Page 14 of Havoc's Fox

“Yes, but, I mean, if you’d actually written him off, it wouldn’t bother you anymore. You know?”

“No, I don’t. Once somebody hurts you, you never forget.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one. But once you truly don’t care anymore, you become completely disinterested. You’re not disinterested.”

She sat quietly for a while, so long in fact that Christian flipped the channel to the standard favorite holiday channel of all females far and wide.

“Still a sucker for the Hallmark Channel?” he asked with a grin.

“Are you?” she asked.

“You know it.”

They watched the movie for a while before out of nowhere she started talking again. “I’m fine for months on end, I don’t even think of him. I mean, not at all. Then suddenly a flash of his smile. The sound of his laughter, the way he says my name will emerge from my memories and I’m suffocating. It’s overwhelming, and it takes all I have to pull myself above the waves to even try to breathe again. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Then don’t do anything.”

She looked his way questioningly.

“I mean it. Don’t do anything. Instead, surf it. Don’t try to fight against the waves. Surf across the memories that are trying to drown you, make friends with them, try to pick out the good times and remember those. Eventually, maybe the bad stuff will stop overwhelming you. Maybe you’ll train yourself not to even think of it.”

“You really think that’ll work?”

“One thing’s for sure… you’ve never addressed the betrayal, you’ve never processed it, or you wouldn’t react like it just happened every time just the thought of him crosses your mind.”

“I have pretty much shoved it down deep and ignored it.”

“See? I’m not just a pretty face, I kind of actually might know what I’m talking about.”

“Read it in a textbook?” she asked.

Christian barked out a laugh. “Something like that,” he said evasively as the credits for the end of the movie they’d watched began to roll across the screen.

As the new one started, “Oh, I like this one!” they both exclaimed at the same time as a movie about Christmas and love in Norway began to play.

“You’re still the romantic,” Analise said.

“I won’t even try to deny it.”

“I can’t wait to find out who your mate is. She’s going to be a very lucky woman.”

His mind went to the new girl next door, Addie and he smiled softly. “I might have one, you never know.”

“You do. And she and I will be great friends. We have to be, you’re my bestie, and my Hallmark binge watching bud. I’m not willing to give that up.”

“Nobody else I know runs up an eight-hundred-dollar phone bill watching Hallmark together long-distance,” Christian said.

“You love it,” she said, tossing a piece of toffee-covered popcorn at him.

“I do indeed value those nights. Best friends and insomnia… what more do you need?”

“Well, Fiddle-Faddle, and bourbon, obviously,” she said. “Which, by the way, where is my bourbon?”

“Coming right up,” Christian said, tossing his piece of popcorn at Analise on his way to the kitchen. “Hey, you want some pâté?”

“Oooo, you have some?”

“I do. Brandt and Tempest left it — I think.”

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