Page 6 of Christmas With the Convict

Her perfect life will splinter because of me. It’ll shatter and leave her in pieces that she won’t know how to pick up. If I don’t leave now, I’ll ruin her.

Wendy reaches across the seat and takes my hand.

I let her. I let her loop her fingers in mine, and I wonder how a person could grow to be so soft.

“Everything is going to be alright, Chase.”

Something pangs in my heart.

It’s so intense, so overwhelming that I have to look away. I can feel the tears behind my eyes, begging to be free.

No one has ever told me that before… and if they had, I would have called it a lie.

But I believe her.

I let myself believe her.

I keep quiet as she drives. I allow this to continue.

Because I’ve been thinking about her touch since the first time I laid eyes on her, and I can’t let her slip away now that her fingers are locked in mine.

My journal is on my lap, filled with all the words I wrote because of her.

If she read them all, she’d stop the car, throw me out, and forget all about me…

The sun is setting when we reach Aspen County and stop to get chains on the tires. It’s night as we roll through the village at the foot of Aspen Snowmass, the main resort for wealthy tourists and Colorado elites.

I’m sure not everyone who skis here is rich. Wendy’s family falls snuggly into theliving on another planetcategory. We turn onto a path that splits off from the resort, hugging the mountainside as the trees grow thick around us.

“Didn’t we pass the cabins?” I ask, craning my neck to look behind us. We’re leaving all the warm lights of the resort behind us.

“The cabins at the main resort are rentals and time-shares,” Wendy says, bouncing in her seat as we power through the unplowed road. “Hold on tight!”

Wendy drives this dark road like she owns it.

And soon, new lights come into view. The tire tracks ahead of us pierce out into a wide clearing, branching off toward a dozen massive two-story cabins. They’re twinkling like Christmas-colored campfires.

It’s like a dream.

“Thisis where you spend your holidays?” I ask, holding the handle above the door as the car dips in the snow. “Just how rich are you? Does your family own all these cabins?”

“Don’t be silly,” Wendy laughs, pulling us up behind a line of trucks and SUVs crowding a wide, shoveled driveway. She stops the car and stretches, already getting her bare feet back in those heels. I resist the urge to watch her fingers work the clasp around her ankles. “This is ours. Bettencourt Bungalow.”

“Bungalow?” There must be ten rooms in this place… “Wouldn’tmansionbe a better word?”

“My dad’s idea of a joke.”

Suddenly, I don’t want to leave the confined space of the front seat. My mind even flashes back to my cell, six by eight feet of gray. I knew what each day would bring behind those bars. If I step out of this car, I’m not sure what I’ll find waiting for me in this world I’m not welcome in.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“Chase.” Wendy turns in her seat and puts her hand on my leg. She really needs to stop touching me like that… “You belong here, alright?”

Those blue eyes calm me in a frightening way. Her gaze is opium, and I’m addicted.

“You really don’t know how wrong you are.”

The double doors of the home open. Out comes a man with slick silver hair and a perfect smile. Two kids no taller than his waist run past him.

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