Let It Snow

by Jeanette Grey

  Unexpectedly nervous, voice quiet, she asked, “Tell me more about yourself?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  He chuckled. “I guess we have all night.” He closed his fingers around hers for a second, a warm pulse of contact before he relaxed them again, leaving himself open to her exploration. “Still kind of a broad question, though.”

  “You’re from here?”

  “Yeah. Born and raised.”

  “And your…your family still lives here.”

  “They do.” A hint of trepidation had crept into his tone.

  She ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth, trying to decide how to phrase this. “What you were saying, earlier.” When she’d asked him if he was sleeping with Rebecca. When he’d misinterpreted everything about how she saw him. “About college. And about them.”

  He let out a little groan, turning his face into his coat, but he didn’t hide himself for long. He shifted onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, clasping one of his hands around hers and draping the other across his chest. Sneaking a glance at her, he gave a wry little smirk. “Should’ve known you wouldn’t forget about that so easily.”

  “I have got a pretty good memory,” she said, teasing.

  “Yeah, you do, college girl.”

  She hesitated for only a moment. Then she stroked her thumb across his. “So. Will you tell me?”

  Chapter Five

  Sam’s breath stuttered, and she watched as his throat bobbed.

  Then he tugged his hand free, leaving her fingers flexing around nothing, and oh God. She’d pushed too far this time. As he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, her heart squeezed, just as empty as her open palm. It felt like a blow, the way he’d pulled away. Like she was asking too much—and wasn’t she, really? She’d offered him nothing and was pumping him for things he’d made it clear he didn’t want to give. The way she always did.

  Dragging his hands over his face, he opened his eyes and twisted his neck, and she braced herself for him to tell her off, or just plain tell her to leave him alone. To her surprise, there wasn’t any accusation in his face. No hint of the fight she always seemed to expect whenever she did something wrong.

  Instead, the corner of his mouth tilted up. “Fine, fine.” He held his arm toward her again, and the magnitude of that invitation rocked her. She hadn’t pressed too far, after all. Not yet. “C’mere, though,” he insisted. “If you’re going to make me talk about this crap, at least let me hold you while I do.”

  Her heart did another flip, but instead of empty it was almost uncomfortably full. She hadn’t entirely known it could even feel like that.

  Without a shred of reluctance, she went into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. The broad expanse of his chest was a better pillow than her balled-up jacket, and heat was pouring off him as she snuggled in. The temperature in the store couldn’t have dropped by more than a couple of degrees in the time since the power had gone out, but there on the floor, spread out under a single layer, the chill had already started to set in. Not that she could really notice now, with her body so close against his.

  Wrapping one arm around her back and rubbing her shoulder idly, he breathed out, long and low. “There’s not really all that much to tell, honestly.”

  “Okay.” She tipped her head so she could see his face, finding he’d directed his gaze to the ceiling overhead. When his eyes flicked toward hers, she looked away, focusing on the fabric of his shirt as she fiddled with one of the buttons.

  He let out another little sigh. “My dad’s just…he’s that dad, you know? He’s a lawyer. Has his own practice and everything. Wears a suit to work every day, going bald, potbelly. And he’s always expected me to follow in his footsteps.”

  “Right.” Of course this would be about his dad. Her own silence bore down on her, making her lungs feel too tight. She chose her words carefully. “That…must be an awful lot of pressure.”

  His chuckle rocked the firmness of his chest beneath her cheek. “Yeah, especially the receding hairline thing.”

  She could only hum in agreement, slipping a finger into the open collar of his shirt to play at the light swirls of hair there. She eyed the flat plane of his abdomen. “Got a long way to go on the potbelly front, too.”

  “Glad you think so,” he said, sounding pleased. His grip on her shoulder hardened, an agitation playing under his skin. “Got an even longer way to go on the lawyer front, is the problem.”

  As much as his efforts to keep her close felt like they were trying to avoid exactly that, she wanted to see him for this part. Rolling over onto her stomach, she propped her elbow on his ribs and settled her chin into her hand. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” His gaze went to a spot to the side of her face, and he combed his fingers through her hair. “I mean, I tried and all. Three years, pre-law. Political science major and everything.”

  “Oh.” All those times he’d teased her about being a college girl, she knew there’d been something more to it. She racked her brain, trying to remember if she’d ever seen him around campus, but it was a big enough school, and he had a different major. There was no reason they would have run into each other. She tried to pick her words carefully. “I’m…guessing that didn’t work out so well?”

  She winced at her own indelicacy, but he just laughed.

  “Understatement of the year.” His voice took on an edge, a hollowness she felt in her bones. “I hated it. Every day, I’d drag my ass to classes, and study until all hours of the morning, and I wanted to blow my damn brains out.”

  Her eyes widened at that, but he waved her off.

  “Not really,” he corrected. “But it was this constant drudgery, and I imagined just…going. Walking out of that stupid dorm with the clothes on my back and disappearing.”

  And that hit too close to home. “Oh.”

  He seemed to hear it about a second after she had. His gaze met hers, and something flickered in his eyes as he sucked his lip between his teeth. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “Of course not.” Her throat sounded strained to her own ears, and her fingers dug into her palm.

  Fuck. This whole thing had been about opening up to each other, getting to know those hidden, tucked-away parts. Yet here she was, silently cursing herself for having let even that much slip, for going so far as to hint that she’d left home. That she’d reached her limit and walked away one day. The same way he’d imagined doing.

  For very different reasons, though. Really, really different.

  “I. Um.” He coughed.

  “It’s fine,” she said, even though it wasn’t—not entirely. But this was his story, not hers. All she had to do was listen to it.

  Maybe someday she’d tell him her story. Push past these competing instincts in her heart to squirrel that sad, ancient history even deeper away, or to finally let it out. And if he judged her for what she’d chosen…well, that would tell her everything she needed to know about why she’d always shied away from opening up to anyone.

  His gaze dropped, coming to rest somewhere in the vicinity of her mouth, but it wasn’t like when he’d been about to kiss her. He shifted his hand away from her hair to trace his thumb over the pout of her bottom lip.

  “It was my mother,” he said when he met her gaze again. “And CeeCee—my little sister. There were a lot of things I could walk away from. But not the two of them.”

  That old, missing ache in her chest redoubled, but she did her best not to let it show.

  “So,” he said. “Last spring, when it got really bad, right around finals time, when I felt like I couldn’t breathe…I just. I did it. Took all my shit and walked down to the bursar’s office and put in my withdrawal.”

  “Wow.”

  Because that was a big step. A huge step. That usually meant forfeiting tuition and putting incompletes on a transcript, and it wouldn’t look good.

  “Yeah.” He la
ughed, and it was the saddest sound she’d ever heard that wasn’t a sob. “That was pretty much my dad’s reaction, too.” He dropped his pitch, mimicking, “You’ll never get into law school now! You’re throwing away everything! Do you know how much we invested in you?”

  She heard a whole other litany in her head. Useless, worthless, ingrate…She blinked hard to push it away. Because this wasn’t about that.

  Even yelling at him, Sam’s father hadn’t made it out like his son wasn’t worth his time. Just that he was making a mistake.

  Sam came from a whole different kind of world.

  “Anyway,” he said, pulling her attention back. “I bummed around all summer. When the time came to start getting ready for the fall term, I told him I wasn’t going.” His voice went tight again. “Long story short, he kicked me out. Now I’m a college dropout living in a shithole apartment with three other dudes I found on Craigslist, working in a bookstore and driving a fifteen-year-old Oldsmobile, and if it weren’t for my mother, I wouldn’t even have those last two things.”

  The corner of his mouth had dipped so far it had transcended the genre of a frown. She turned to kiss his palm where it was still pressed against her face. Dipped to place another soft kiss at the edge of his lips.

  He reeled her in, opening his mouth to make the contact a little more lasting. A little more intimate. Letting her go, he swept his thumb across her cheek.

  But then he dropped his hand and tipped his gaze skyward again, and she shivered at the sudden distance in his eyes. At the closeness of the hurt lying just beneath the surface of his tone. “The thing that gets me is that he hates it. He’s not happy with what he’s doing. He hates the assholes he’s always dealing with, haggling out fucking contract law or something. He works these crazy long hours and he comes home miserable.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was to look right at her. “And he wants me to follow him into that. I mean…it’s just…it’s so fucked up.”

  “Yeah. It is.” She swallowed, rolling over again to use his shoulder as a pillow. Splaying her palm out over his ribs. “Thank God you didn’t let him suck you down with him, or you would’ve been miserable, too.”

  He chuffed. “Because the life I’m living is so glamorous now?”

  “It’s the life you chose. That’s always got to be better than the one you would have been stuck with.”

  It was the lesson she’d reminded herself so many times, when things were hard. When she worried she’d made a terrible mistake.

  “You think?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  The moment hung for what felt like entirely too long, broken only when he settled his big, warm hand over her arm again, squeezing her tight. Forced levity making his voice lilt upward, he said, “Anyway. That’s why I don’t know if I’m going there this Christmas. I just—I don’t know if I can face it. Him. If he even wants to look at me, after everything.”

  She would bet the farm his father did. That his mother and his sister would give anything for a chance to fix what two stubborn, stubborn men had broken. God knew she wished she could, sometimes.

  She wished, after everything, that there had been anything left to fix.

  Her heart pounded as she nestled in close, pressing her face against the skin of his neck. Confessions tore at her throat, things she never talked about, but which suddenly she actually wanted to speak into the night. It was sympathy for all the ways he’d laid himself bare. Empathy for everything he’d been through. And something more, too. A beating pulse inside her chest that was dying to break free. To open up and let him see.

  Because there were a couple of ways she could play this now. After what he’d told her about his father and the expectations that had weighed down all his plans…she could be brave. Part her lips and let him into this dark, hurt corner of her heart. Or she could say nothing, and hold on to it. Keep it secret and safe.

  As he rubbed up and down her arm, she snuck another glance at his face, and God. If she hadn’t already been gone for him since day one, she would have fallen right then and right there. There was no expectation to his countenance. Nothing he was going to demand from her—maybe not ever.

  But an absolute willingness to receive it.

  Just like that, the pressure inside of her shifted, breaking loose with a crack that took her breath away. She looked from his face toward the hand he’d kept wrapped, protectively, steadily on her shoulder.

  And before she’d entirely decided to say it, she heard herself croak out, “My father was a drunk.”

  Chapter Six

  The words sounded unbearably loud in the silent space. The panicky, shivery part of her wanted to pull them back, but it was too late. Too late for a lot of things.

  “Go on,” Sam said. His hand had stopped its gentle rubbing at her arm, but he hadn’t pulled away. If anything, he was holding her closer. “I mean, you don’t have to if you can’t, but I’m here. If you’re ready to say it, I’d like to hear.”

  And it was that quiet support that had her shutting her eyes and opening her mouth and her shuttered, fettered heart. Breathing air into spaces that had been closed off for years.

  “No, it’s—” She blinked, zooming in on the weave of the fabric of his shirt. And then there was just his breath and the cadence of his pulse and the warmth of him surrounding her, there in the darkness on the night before Christmas Eve. She let out a measured exhalation, long and slow. “It’s all right.”

  Because it was. Somehow, with him, it was.

  “It started when I was a kid, I guess? Mom used to say that he was…different, when they were dating. Less angry. Less sad, maybe. All I can remember is him being this grenade. You never knew if he’d pull the pin or not. If what you were going to say or do was going to set him off.”

  That was the part that had always been so hard to explain. Sometimes, everything had been fine, and the next minute, you’d do something tiny. Knock over a glass or shut a door too hard, and it was the end of the world.

  She’d been so convinced, so many times, that it was the end. That he’d kill her by accident. Or on purpose. She never knew.

  “He’d fly off the handle for no reason at all, and it was…it was worse, this time of year. He did construction. Both my folks had these shitty jobs, and they had to work all the time. But it was hard to get work when it was freezing out, so he’d be hanging around the house. Usually with a bottle in his hand.” She sucked in a deep breath at the memory, and Jesus, there was a reason she never let herself think about this kind of thing.

  Sam just stroked his fingers through her hair, though. Curled his hand around her palm where it was resting on his chest. Made her feel safe in a way she never had, back then.

  She tried her best to relax, but there was a tension in her bones, a fear that kept her coiled up tight. A piece of her that still wanted to keep the past contained.

  His fingers stuttered in their movements. “Holly…”

  She clenched her eyes shut tight, breathing in the warmth of his voice. His presence was grounding, and the sound of her name on his lips gave her the strength somehow to go on.

  “I was always so scared.”

  “He hurt you?” The hint of gravel in his tone made her open her eyes.

  It was the strangest question, because it didn’t even begin to touch what it had been like to grow up that way. “Yeah. But…not always how you’re thinking. It was physical sometimes, but it was the rest of it. The being told you’re worthless or stupid, or…”

  He sucked in a hiss of a breath, anger creeping into the way he gripped her. Swallowing, she flipped her hand over to entwine it with his, coaxing his fingers to ease.

  “What about your mother?” he asked.

  God, she hated that question.

  She shrugged. “She got as much shit as I did, and for longer.”

  “But she didn’t try to stop—”

  “If somebody’s getting hit by a car, do you blame them for not stopping the car fro
m hitting the person behind them?”

  “But—”

  “She tried.” Holly had to believe that. So many times, her mother had intervened, had made things better. Even if it had never been entirely enough. “She was kind, and tired. Exhausted. She worked more than he did and still had to do most of the work around the house, and then put up with his crazy and his screaming and the…” The hitting. “All of that, on top of it. She tried to protect me.” She brought their hands to her lips and kissed the point of his knuckle. “But I don’t think she had anything left.”

  Her tone must have brooked no argument, because Sam went quiet. Everything he wasn’t saying bled out in the way he held her, though. The leaking edges of something desperate and impotent, all coiled up tightly in his limbs.

  She knew the feeling—not being able to do anything when someone you cared about was being hurt.

  The fact was, if she blamed her mom too much for not saving her…then how much would she have to blame herself, for not helping her mom get out, too?

  Blinking fast against the dampness creeping into the corners of her eyes, she licked her lips. “Anyway. It was bad. Really bad. But you do what you have to do, and you can bend and bend and bend, you know?”

  “Until one day you snap?”

  Exactly. Her breath shuddered, and she nodded. “We, um, we never had much for Christmas. I only ever complained about it once, when I was nine.” She still had the scars from that year. “I learned that you appreciated what you got. Even if it wasn’t anything.”

  And then, one year, it had been everything.

  Fuck. She couldn’t keep her voice steady now. Couldn’t help the way her vision blurred or how hot her cheeks burned.

  “When I was seventeen, my mother, she knew how much I wanted this stupid—it was just an iPod. It didn’t even make any sense, because it wasn’t like I could afford MP3s, but I wanted one so badly. I didn’t really have many friends, but everybody, all the girls who weren’t poor, they had them. And I wanted one. I was so fucking selfish.” She tugged off her glasses and swiped at her eyes, but it didn’t do any good. “Mom saved up for I don’t know how long, and she got me one. Secondhand, but it had all the packaging and everything, and I was so happy.