Page 94 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

In this moment, the emotional side wins a minor victory. I put down my coffee and walk across the mattress toward her on my knees.

“Look.” I take her disheartened face in both hands and can now truly see what my clumsy way of handling this has done. Her eyes glisten in the half-light. I’ve just made her feel exactly the way she tells herself she should feel—not good enough, not worthy of anyone’s love or affection unless she’s done something to earn it.

She deserves better than being treated like this. I am better than treating her like this. I don’t even want to treat her like this.

“I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I just have to do this meeting in an hour, and I figured you wouldn’t be able to wait here until after that for me to take you home. And it’s too far to walk. And it’s cold. So I thought I should take you now.”

She studies my face, her eyes skimming over every muscle in my expression before halting on my lips.

Then she turns her head away just enough to be able to look back at me from the corner of her eyes. “Really?”

Her unconsciously flirtatious expression tugs my mouth up at the corners. “Yes. Really.”

She shifts her body toward me and rests her hands onmy forearms. “Okay. And I really need to go too, anyway. I have to get to the office at the theater and sort out everything so it’s ready for Divina to take over. I’ve kept putting it off. Maybe because it means I’m really leaving. And that the kids are really going to have Divina inflicted on them in the new year.”

Her expression softens again, and my conviction to back away from the edge of the dangerous Natalie precipice is washed away by her smile.

“You really don’t have to quit and move just to prove the Alaska asshole wrong, you know.” I might have criticized her before for planning this move for the wrong reasons, but this is different—this is about her hopes and dreams and what’s in her soul.

She shrugs. “It’ll be great.”

But her smile is forced. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, and I’m not going to press her.

“Right. And you must have a lot to do to get ready.” Am I just trying to convince myself she’s as busy as I am and neither of us has space in our lives for each other? “Do you have to hunt for somewhere to live in New Orleans too?”

“No, the city has a furnished apartment I can stay in for a month or two until I find my own place. So that makes it easier.” But her voice is still downbeat, not permanently perky like it’s been since I first met her.

My phone pings with a text in my back pocket.

“You should get that.” She seems grateful for the change of subject. “It might be something important.”

“Doubt it.” I inch closer to her on my knees and loop my arms around her waist. “Probably my mom telling me they were robbed of a win in the onboard mini-golf tournamentor something.”

“They seem lovely.” Natalie rests her hands on my shoulders.

“Lucky for me. Because they’re the only ones I have.”

“Not all of us are that lucky.” The heaviness of her heart is evident in her voice.

Yeah, she didn’t exactly win the parent lottery. I’m not sure I’d be able to hold my tongue about that if I ever met them. But what the fuck am I doing thinking about meeting Natalie’s parents? That way madness lies.

“You turned out okay though.” I give her a peck on the end of her nose. “And you have Aunt Lou. And she seems really awesome. I mean a psychiatrist who now runs a retirement home and is mayor—that’s definitely someone to look up to.”

“Oh yes,” Natalie says. “I totally lucked out on the aunt front. My relationship with her is definitely the good thing that came out of my parents having to travel all the time.”

She slides her fingers around my neck and pushes them into the back of my hair, sending a thrilling shiver down my spine.

“I know I never told my parents how hurt I was when they’d keep going away and leaving me behind,” she says. “But I did get the Aunt Lou thing out of it. Whereasyouare getting nothing good out of leaving things unsaid.” She lets her eyebrows complete the rest of her meaning.

“Are you saying I should tell my parents about the whole Christmas thing? And confess that I’ve lied to them about where I am?”

“Just a thought.” She says it like I imagine she’d sow a seed in the mind of a six-year-old about whether they were making a good life decision to eat a family-sized bag of M&M’s for dinner.

“God, no.” I almost recoil at the thought. “They’d be heartbroken.”

Natalie drops her gaze to the space between us, where her chest almost meets mine. “It just seems like it’s kind of”—she pulls one hand out of my hair and strokes the fingers over my beard—“churning around inside you constantly.”

Churning. That’s exactly how it feels. How does she have this way of knowing exactly what’s going on inside me when I haven’t even pinned it down myself?

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