Page 3 of The Christmas List

The love that I’ve never gotten over.

And I am not at all prepared to see him for the first time since he left all those years ago. Or at least… my heart isn’t. Of course I’d see him with my end-of-day hair a mess, light-up antlers, and a glitter reindeer skirt.

“Josie?” he whispers thickly. His deep, raspy voice has gone breathless in shock, sounding nothing like the boy I remember.

Nothingabout him is like the boy I once knew. In his place is a tall, broad-shouldered, devastatingly handsomeman.The kind of man that would make my heart race on a regular day, even without the fact that he’s… Wyatt.MyWyatt.

Or at least he was once upon a time.

I swallow, inhaling a breath as I try to remain calm. “W-Wyatt.”

He stares back, evident disbelief flickering in his whiskey eyes that I could never forget, even when I tried.

I’ve done my best over the last eight years to protect my heart after he broke it, which means that I haven’t looked him up on social media or even asked his grandparents or his high school friends how he was when I saw them around town. I’ve done my best to pretend that he didn’t exist at all.

When he left… I was devastated. I wondered so many times if you could actually die of a broken heart. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. I thought Wyatt and I would be together forever, and looking back, I realize I was just young and naïve.

God, is this really happening? Is Wyatt Owens actually standing in my classroom right now?

“You’re… Lucy’s teacher?” he asks, as if the answer isn’t already obvious, heady surprise hanging heavily in his words. He holds my gaze as I walk closer until I’m standing in front of the doorway where they’re standing.

Clearly, he’s as taken aback as I am by this new development.

I nod as I roll my lips together. “I am. She’s such a sweetheart. I really love having her in my class.”

My gaze drops to the bright-faced little girl currently wrapped around his legs, her gaze bouncing between the two of us curiously. I give her a small smile, and her green eyes twinkle.

I didn’t even know that Wyatt had a child, let alone a five-year-old, but now that he’s standing here with Lucy, I can see the uncanny resemblance between them.

His dark blond hair is unruly, the locks mussed as if he’s run his hands through it for most of the day. I can almost recall what it felt like to tangle my fingers in that hair, and my heart stutters in my chest.

He feels so familiar, my heart calling to his in a way that it once used to, but also completely different. I never knew it was possible to experience both feelings at once.

“You look?—”

“It’s go?—”

Our sentences run together in a string of syllables when we both speak at once, and Wyatt laughs, low and gravelly in a way that shouldn’t have my stomach fluttering the way that it is.

He’s always had that effect on me, and I guess some things never change.

Lucy tugs at the bottom of his T-shirt, and he looks down at his daughter, giving me a moment to unabashedly drink him in.

My gaze drops to the large work boots on his feet, slightly caked with dried mud and grass, and slowly moves up to the tight, dark jeans that are molded over his thick thighs. Then, higher to the mud-stained burgundy T-shirt beneath a thick, khaki-colored Carhartt jacket. I take in his wide shoulders and the strong column of his throat, which is covered by a short beard that’s slightly darker than the honey-colored hair on his head.

When I finally get to his eyes, I find them on me, the corner of his full lips curved into a lazy smirk.

Crap.

My face immediately heats, bleeding down my neck as I clear my throat and force my gaze to anywhere but where he’s standing.

“It’s good to see you, Josie. You look… amazing,” he says quietly, and my gaze snaps to his. His dark, bourbon-colored eyes seem to burn into me, and I nod, plastering on a small smile. Even though my stomach feels as if it’s doing Olympic somersaults inside of me.

“It’s great to see you too. I-I… didn’t know you were back in town.”

His chin lifts in a slight nod. “Yeah. Papa fell a few weeks ago and broke his hip. Even before that, he’d been having trouble keeping up at the ranch lately, so decided it was timefor me to move back home to help out. It worked out perfectly because there’s nowhere I’d rather raise Luce than in Strawberry Hollow.”

I nod. “That’s good. I mean, that you’re helping him out—obviously not that he broke his hip. Will your wife be coming by this week to meet me?”

---