Page 55 of Love Letters to Christmas

“Is it really, though?”

“It takes a while to start feeling safe again.”

So people keep telling me.Time. It all takestime.

Right now, I only feel safe with him, and even then, I’m too scared to tell him everything going on in my head and my heart. Because he doesn’t need this kind of garbage. Because he’s already doing more than enough for me. “I’ll be okay,” I say. “It’s just taking time. I think, probably, on a diagnosable level, I have anxiety.”

“What would you like to do about it?” he asks.

I press my lips together. “What do you mean?”

“Therapy, drugs, suffering. Which suits you best?”

Suffering. Yes. That one. Entirely that one. I don’t think anything I’ve gone through is quite terrible enough to warrant therapy, and drugs are absolutely off the table, because if it’s not even bad enough to talk about, it’s definitely not bad enough for prescriptions. All the same,sufferingdoesn’t feel like the correct answer, so I merely stare at Brian with my mouth hanging open.

“You’re allowed to answer honestly,” he says.

“Am I?”

“Always.”

“It seems wrong to say I’m not planning to do anything about it.”

His brows rise. “Not doing anything about it wasn’t one of the options I gave.”

“Isn’t that what suffering means?”

He flicks the white pompom at the end of the Santa hat. “Nope. You’ll either suffer yourself to improvement, or you’ll suffer yourself to a different decision. People don’t stand still, even when it feels like they do. Even against our will, we’re always going somewhere, always learning and discovering. It’s a beautiful part of the human experience. You know, thehumanpart. It’s the unique reality that when we’re uncomfortable—” He cuts his attention down my outfit, which was supposed to be an elf one, then he lets his eyes close. “—we change.”

It becomes slightly hard to breathe, but for a reason entirely apart from my out-of-control nerves. Fighting to grasp the calm Brian offers, I say, “Is that why you left Bandera? Did something make you need a change?”

He exhales a brief laugh and kicks off the wall. “Something like that, I suppose. I wasn’tuncomfortable, per se, with Bandera. I was uncomfortable with the situation that my presence incited.”

“What situation?”

He glances at me. “Too many heirs.”

I blink.

He lifts a finger to his lips. “But that’s a secret I’ve never told anyone before, so make sure it stays just between us, all right?”

I…nod. Because I completely do not know what he means in the slightest, and a secret I don’t even understand is not exactly one I can share.

Chapter Twenty

Progress is progress.

Amelia

I’m not sure I’m old enough to view this image.

Face scalding, I stare at my phone, at Brian’s feed, a place I haven’t been for a little while considering I’ve been living with the man himself…but I am weak. And you may consider this yet another regression.

“Good picture, isn’t it?” Brian asks, suddenly behind me, and so I do what any sane woman would.

I scream bloody murder, throw my phone across the room, and fall off the couch.

Panicked and on the floor, I hold my shaking self up on my arms and look up at Brian, who wassupposedto be shopping. “You’re supposed to be shopping,” I inform him, breathlessly.

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