Chapter 27
The next couple of weeks went by in an absolute blur. Mostly because we were so busy at the shop. Summer had been hectic, fall had been slow until hunting season had started, but everything had gotten kicked into high gear once the snow came and schools started closing down for holiday break.
We were slammed with rentals and sales, and Clara had given me a crash course in helping customers select skis and snowboards the day I’d gotten my own rental. Everything else I needed to know—questions that customers could or would ask—I made a list of and asked some of the locals I’d gotten to know since working at the shop. Amos, surprisingly, answered a lot of them on the nights we had dinner together. Fortunately, there was only one resort close by, so there weren’t too many things people could ask, except where they could take the tubes they rented for sledding.
With work being so busy, I was grateful that I’d bought all my Christmas presents in advance on my lunch breaks, shipping most of them straight to my aunt and uncle’s, and having a few sent to my PO box in town. If it hadn’t been for those presents I had sent to my box, I might have totally forgotten about the plane ticket I’d booked back in October to go to Florida for Christmas.
Even back then, I hadn’t wanted to leave Clara alone for too long, so I’d reserved my ticket to leave early in the morning on Christmas Eve and come back the 26th.
When everyone started talking about a big storm that was supposed to roll in the day before Christmas, I didn’t think much of it. We had been getting steady snowfall every few days for a while. I’d gotten more confident driving in it, even though any time he could, Rhodes came to the shop and followed me back home.
Just thinking about Rhodes made the funniest feeling fill up my chest.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I had been raised by people who believed in me too much or just weren’t the helicopter-parenting type, but his overprotectiveness just did something to me. Big-time. I swear it lit me up from the inside out like one of those Lite-Brites I used to have when I’d been a kid.
We hadn’t gotten to spend any time together by ourselves again, and there hadn’t been any more real kisses since the day I’d basically thrown myself at him after Mrs. Jones’s visit, but that was mostly because of how often he’d been working late. There were all kinds of issues he had to deal with that I had no idea were even a thing. From problems with snowmobilers, to ice-fishing issues, and illegal hunting. He’d explained to me one night when he’d gotten home early enough and brought pizza with him, that after summer, winter was the busiest season he had.
To be fair, any time he got home early enough—with the exception of a night he’d gone over to Johnny’s to play poker—Rhodes invited me over.
And of course I went.
Sitting as close to him as possible on the two nights we’d watched a movie with Amos sprawled in a recliner. We’d smiled at each other from across the table on another day when, after dinner, we’d played an old version of Scrabble that no one knew where it had come from. But the most special part was how he walked me back to the garage apartment every night we spent time together and he gave me a long, lingering hug afterward. Once and only once, he kissed me on the forehead in a way that made my knees tingle.
I didn’t think I was imagining the sexual tension every time my breasts got pressed against his chest.
So all in all, I was happier than I’d been in forever, in so many different ways. The hope that I’d gotten so many glimpses of over the last few months had grown bigger and bigger in my heart with every passing day. A sense of family, of rightness, wrapped around just about every part of me.
But on the 23rd of December, when Clara and I were closing up the shop, she turned to me, seriously, and said, “I don’t think you’re getting out of here tomorrow.”
Covered in a down jacket I’d had forever that didn’t have enough filling for the temperatures we were having, I shivered and raised my eyebrows at her. “You don’t think so?”
She shook her head at me as she turned the lock on the door; we’d already set the alarm right before heading out. “I saw the radar. It’s going to be a big storm. I bet they’ll cancel your flight.”
I shrugged but didn’t want to worry about it. It had been snowing a lot, and tourists were still coming into town. Plus, it wasn’t like I could do anything about it. My superpowers didn’t extend to controlling the weather.
Pulling down the security gate that went over the door Clara still wasn’t looking at me as she said in a funky voice, “I forgot to tell you… someone… some… charity, I think… paid off my dad’s medical bills for Christmas.” One dark brown eye caught mine before she focused back on the gate. “Isn’t that a miracle?” she asked, sounding just a little funny.
“Wow, that is a miracle, Clara,” I answered her, trying to keep my voice even and steady. Normal. Totally normal. Even my face was blank and innocent.
“I thought so too,” she said, peeking at me again. “I wish I could thank them.”
I settled for nodding. “But maybe they don’t need any gratitude, you know?”
“No,” she agreed. “Maybe not, but it still really means a lot to me. To us.”
I just nodded again, averting my eyes until she wrapped me in a hug and wished me a safe trip and a Merry Christmas. We’d exchanged presents yesterday. I had sent Mr. Nez and Jackie a gift too.
But that evening, after driving slowly home, I was upstairs in the studio apartment, folding some clothes so I wouldn’t leave the place a disaster zone that would give neat-monster Rhodes a migraine, when there was a knock downstairs, a creaky door being opened, and an “Angel?”
I smiled. “Hi, Rhodes.”
The sound of him on the stairs kept the smile on my face, but when he cleared the top and stopped right at the landing, it went a little bigger, about as big as I could muster.
The corner of Rhodes’s mouth twisted. He was in his uniform, but he must have gone inside his house first, because instead of his winter work jacket, he had on a dark blue parka with a fleece hood. It was pretty chilly outside. “Couldn’t fit your clothes into the suitcase balled up so you’re folding them?”
I gave him a flat look. “I used to wonder if Amos got his sarcasm from his mom, but now I get where it came from, and actually, I was folding them so you wouldn’t go into cardiac arrest if you came up here while I was gone so….”
He walked over and stopped beside the table, his cold bare hand settling on top of my head. He eyed my small stacks of clothes—underwear in one pile, bras in another, mismatched socks over there.
I tipped my chin up and earned myself a rare smile. I swore he was handing them out to me left and right lately, and not like the precious currency they’d once been.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re something else, Buddy,” he said.
I set the T-shirt I’d been in the middle of folding down and squinted. “Can I ask you something?”
“What do you think?”
I groaned. “Why do you call me ‘Buddy’? I’ve never heard you call Am that, or anybody else.”
His eyebrows crept up his forehead at the same time as his mouth stretched into an even more rare, supermoon of a smile. “You don’t know?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“I thought you would,” he replied cryptically, still grinning.
I shook my head. “No idea. I used to think you called me ‘angel’ because you thought that was my name, but now I know you just… whatever.”
Rhodes chuckled, laying a hand on top of the table, the tips of his fingers millimeters from the lace trim of my green underwear. Those gray eyes were totally hung up on them for a moment before he glanced back at me, color rising along his throat as he said, “Because you are one.”
My mouth gaped, and I was pretty sure I was just staring up at him blankly.
One side of his mouth rose a little higher. “Why do you look surprised? You’ve got the sweetest, kindest heart, Buddy.
It wouldn’t matter what you looked like, you’d still be my angel.”
His angel?
Was my chin quivering?
Was that my heart losing its identity for a new one?
Did Rhodes literally just say the nicest thing anyone had ever said about me?
His expression was so fond, so open, all I could do was gape at him as he looked down at me. “You remind me of Buddy the Elf. You’re always smiling. Always trying to make things better. I thought for sure you would get it,” he explained.
My chin was quivering.
And the softest smile swept over his hard face. “Don’t tear up. We have to talk. Have you seen the forecast?”
I blinked and tried to focus, wrapping up that explanation and setting it beside my heart because otherwise I was about to get naked right then and there. “The forecast?” I croaked, trying to think. “You mean because of the storm?”
He nodded, apparently over paying me any more compliments that could make me feel like maybe, just maybe… he might love me.
Because the truth was, I was totally in love with him.
Just looking at him made me happy. Being close to him made me feel calm. Safe. There was nothing about this man that was hesitant or withdrawn. He was quiet, yeah, but it had nothing to do with him holding parts of himself back. I loved how serious he was. How deep his thoughts and actions went.
No one in my life, other than my mom, had made me feel the way he did. Like I could trust them completely. And it was when I’d accepted that—seen it for it what it was—that I’d understood the depth of my feelings.
I was in love with him.
“Yeah,” I confirmed, making sure my mouth was closed and scrubbing under my eyes even though I was pretty sure no tears had actually come out. They’d just hung out right at the rim. “Clara told me, and I looked too when I got home.”
He dipped that chin with its cute cleft. “Your flight is supposed to leave early, isn’t it?”
I confirmed it was, swallowing hard once to make sure I was keeping it together and not blubbering—much less telling him that I was stupid in love with him.
“It’s supposed to drop ten to twelve overnight,” he kept talking, his words careful.
“The plane is supposed to leave at six.”
He didn’t say anything, but those hard, blunt fingers went to my jaw, touching from right behind my ear to the center of my chin and back.
“You think it’s going to get canceled?” I managed to ask, mostly to distract him so that hopefully he’d keep touching my face. He hadn’t been shy about touching my shoulders or my wrist. Sometimes he’d touch my fingers, and I’d swear it was better than anything I did to myself at night in bed.
He did—keep up his touching that was. “I think you should be ready for the possibility it will,” he answered quietly, his lids heavy over his eyes.
“Oh, that would suck, but it’s not like I can do anything about it if it happens. I have—”
Those gray eyes met mine, and he dropped into a crouch at my side, bringing that handsome face and beautiful hair to basically eye level with me. “Come stay at the house with us.”
“Tonight?” I pretty much croaked.
The hand that had been on my throat for all of thirty seconds landed on my thigh. “I’ll drive you in the morning if your flight is still on. You won’t have to walk back and forth across the driveway,” he said, like it was a half-mile walk from the garage apartment to his house.
My own mouth twitched. “Sure.”
Rhodes stood and set that same palm on top of my shoulder. “Want to come over now? I’ll help you carry your things.”
“Sign me up.”
His warm expression fueled my spirit. I really was totally in love with him. But the most surprising part was that the knowledge and acceptance of it brought no terror into my heart. None. Not a fragment of fear. Not a whisper of it.
This knowledge, this feeling, reminded me of concrete in its endurance, in the strength of it. I had told myself a hundred times that I wasn’t afraid of love, that I was ready to move forward, but the future was scary.
But Rhodes had earned every inch of what I felt with his attention, with his patience and overprotectiveness and just… with everything that made him up in general.
Feeling pretty damn ballsy, I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek quickly and then started getting my stuff together. It didn’t take me long to get another change of clothes and pajamas together while Rhodes took the initiative and finished folding my laundry. When we were done, he carried my big suitcase down the stairs, not crying at all about how heavy it was even though I was only leaving for two days, as well as the grocery bag I’d stuffed with my extra clothes for tonight and tomorrow. I had already hidden their presents inside the hallway closet by Amos’s room yesterday when I’d gone over there before work. I had planned on calling them Christmas Day and telling them where to look for their gifts.
We were crossing the driveway when Rhodes carefully said, “This storm is going to be big, sweetheart. Don’t be too disappointed if your flight gets rescheduled, all right?”
“I won’t,” I assured him. Because I really wouldn’t be.
* * *
“Are you sad?” Amos asked the next night as we sat around the table. Rhodes had pulled out a set of dominos an hour earlier, and I’d played one game against him before Am had wandered out of his bedroom and apparently decided he was bored enough to join in too.
“Me?” I asked as I stretched my arms over my head.
“Yeah,” he asked before taking a quick sip of his strawberry soda. “Because your flight got canceled.”
The notification had come in the middle of the night. The beep of the app had woken me up, and I’d rolled over—in Rhodes’s bed, where he’d slept on his side and I’d slept on the other because he’d reminded me about the mice and the possibility of bats again—to find that my flight had been rescheduled from six in the morning to noon. By nine in the morning, it had been rescheduled to three, and by ten thirty, it had been totally canceled.
If I had felt even a little bit disappointed, the way that Rhodes had massaged my nape when I’d given him the news would have made up for all of it.
That and how he’d stripped down to his boxers in front of me before crawling into bed mere inches away, his fingertips brushing mine more than once before we’d fallen asleep.
I wasn’t sure how much longer we were going to be able to sleep in the same bed together—even though it had only happened twice—but I was ready for something. And from the look in his eye, I could tell he was ready for something too. Something deeper than a three-letter word that hung between us even though we had barely kissed each other.
But that was something to ponder over later when Am wasn’t sitting across from us at the table.
“No, it’s okay. As long as you don’t mind me hanging out with you guys….” I trailed off.
He made a face behind his can. “No.”
“Are you sure? Because my feelings won’t be hurt if you just want to hang out with your dad and your mom’s family.”
“No,” he insisted. “It’s fine.”
“It’s fine” from him was pretty much a blessing that I wouldn’t close my eyes to. “Are you two sad your dad had to cancel coming because of the snow?” I asked Rhodes.
Father and son looked at each other.
I hadn’t heard much about Randall Rhodes, but I did know that he had been invited to come over and spend Christmas Eve with them, since he definitely wasn’t invited to the get-together on Amos’s other side of the family, which might also be canceled now depending on road conditions. Personally, I thought it was a small step that the man had called and apologized for not being able to make it. But I was pretty sure I was the only one impressed by it.
He was trying. I thought.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I muttered. “Maybe we can find a scary movie to watch after this?”
That p
erked Am up, and I didn’t miss the slight snort out of Rhodes’s nose at the idea of watching something scary on Christmas Eve. I glanced at him and smiled. His sock-covered foot nudged mine beneath the table. I swore that was better than most kisses I’d gotten over my life.
“Yeah, I guess,” Amos said, also in a way that was pretty much a “hell yeah” from him.
“Do you care?” I asked Rhodes with a hopeful look on my face, fluttering my eyes at him.
The older man side-eyed me. “Quit being cute. What do you think?”
I thought he wouldn’t, and I was right to think so. We all sat around the television and watched Brightburn, and they ignored me when I closed my eyes or pretended to have something really interesting to look at beneath my fingernails. By the time the movie finished though, it was midnight, and I couldn’t wait until morning any longer. We had always celebrated Christmas at midnight—with my mom, at least. That tradition had seemed to be the only one she’d kept from her Venezuelan family.
On the couch, besides Rhodes where I’d watched the whole movie, I scooted forward and asked, “Can I give you two your presents now?”
Am said, “Okay,” at the same time Rhodes asked, “You got us something?”
I eyed Rhodes again. “You saw how much garland I had up in the garage apartment. This can’t surprise you.”
He shrugged, and I believed him. He’d looked genuinely surprised when boxes from his brothers had arrived with Christmas presents for him and Amos. The only box that he hadn’t been too surprised by was the one that had made it from Amos’s parents.
“Of course I got you something. Wait, wait, wait, let me go get it. I love giving presents on Christmas Eve, sorry if this is messing everything up, but I just get so excited. I love Christmas.”
“Your mom celebrated Christmas?” Rhodes asked as I got up.
I shot him a smile. “She probably would have hated how commercialized it is now, but she didn’t back when I was a kid, or if she did, she hid it from me.” I had a lot of fond memories with my mom on that holiday, and just thinking about it made me miss her a lot, but not in a bad or sad way. More grateful that I had those moments to look back on.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 41