Page 86 of All I Want For Christmas

He nodded, following that, but saying nothing.

“I used to beg them to go on trips,” she continued. “I wanted to see the mountains, and the desert, and the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to see ranches, and beach cottages, and big old mansions in the south. The Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, the Vegas strip. All of the iconic places across the country that my books talked about. Hell, that tv shows and movies talked about.”

She paused and took a deep breath. Their fingers were interlaced, and he felt her fingers curl against his.

“But they never wanted to,” she said. “They didn’t understand why we would ever need to leave New York. Our own city had everything every other place had and had it bigger and better.” She shrugged. “So I never got to travel. And when I got older and understood just how elitist and strange that was, I started to get frustrated. I asked ifIcould go. Go on trips with friends. Spend spring break somewhere else. Or go to camp. Or get a job or an internship for the summer somewhere else. But I always got the same answer. Why would I ever want or need to leave New York City?”

That did sound strange to him, but Theo just stroked his thumb over the back of her knuckles, hoping she’d go on. He loved having a little insight into this woman. He completely understood how that situation alone would make her want to travel extensively. He just didn’t get how it fed into her anxiety.

Savannah was staring straight ahead. But she did continue. “Finally, one night after a particularly loud and long argument when I was about sixteen, my mother finally confessed that she had a horrible fear of flying. She had been on a flight as a kidthat had crash landed. No one died, but, of course, she’d been traumatized and hadn’t been able to fly since.And my mother’s anxiety aboutherflying extended to my sister and me flying. She just couldn’t handle the idea. It was the entire reason we lived in New York City. So that she and my dad and me and my sister could have anything and everything we could ever want and need without having to ever fly anywhere else.” She sighed. “They were also upset because I was being ungrateful for that, thinking there were all these other, better places.”

“But you weren’t saying that you thought other places werebetter. They’re just different. You just wanted a whole, varied experience.”

She looked over at him quickly. He glanced at her again.

“Yes. Exactly,” she said.

He nodded. “That makes total sense. Wanting a piece of pumpkin pie once in a while and finding it fucking delicious doesn’t mean that blackberry pie won’t always be your favorite.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Savannah laughed.

He looked over with a grin. “What? I’m right. And it’s the same thing. Basically.”

She nodded, grinning. “You’ve got a point. I never thought of it that way. But…yeah.”

He smiled. He’d made her laugh. Fuck, that felt good.

But he felt for her whole family. That was all a lot more serious than pie, of course.

He’d never been on a plane himself, but he wasn’t afraid of it. He just didn’t want to. And he couldn’t imagine being involved in a fucking plane crash. Jesus.

Savannah sighed softly and continued her story, looking around as they came to a wider, more even dirt road that ran perpendicular to the trail he’d cut through the grass. There was still only grass and weeds to see, but there were trees off in the distance along the horizon.

He turned his truck to the right.

“So, yeah…I felt like shit after learning what my mom had been through. But after that it seemed to just add to my feelings of being stuck. Icouldn’task for us to go anywhere after that because who does that? My momcouldn’tfly. And for the next couple of years, I felt resentful too. Finally, when it was time to apply to colleges, I applied to all the local ones, but also toseveralfar away. I chose LSU because it was far away and because the culture would becompletelyunlike New York.” She shook her head. “My parents were furious. They refused to pay my tuition for any school outside of New York. I got some scholarships, and my grandmother—my father’s mother—stepped in and paid the rest, but my parents never came to visit, would not pay for plane tickets home for me to visit, nothing. My mother got sick every time I got on a plane to go home for holidays, so I stopped going more than once a year or so. I even lied to my friends sometimes and told them my parents were skiing or in Europe for the holidays, so they didn’t think it was weird I wasn’t going home. It’s all been pretty awful.”

Damn. He squeezed her hand. “So you felt kind of stuck in Louisiana, too,” Theo guessed.

She shrugged. “Yes and no. Like I know that I’m not physically stuck here. Icanfly to other places, I can drive, I can get on a train. But the idea that my mother doesn’t want me to does mess with me emotionally. And that if I go home, she’ll worry about how I got there and how I’m getting back.” She sighed again. “It’s kind of terrible. And I felt bad putting my grandmother in the middle, so I didn’t want to ask her for money all the time, and I didn’t have a lot of extra spending money to be flying all over, so I still haven’t traveled much. It’s why I wanted a job that would have me travel as a part of the responsibilities. It’s paid for, and I can rationalize it by saying Ihaveto.”

“Is your mom what kept you from actually becoming an airline attendant?”

She looked over at him. “How did you know I thought about becoming an airline attendant?”

He shrugged. Dammit. She was going to figure out quickly that he was a little obsessed with her if he wasn’t careful. “I overheard you talking about it at Ellie’s one time.”

“Oh.” Then she nodded. “Yeah. I thought that would be perfect, but that would havekilledmy mother. I would have had to lie to her about my job, and it all gets so exhausting as it is.”

“It sounds like a lot.”

“It is. I hate feeling guilty about wanting to travel, I feel bad for my mom, but I hate feeling like Ican’tdo something because of how it makes her feel. And then I feel bad for not wanting to protect her.”

They finally made it to the main road. It was still dirt, but two trucks could pass one another here and there weren’t dips and holes that would rattle your teeth. There was a big wooden sign that had AUTRE painted in bright green letters with an arrow pointing to the right.

There. That would show her that not only was it possible to get back to civilization from where the cabins sat, but it was easy as well.

Theo put the truck into park and turned on his seat. “You shouldn’t have to protect her.”

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