Page 12 of Accidentally Under Your Tree

Seven nights Before Christmas

"The marriage didn't last as long as the wedding planning." It was my canned remark anytime the subject of past relationships came up. First dates and podcast interviews received it well. It brushed over the worst year and a half of my life and made people comfortable. No one ever responded with,"I'm sorry."Or,"That must have been so hard."Information was received in the manner it was delivered. I didn't seem bothered, so neither were they.

"Hmm." Lizzy considered me. A mahogany ring circled the outside of her brown eyes, an endless circle for me to spiral into.

Before she could say something I didn't have an automatic script for, I asked, "What about you?"

"I had a live-in boyfriend for four years, but when I lost my job, he told me he didn't want to support me while I built my business. I moved in with my parents instead. We didn't last a month in different cities."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not." She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. "At the time, there’d been so much that needed changing in my life. Broken systems. I should have seen it."

I took a sip from the beer I'd just ordered. The power had restored about forty minutes ago. Neither of us were in a hurry to leave for our rooms. I'd sit there all night if she'd just keep inching her knee a little closer to mine. The anticipation of contact was giving me more of a buzz than the alcohol.

She chewed on her plump lower lip, and my brain fizzled offline. "I can't believe I just told you that."

"Why?"

"I don't think I've told my best friend that."

"Why are you telling me?"

She held my gaze. Her lips were always slightly parted—soft, inviting. The opposite of her icy demeanor. It slowly thawed, and I slipped into the warmth she had just underneath.

I leaned toward her and breathed in the citrus scent of her perfume to hear her airy whisper, "It's probably the stranger in the dark of it all. It feels safe to tell you…things."

Looking over my shoulder, I took in the empty bar. "Not that dark, anymore."

The muscles in her throat flexed. Her words sounded squeezed as she spoke to the straw pinched between her fingertips. "Not much of a stranger anymore."

I rubbed my chest, trying to reach the ache her little vulnerability had put there.

She twirled the straw, tapping it on the bar-top. Her knee bounced near mine. The pink of her cheeks deepened and seeped to the skin of her neck. "I should probably call it a night."

"I should too."

She hesitated to meet my eyes, but when she did, the surrounding air filled with something different. Molecules shifted and adjusted. Energy crackled in the new chemistry. Realizing I'd paused with my beer halfway to my mouth, I lowered it back to the bar.

"I feel…" she trailed off.

I gripped the back of her stool, my hand close enough to feel the heat of her body. The desire to touch her was too much. She had a pull, a magnetism, a gravity. I wanted to sink into the curve of her neck. I could surrender to this attraction. Give in to the tug of her presence, a tightening string wrapping around her finger. It'd been there since the moment I'd sat next to her. The call of her body to mine was a whisper tickling my ear.

"What?" I nearly growled.

"Naked."

She didn't mean undressed. She meant emotionally bare. Exposed. I knew that. But my cock didn't.

I was hard as iron at just the insinuation of this beautiful, intelligent, and guarded woman stripped down. This woman whose last name I didn't know. But I knew the way she blushed when I complimented her on her entrepreneurship. Or how she smiled and rolled her eyes when she told me about her best friend.

I knew like I knew that I needed oxygen to breathe that I needed to know her.

Clearing my throat, I asked, "Would you feel better if I told you something I don't normally talk about?"

"If you want to." She exhaled a sigh. "Yeah."

I shifted, my sweater suddenly feeling tight. "I… My marriage was the worst time in my life and the divorce was a relief." There was a wrinkle in my beer's label, I couldn't smooth out. "She's a good person, and I think I am, too. But we were toxic together. We kept fucking everything up."

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