Page 86 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“Do you see me rushing off?”

He chuckles and makes a resigned nod. “Do you have siblings?”

“No, why? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because only someone else who’s an only child might get it.”

“You mean you’ve never explained this to anyone before?”

He sucks on his lips and shakes his head.

Holy shit. Is Gabe Woods about to tell me a secret? His Christmas-hating secret?

“You can trust me. I won’t betray you like the asshole ex and asshole agent did.”

He reaches up to cup my cheek. “I know.”

I lean into his hand. The surety in his voice, the tone that says he knows that to be true, that the man who no longer trusts anyone trusts me, makes me feel twenty feet tall.

“I’ve dreaded Christmas since Iwas a kid,” he says.

As someone who has only ever skipped toward it with my arms wide open, hoping to scoop up all its delicious Christmassyness, it’s hard to comprehend someone actually dreading it. I channel my inner Aunt Lou and rack my brain for possible reasons.

“Why the dread? Did you lose someone important at Christmas, or something like that? Something that tainted it for you forever?”

“No.” His head flops forward. “And now that you’ve said that, this will sound even more pathetic than it was already going to.”

I take hold of one of those solid biceps with one hand and tip his bristly chin up to look at me with the other. “I promise that whatever you say won’t sound pathetic.”

“Nah. It doesn’t matter.”

Dammit, I’m not letting him shut down on me, not just when we were right on the brink.

Grabbing his upper arms, I shake him as much as I can. It sends him off-balance, and he has to put a hand on the floor behind him to stop himself from toppling backward.

“Just tell me, you great idiot.”

“Please don’t ever become a therapist.”

“If you’re not going to tell me, there’s no point in me being here. I might as well head home.”

The second I stand up he hooks his fingers in the belt loops of my jeans and yanks me back down to sitting.

“Okay, okay. I dreaded Christmas morning because I knew I would have a giant pile of presents.” The words come out in one rush, almost blurring together, as if giving himself no option to back out of the sentence.

I don’t know what answer I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t that.

“That doesn’t sound like a thing most kids would dread.” I can hear the puzzlement in my own voice.

“Yeah, well, I knew my parents couldn’t afford them.”

“Ah. So you’d have preferred they paid the bills rather than get you the new Death Star Lego or whatever.”

He nods.

“Did you ever explain that to them?”

“I tried. But they’d just brush it off like I couldn’t possibly mean it ’cause I was just a kid and all kids want as many presents as possible.” His eyes meet mine, a natural connection zaps between us and, in an instant, I’m sure he knows I get it.

---