I can be here for her and that she’s letting me into this part of her life. There is no place else in the world I’d rather spend Christmas than with these two women who mean the world to me.
Avery leads us through the front door into a small foyer that opens to a beautiful living room. It’s bigger than the living room, kitchen, and dining room of my mom’s house.
“The fireplaces have all been inspected and are sound and working.” She points toward what looks like an original brick fireplace. “They are wood burning and perfect for hot chocolate around the Christmas tree.” She gets a far off look in her eyes as she looks at the tree in the window.
“The first thing to go is that creepy mirror above the fireplace. I’d like it if we can take it down tonight. As a kid, I was always scared I’d look up and some creepy little girl standing behind me or something.”
I can’t help but laugh as I imagine a little Avery running around the house, it sure does pull on my heartstrings.
She starts talking to my mom and I watch as my mom comes alive. She loves decorating and it was always her dream to do that for a living, but she can’t afford the cut in pay to get her foot in the door.
“This room just needs a paint job and a way to organize coats in the foyer. The layout is a bit choppy, but I’d like to find a way to make it work for now,” Avery says as she trails her hand along the walls. Watching her walk through the house, she has a far off look in her eyes. She has a new spark of life in her and getting to see this side of her means more to me than I can describe.
“These hardwoods are in great shape, are they original?” My mom kneels down and runs her hand over the wood floor.
“Yes, my grandma had them redone about five years ago and she took good care of them.”
We walk into the kitchen and even I know this would be my mom’s dream kitchen down to the water facet over the stove to fill pots.
“I bet you can’t wait to cook in here, can you, Mom?”
“Oh, this kitchen is beautiful!”
“This was my grandma’s dream kitchen; she spared no expense here. She watched a lot of Food Network cooking shows and said she wanted to feel like she could host a show in her own kitchen. Feel free to use it as much as you want. My grandma said the kitchen is the heart of the home and is meant to be used. She would be mad if it wasn’t used while we are here.”
She leads us from the kitchen to a butler’s pantry and through a teardrop shaped arch to the dining room.
“Oh, that arch is original! Please tell me you want to keep it.” Mom runs her hands over the wood.
“Oh, yes, I don’t want to change much, and I want to keep all the original details. It’s what made this house a home. Look here at this nick in the wood…” She leans down and points to a dent in the wood a few inches off the ground. “This is where I ran into the arch while I was roller skating around the house during a blizzard one Christmas. We were stuck here for a week, so Grandma and Grandpa moved all the furniture out of the way and make a skating track for me, before they redid the floors, of course.”
She stops at a half bath downstairs that hasn’t been redone. The wallpaper almost looks like old newspaper clipping all over the wall but as you get closer you can tell it’s all one big piece.
“This is the only bathroom that hasn’t been redone and it’s because my grandpa loved the wallpaper, but they couldn’t find any more of it to be able to put it back up when they redid the room. I want to try and save some of this wallpaper and frame it for decor in the house before this bathroom gets torn up. Silly, but I remember my grandma trying to bribe my grandpa to let her take it down and he would always refuse. After he died, she left it as a memory of him.” She smiles and runs her hand over the wallpaper by the door.
I take her hand and squeeze it. “It’s not silly. I love the idea.”
She leads us upstairs next. “This is the master. You can see part of the leak I was telling you about by the fireplace. The fireplace is fine, I had it checked, it’s just this part of the wall that needs to be fixed. Grandma redid the bathroom here to match the kitchen. She loved the countertops so much she brought them up here too.”
“It’s smaller than I would’ve expected.” My mom takes a look in the master bath.
“Yeah, when my grandparents bought it there was no master bath. They combined two rooms to make this room and the bathroom. My grandma didn’t need much space to get ready, so she refused to make the bathroom too big. The master only needs paint and some decor. Gina, you should stay in this room.”
“Oh no, dear. This is your room. Denver and I will take one of the others.”
“But I insist.”
“That’s a deal breaker. This is your house, your grandparent’s room, so it’s your room. I won’t stay there.”
I watch as Avery relents and nods.
Mom walks down the hall to check out the other rooms, but I stay behind with Avery.
“Everything okay?” I ask her.
“I’ve never stayed in this room. Never been able to. Maybe with you two here, I can finally do it.”
I pull her into a hug since I don’t have the words for this moment.
“Go pick out your room.” She smiles.
I find my mom in a bedroom that overlooks the backyard and she is staring out the window.
“Taking this room?”
“Oh, yes, I love it in here. The back yard is like something from one of those Christmas movies it just needs some snow.”
“My grandma used to say that all the time,” Avery says from the doorway.
Avery finishes her tour, showing us the basement with the laundry room and a craft room. She and Mom talk about different ideas of things they can do down here.
This house suits Avery, I can see her in every room. She has so many stories from which of the antiques creep her out and why to how several dings and dents ended up in the doorways.
“Why don’t you take your bags up and get settled, then we can head out to the store get some dinner and a grocery shop. I also need to pick up boxes and tape,” Avery says.
I am upstairs in the room next to the master unpacking my stuff when there is a light knock on the door frame. I look up to see Avery.
“What made you pick this one?”
I shrug. “It’s next to yours.”
She smiles. “This was my room growing up.” I look around, it’s done is yellows and greens but there is no sign of it being a girl’s room.
“I had a dollhouse in the corner over there and I loved watching people drive by looking at Christmas lights this time of year from that window. I’d get myself in trouble because I’d be up pas
t midnight just watching.”
She steps in and heads to the window and looks out, lost in thought. I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her. After a minute she turns in my arms to face me.
“Thank you for being here, it’s made it a lot easier.”
“There is nowhere else I’d rather be. This place has a magical quality to it, I can’t explain it. I’m always here for you, Avery, always have been, even though you didn’t know it.”
She wraps both hands around the back of my head and pulls me in for a kiss. The moment my lips touch hers she is deepening the kiss into one filled with passion. My heart races, there is a connection between us that is above and beyond what has been there before. Forgetting where we are and who could see us, I push her up against the window trying to eliminate any space between us. The need to be closer to her is all I can think about. When the cold glass hits her back, she gasps.
“Denver,” she whispers.
“Yeah, baby,” I whisper against her lips as I try to catch my breath.
“Your mom...”
I groan. I know my mom could walk in at any time so with one more quick soft kiss I pull back and take a deep breath. I know in my gut that this is just the start of us. Something has shifted here. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know with all certainty that I’m not letting Avery go.
Chapter 12
Avery
Once they are all settled in, we head out to explore Nashville for a bit.
“I have an antique dealer coming tomorrow to look at some of the stuff that I don’t plan to keep. What’s worth anything he will take to his shop to sell on consignment or buy outright. My dad refused to be here for that, though.” I laugh and shake my head.
“Too hard for him to sell the stuff?” Gina asks.
“No, the guy is my mom’s old high school boyfriend.” We all laugh. “He’s a good guy, came out not long after him and my mom broke up. He and his husband now run the store. They adopted a little girl who I ended up going to high school with and we became good friends. When he heard of my grandma’s passing, he called and asked that I don’t sell anything without him there. He never once tried to get the sale, he just wanted to make sure whoever I brought in didn’t rip me off. It was never a question in my mind that I’d give him the sales. My dad still grumbles about it. He can’t get passed that it was one of my mom’s ex boyfriends.”
We get back home from the store with boxes for packing up some of the rooms and food. Pulling into the drive and seeing the lights on makes it feel like home. It feels right to be here. I must have been standing and looking at the house longer than I thought, because Denver wraps an arm around me.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just feels like home.” I smile as we head in.
Gina insists on making dinner so she can use the kitchen and Denver helps me as we start packing things up. We pack up clothes to donate, along with lots of family photos to keep. My dad left me the keys to his truck so I can move stuff into their basement before they get home.
Before I know it, it’s after 10 p.m. and we all say good night and head to bed. As I climb into bed, I check out my grandparents’ room and try to imagine it as my own. Could I live here? I’d love nothing more than to have a family and raise my kids here. I have to find a way to make it my home and not like I’m tiptoeing around after the ghosts of Grandma and Grandpa.
I’m lying in bed, coming to terms with the fact that I plan to live here and make a life here, when my phone goes off.
Titan: You up?
Me: Yeah lots of memories, it’s hard to sleep.
Titan: Lots of noises I’m not used to.
Me: Yeah. I still have you listed as Titan in my phone.
Titan: Leave it. I like it.
Me: Okay.
There is nothing back from Denver, so I keep thinking about moving in here after graduation when my door opens and Denver slips in. He lies down on the bed next to me but over the covers.
“What is your favorite memory in this house?”
I stare at the ceiling for a moment, the past filling my head. “Pretty much every Christmas. Grandma loved decorating and it always started before Thanksgiving by sorting decorations and buying news ones. I have photos of all the decorations. She would make sure every room was done up, even the bathrooms. The house was always one on the Nashville Lights Tour. A few years when I was in high school, she even won some awards.”
He smiles and reaches out to take my hand. “Worst memory?”
I don’t even have to think. “Both Grandma and Grandpa’s wakes were held here.”
He turns on his side to face me and I do the same. There is just enough light from the open curtains and the nightlight in the bathroom to make out his face.
“My mom loves this house. She lights up when she talks about decorating it and I haven’t seen her like that in a long time. So, thank you.”
“Has she ever thought about becoming an interior designer?”
“She never could go back to school for it, and now to get her foot in the door, she’d have to take a pay cut. She can’t afford that and to still put me through school. If I can get signed into the NFL, it will give her the chance to do it. I’ll encourage her to as well.”
I shake my head. “It’s a talent you can’t be taught, either you have it, or you don’t. Listening to your mom’s ideas, she has talent. Do you think she’d like to help me with this place? It could be the first in her portfolio.”
He smiles. “She would love that, Avery. You should talk to her.”
I nod. “Good, because I want someone I can trust working on this place.”
We lie there for a few minutes before I speak again. “I’ve been thinking tonight, and when I get out of school I want to live here. I can’t bear to sell it. It’s hard being here and making changes, but the thought of selling it is more than I can bear. It just feels so big for one person.”
He reaches up and tucks some hair behind my ear and traces his thumb across my cheek. “Don’t sell it. Make it your own. Your grandparents would love for you to raise a family in their home.”
I think about that. I know my grandma would love having her great-grandbabies here and raising the next generation in this house is exactly what they wanted. “I will.”
I smile and his eyes lock with mine.
“Avery...” he whispers before his hand goes behind my neck and pulls me into him for a light and sweet kiss that gears up to a passion-filled tango. His tongue meets mine and it’s like he is making love to my mouth as his hand grips my hair and pulls me closer.
My breasts rub against his chest causing him to groan and pull away just a bit.
“Every time I kiss you it’s better than I remember from that first night,” he whispers against my lips.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” I snuggle up with my head on his shoulder and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me close. I’m so comfortable and I feel so safe that I don’t think twice about drifting off in his arms.
Chapter 13
Denver
I don’t sleep much that night with Avery in my arms. I want to soak up every minute of it, memorize the feel of her pressed up tight along my side, her body heat soaking into me, the sounds she makes when she sleeps and the scent of her shampoo.
I drift off at one point and wake to watch the sun filtering in the bedroom windows. Not too much later, Mom peeks her head in to find Avery still in my arms.
“We stayed up talking and she fell asleep like this. I didn’t have the heart to wake her,” I whisper.
Mom smiles at me. After the first night that I brought Avery home, she hasn’t stopped talking about her. She loved her and thought she was the sweetest girl. It helps that my mom knew what Avery meant to me and how we met.
“I’ll start some coffee and breakfast, you two come down when you’re ready.” She quietly closes the door behind her.
I gently rub Avery’s back. “Beautiful, it’s time to ge
t up, the antique guy will be here in two hours.”
She groans and rolls on to her back, stretching her arms above her head, emphasizing how thin her T-shirt is, and the fact that she isn’t wearing a bra underneath it.
I can see she is as turned on by being so close to me. Her nipples are stiff peaks and tenting her shirt which makes the hard on I’ve been fighting all morning spring to life. When the hem of her shirt lifts just enough to see a sliver of her belly, come starts leaking from my cock and causes me to groan. I try to shift around and adjust myself, but it does nothing with her so close.
She rolls back to her side and looks at me. “I haven’t slept that good in a long time. Thank you for staying with me.”
Her eyes travel down my body and I know the moment she sees how hard I am because she gets the sexiest blush on her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
I lean over and tilt her chin to look up at me. “Sorry for what?”
She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes slide back down to my cock, making me smile.
“Yes, sweet girl, that is what you do to me and I’m not sorry. I’m also not going to push for anything. I didn’t wake you when you fell asleep because you felt so good in my arms.”
She smiles and leans in to kiss me, pressing her chest to mine. Her hard nipples brush across my skin and my mind goes blank at how good it feels.
In the next minute, she wraps one leg over my hip and pushes her core against my hard length, grinding against me. Her hands snake down to the top of my sweatpants and I grab it back up.
“Sweet girl, not right now.”
She bites her bottom lip and nods, but has an unsure look on her face. How does this girl not know I want to spend the rest of my life inside of her.
I groan and roll to my back, pulling her on top to straddle my hips and get a better angle. She places her hand on my chest for leverage and slowly grinds back and forth on my cock, every thrust making her moan.