Page 74 of Texting My Secret Santa

The cops take Derek and his goons away.

On the way home in the car, Mom mutters from the backseat, “That was beautiful, Asher.”

“It really was,” Holly murmurs.

She sounds less carefree than Mom. I’m sure she knows by now everything I said can only ever exist in a hypothetical world that has already ended. The snow globe has shattered. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell Dan I’m leaving.

It’s like Holly reads my mind. She touches my hand. “We’ve got the rest of the night. That’s more than some people will ever have.”

I hold her in bed, listening to her sleeping breaths, determined to stay awake all night. I’m like a kid who wants to hear Santa sneaking down the chimney, except I’m not waiting for my gift. She’s here, in my arms.

I kiss the top of her head. Her breath hitches.

A smirk touches my lips. “Are you pretending to be asleep?”

“I can’t stop thinking about that speech,” she says quietly.

I chuckle in the dead of the night, safe knowing that Derek and his idiot buddies are in cells to sober up. With the morning seeming a long way off, it’s surprisingly easy to laugh, even if it’s another betrayal.

“It wasn’t aspeech.”

She sits up, her hand over my heart, looking me in the eye. “It was. I’m never going to forget it.”

“We’ll have to soon,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “Even when you … I won’t forget it.”

“When I go. You can say it.”

“I can’t. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Something special happened this Christmas,” I whisper, tenderly stroking my hand over her cheek and hair. “When I came home and saw you, I didn’t believe you were the same little Tarantino I’d left behind. You’ve changed me, Snowflake, in our short time together. But soon, I’ll go back to the way I was.”

“Maybe this—us—maybe it’s made you more emotionally available. You said I melted your snow.”

“I did?”

“You texted it,” she says with a grin.

“It’s easier to be cheesy over text.”

She laughs sweetly. “Tell me about it, but maybe I’vemeltedyou now.” She playfully tickles me. “You’ll be able to move on?—”

“No,” I cut in. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think about it. There’s no moving on from you. Tomorrow, I freeze up again. How’s that for cheesy?”

She laughs as I tickle her. We roll over, and then my lips find hers. She sighs and slides her hands over my neck, down my back, under my shirt. I groan as my body responds to her touch, my cock thickening, precome kissing my end already.

She shifts her body against mine and wraps her legs around me, her heat grinding against my member through our clothes. I should stop. Letting her go will be much more difficult if we cross this threshold.

I can’t.

Instead, I slide my hand up her thick thigh and press my touch between her legs. She gasps, staring wide-eyed at me. A laughescapes her, but this one is breathy. “Have you been watching me this whole time? Don’t you close your eyes when we kiss?”

“I don’t want to miss a single moment,” I utter.

She lets her head fall back, presenting her neck. I kiss her tender skin, rubbing her folds through her clothes.

“I want this,” she whispers. “I want us. Don’t think about tomorrow.”

---