Page 59 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

And it was a terrifying one. Something she didn’t know what to do with right then. Something so deep that she knew she couldn’t simply say it.

Because the problem with love was that it could be very real, and still not be enough.

At one time her mother had loved her father, that much she was certain of.

But she had folded herself into a life that she apparently hadn’t wanted.

And slowly, very slowly, everything had degraded over time.

She had betrayed the man that she once loved, because she was still searching for something else. It scared her. That realization.

That you could think you wanted something, and be so very, very wrong.

And it reminded her again of that feeling of being adrift. That feeling of being evolved. Like a creature who used to be at home entirely in the water, and had learned to walk on land, but still craved the sea. An amphibian. Not really one or the other. She wondered if that was love. Finding yourself trapped in the middle of two worlds, never being able to fully inhabit either anymore. That was the scary thing. That the change was the sort that left her destined to be unsatisfied.

He wanted to live with her half the time. He wanted to allow her a chance to go back home. To raise their child in a small town.

Being away from him she would never feel whole.

Being entirely away from Holiday House, she would never be whole.

That was the bargain that she had made.

It was the impossibility of loving him. Or maybe of loving altogether. A series of compromises that left you only ever half alive.

“You are thinking,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

“You don’t need to stop.”

“I probably should.”

She kissed his neck, and scooted to the side just a bit. He lay down next to her. “Maybe we should get a Christmas tree,” he said.

“It is eleven thirty on Christmas Eve.”

“I’m a billionaire.”

No sooner had he said that than he was on his phone. And a record thirty minutes later, a Christmas tree was being placed in the center of the penthouse.

Pre-lit and glowing.

The delivery crew had left behind a box of ornaments.

“We should decorate it,” he said.

Oh, yes. She loved him. Looking at him as he said that, with absolute earnestness, she was certain.

You can find a way. Just maybe.But still, she didn’t speak of love out loud. Instead, she looked at him, at the Christmas lights reflected in his eyes as he hung the ornaments up on the tree, and she hoped.

As a child, she had a life that had seemed perfect.

But it hadn’t been real.

It hadn’t been real.

But this was. That much she knew. If she never knew anything else, then she knew that.

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