His Holiday Crush

by Cari Z

  It meant more than I could say for Marcus—more of a father figure to me now than my own father ever could be—to tell me he had that kind of faith in me. Not just in my work, but in my decisions. It made the next part a little easier. “Then I think I need to go.”

  Not just for Dominic, as hugely as he factored into my decision. I needed to go back to Edgewood for Hal and the girls, too. But mostly for Dominic.

  What if I just made him uncomfortable, though? What if my coming back was a huge imposition? Moving to Edgewood felt like the right thing to do, in my heart at least, but I didn’t want to make the wrong call again, to screw things up without meaning to.

  I needed to talk to Dominic, and I had to do it face to face. Over the phone wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t plead my case well enough like that, not when the result was something that could change the entire arc of my life.

  “Tell you what,” Marcus said, getting up from the chair. “Why don’t you take an actual vacation for a week and go get your questions answered? I’ll hold off the other partners until you make a final decision.”

  That was more generous than I’d ever hoped for. I rushed to my feet. “Are you sure?”

  “It beats watching you have some kind of nervous breakdown before the age of thirty.”

  That was more like the mentor I knew.

  “I have to…”

  I had to get back to my apartment, I had to pack, and I had to get on the road. If I hurried, I could make it back to Edgewood before midnight, and then…

  “You’ve got to go.” Marcus jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “So get out of here already.”

  I went.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dominic

  A full week had gone by since Max left, but it felt like ten times that. I walked around like a zombie, able to play at being a real person, but not quite animated enough to pull it off. I was grateful things were quiet on the job front, or I would’ve been fired for inattention or some sort of reckless endangerment. I got all of nothing done at my house—I should have finished the drywall; it was the last thing I needed to do in the living room before I could put baseboards up and start texturizing and painting—but I couldn’t even look at my tools without remembering Max. Everything seemed impossible—too big, too hard, too hopeless.

  I was 100 percent moping.

  Hopefully, Hal wasn’t aware of it—he’d gone back to work after Christmas Day with a vengeance, and I spent every spare second I had looking after the girls, who were still on their holiday break. They’d spent most of this past week with Phee, who helped them teach Baby enough basic tricks that the girls were convinced she was a genius dog. I couldn’t say they were wrong, either. With them, she was barky and jumpy and cheerful, but with me, when we had a few moments alone, she settled in against my side on the couch or at my feet and set her head on my knee. It was almost like being back overseas, in the quiet moments in the evening when we were all in the tents together and the dogs, freed from their work personas, flopped down on the nearest person and begged for pets. Those nights were some of my happiest memories—some of my only happy memories—from my time in the army.

  If I couldn’t have Max—and I knew I couldn’t—then a compassionate dog was obviously the next best thing.

  The hardest place to be was patrolling with Lauren. Her eagle eyes and perceptive mind didn’t miss a thing. It was part of what made her such a good cop and an undaunted mom. She could see an SUV run a red light or a kid sneak a candy bar before dinner from a mile off, and there was no way to hide from her when we were separated by nothing but a gear shift for hours on end.

  The sidelong glances were bad enough, and by New Year’s Eve, she finally put her foot down and brought up the topic of my mood. “You’re pining.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, even when my shoulders were practically up to my ears out of defensiveness.

  “You’re pining. You’ve been out of sorts all week, Nicky. What’s going on?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Lauren eyed me speculatively. “Maybe you need to talk about it. I promise not to push if you don’t want me to, but you’re my partner, and I hate seeing you look so sad. We could go to Dinah’s to chat, if that’s easier. I’ll get you some pie.”

  “Oh, no. No way.” If Dinah caught wind of what was going on with me, then everyone in the entire diner would know in a matter of minutes. That meant everyone in the town would know within a few days.

  Lauren twisted in her seat. “How about this? I go in and get some pie, we eat it in the car, and you can tell me what’s up in the privacy of your own Jeep.”

  I half smiled at her. “Sounds like you just want some pie.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I want pie. You think I can keep that kind of thing around the house for more than a day? Work pie is the only kind of pie I don’t have to give away.”

  I considered stonewalling her, but…what good would it do? At least this way, I got some pie, too. “Okay.”

  I drove to Dinah’s, careful on the road. It was almost eleven at night, a time when the diner was usually closed. Dinah was hosting the town’s New Year’s party, though, which meant it would be full of parents with babysitters out enjoying their evening, single people who didn’t think a full Netflix queue was a good enough reason to stay at home, and civil servants who had to be there.

  I parked at the far end of the parking lot and turned off the headlights. Lauren sighed. “Really?”

  “It’s not even snowing,” I pointed out. “And I don’t want to be convenient in case someone decides to come out and ask me how I am.”

  “Yeah, God forbid you interact with someone else in a positive way on New Year’s Eve.” She got out of the Jeep and headed for the diner. I watched her go then stared down at my hands. I didn’t glance at my phone. There was no point. Hal and the girls were undoubtedly in bed now—he’d sent me a picture of them having an “early toast” with glasses of sparkling cider three hours ago—and the one person I was dying to hear from was probably living it up in Times Square.

  He hated that party, though. I knew that. And he hardly ever drank. Or maybe his perspective had changed. Either way, I didn’t want to dwell too hard on Max being either raucously happy or lonely and sad tonight. What could I do about it, after all?

  I mean…I could text him.

  But he might not want to hear from me.

  Although, if I had to pick any night to break the ice, this was the night.

  I groaned. Thinking like this was getting me nowhere.

  I opened up my phone and looked back at our last text conversation. It was the one we’d had before I’d been called out to the accident on the highway, before everything had gotten all fucked up. It was light, it was cute—Jesus, it was so cute, it was full of pictures of the girls trying on fancy clothes and Max wondering why dress-up was so complicated. There was even one of him in there, wearing Marnie’s tiara and puckering his lips for the camera.

  Why had I ever made him think he wasn’t wanted? Why had I ever let him go? I needed to do something—to text, to call… My hand hovered over the phone app, poised for action.

  The door opened in a rush.

  “Damn, it’s cold out there!” Lauren said cheerfully as she got back into the Jeep. I scrambled to put my phone away before she noticed my indecision. “And it turns out the pie’s on hold because of the party, but there’s some killer cake, so I brought you a slice.” She handed me a paper plate and plastic fork topped with a slice of red velvet cake covered with way too much thick, sugary frosting. I scraped some of it off then took a bite.

  “Pretty good,” I admitted once I swallowed it down.

  “Don’t let Dinah hear you call her cake ‘pretty good,’” Lauren warned me.

  “It’s not like I’m saying it in the diner.” />
  “True.” She had her own piece, which was already half eaten, and took another bite of it before continuing. “So. Spill. What’s bothering you?”

  I didn’t have to tell her. I could hold it in and let it fester, and eventually it would fade away until it was just a scar, like an old wound. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I felt it more than ever now—I missed Max, and I wasn’t going to feel right until I told him that. Lauren was a good start.

  “I wish Max were here.”

  Lauren nodded slowly. “I knew it.”

  “We had an argument before he left. And it changed things between us, and that wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want him to be here,” I burst out. “I want him to come back to Edgewood and stay. I want him to be there for the girls and for Hal, but mostly I want him for myself.”

  Lauren whistled. “You’re really hung up on him, aren’t you?”

  “I think I’m in love with him.” My mouth went dry putting that out there, but it was true; that was the fucked-up thing. I was in love with Max, and he wasn’t here, and that was my bad. But it wasn’t impossible that I could fix it. “When he was here, we just…we clicked, we connected. I wanted to see where it could go, but I screwed up, and he went back to New York.”

  “Did you try talking to him? Apologizing?”

  “Of course I did! But he still left.”

  “Maybe he was just overwhelmed and needed time to sort things out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dinah was saying the other day that their delivery guy had seen Max stopping by his father’s place on Christmas. God knows what the man said to him,” she said. “Did you not know this?”

  Oh fuck. I hadn’t known any of that. And why would Max tell me, when I’d just picked a fight and given him the impression I was kicking him out? To think that he’d gone to his father’s after that…and nothing good had come of it, or I wouldn’t have found him alone on an icy trail in the dark.

  God, did he still feel that way? Alone and rejected?

  “I need to talk to him.” I grabbed my phone, intent on calling, but no, that wouldn’t do. “I need to see him. I have to see him. What do I do?”

  “You have a car,” she said.

  I blinked. “Um, yeah.” I gestured around us. “We’re sitting in it.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes. “You have a car, and you have tomorrow and the next day off, and you could go and visit him right now, genius,” she said impatiently. “Especially if you’re worried. Go to him. Text him first if you really feel the need, but nothing says ‘I love you and I’m there for you’ like actually being there for him. Show him that you’re serious.”

  “That’s…” Wow. “Not what I expected to hear from you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lauren scoffed. “I’m a total romantic. I fell in love with Jimmy at first sight. We were married in less than a year. You think we could hold it together with his disabilities and my job and four kids if we weren’t madly in love with each other? No way. You have to go the distance for the people you love. This is your chance.”

  Maybe there was something to this. “You really think so?”

  She tapped the phone so the lock screen lit up. “Oh, look at the time! We’re off in five minutes. I think you should leave me here—Mary already offered me a ride home tonight. You know she lives right down the street from me. Then you should drive home and pack a bag, maybe catch a little sleep if you have to in order to drive safe, and get your ass to New York City on New Year’s Day to tell Max how you feel. I mean, that’s just my two cents.” She shrugged and ate her last bite of cake, scraping every last scrap of frosting off the plate.

  “That was more like five bucks’ worth of opinions.”

  “Bargain for you then, bud.” She gestured at my cake with her fork. “Are you going to finish that?”

  “No.” I offered it to her, and she took it with a smile.

  “So…” She left it hanging.

  “So…” I grinned. “Get a ride home with Mary, because I’m heading out tonight.”

  She grinned back. “Atta boy,” she said and opened the door again. A light snow had started to fall. “Drive safe.”

  “I will.” She shut the door, and I watched her walk back into the diner before checking my phone. It was just a few minutes to midnight. I could get back to my house in fifteen, grab a few things, and—

  “Unit Nine, we have an eleven eighty-two out on Highway 10, repeat, eleven eighty-two. You’re our closest unit. How quickly can you respond?”

  Closest unit, shit. I was their only unit for another…two minutes. Great. At least an eleven eighty-two meant the accident didn’t involve any injuries. “I’m right next to Highway 10,” I said into my radio as I headed out of the parking lot. “How far out are we talking?”

  It must have been a slow night, because dispatch was being downright loquacious. “Just a couple of miles. Poor guy slid off the road, but from the sound of things, he’ll be okay once he’s towed out of the ditch. Probably won’t be able to get a truck there until tomorrow, though. You know how tonight can be.”

  “Yeah.” I turned my Jeep onto Highway 10 and drove, keeping my eyes peeled for headlights off to the side. “What kind of car am I looking for?”

  “Um, some sort of…let me see…a BMW coupe, looks like.”

  I just about drove off the road myself as I fumbled the radio. “Repeat, please.”

  “Black BMW coupe, just the driver to worry about, I’ve got his name here somewhere…”

  Up ahead on the left, a roadside flare illuminated an emergency warning triangle. A little farther down I saw a pair of headlights. One of them was partially covered by snow, but the other one illuminated the silhouette of a man. It was a very familiar silhouette. “Never mind, I’ve got it,” I mumbled before putting the radio away.

  I pulled over on the far side of the road, put my Jeep into park, and took a deep breath. Oh my god. He was here. He came back. And I was making him wait in the cold. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment then grabbed my flashlight and got out. We were separated by only the width of the road. The clouds overhead were clearing, and I could make out Max’s features in the light of the moon. He was smiling.

  “Hey, Dominic,” he called out, tucking his hands in his coat pockets sheepishly. “So, um…this wasn’t how I planned on seeing you.”

  “Are you sure?” I managed, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “Because this is the second time I’ve found you on the side of this road. I’m starting to think you’ve got a thing for being rescued.” I forced myself to take a single step into the road then another. The third came easier, and in a few seconds, I was there, in front of him. Max was dressed for the weather this time, at least, but I still wanted to hold him tight and warm him up.

  “Maybe I do,” he admitted. “But only if it’s you doing the rescuing.”

  “I guess you’re lucky I was working tonight.”

  “I guess so.” He pushed a gloved hand into his hair then grimaced. “Look, I came back because I realized that…being in New York, it isn’t…it hasn’t…”

  I decided to take the plunge and try to make things easier on him. “I’m in love with you.”

  Max blinked.

  And blinked again.

  He looked as stunned as if I’d just walked up and slapped him.

  I hoped my confession was more welcome than that, but I was on a roll now, so I was gonna go with it. “I love you, and I was going to pack a bag and drive to New York City tonight so I could tell you that I love you in the morning. Things got weird before, and then they got weirder because we didn’t talk, not really, but I wish we had. I want us to talk about the good things and the hard things. I want us to talk, the next time we argue about something. I want to fight it out with you, an
d then I want to kiss you and make up, because I have never been a sadder excuse for a person than I was this last week, and that includes the week I spent at Walter Reed recovering from tour.”

  “Oh.”

  My heart was about to beat out of my chest, and that was the best he could do? “I’m kind of looking for a little more specificity than that,” I said haltingly. “Do—do you want me to back off, do you want to call Hal, do you want me to—”

  Before I could say another word, Max reached out, grabbed my jacket, and pulled me into a kiss. It was a cold, awkward kiss—our noses were freezing, his lips were chapped, and my mouth must have tasted like too-sugary frosting. But damn. It was still the best kiss I’d ever had. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer, warming him as best I could, welcoming him against my body. He could stay there forever, as far as I was concerned.

  Finally, Max pulled back, though, just far enough to catch his breath and say, “I came back because I missed you too much to stay away. I’m not happy in New York anymore, and once I finish the case I’m working on, I want…I want to make a new future for myself. A new life. And I want you in it.” He chuckled. “I want to move back to the weird, codependent town where the mayor dresses like a beaver and news travels at light speed in the diner and my own father doesn’t recognize me.”

  That last part sucked, and we’d be talking about it soon enough, but first… “And where there are people who love you,” I said. “Hal and the girls and me. Especially me.”

  Max smiled again and kissed me gently. “I love you, too, Dominic.”

  Oh, Jesus. It was like a huge weight had lifted off my chest. I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him again and again, until the sharp beep of a horn as a truck drove by on the road reminded me that, technically, I was still on the job for at least another—

  Bedoopadoop. Bedoopadoop. I reached into my pocket and silenced my phone’s alarm, reminding me that it was finally midnight.