Warm green eyes find me as he pulls away. “There,” he murmurs. “Now we’re safe. We’ve already kissed under this one, so I’m free to put it up.”

He… I…What?

Merry, he hums along to the Christmas music and finds the perfect place to hang the mistletoe, as though he has not left me traumatised or anything. Shaky, I look down at the decorative envelope and find my lip tint glazing the paper in a smudged kiss mark.

Heat explodes in my face.

Oblivious, Brian retrieves the eggnog cookies from the top oven, checks on the roast in the bottom one, and calls out, “Ten minutes until dinner break for all my busy little elves.”

I have ten minutes to stop floating and pull myself together.

Dazed, I set the letter upon a tree bough, adjust it so its seal is perfectly presented, and lose myself watching Brian set out an assortment of snowglobes down the center of the dining room table.

He stuffs more fake snow around their bases, then fluffs it.

Our eyes meet.

My heart launches itself to the North Pole.

Something sly slips into his smile a second before it’s gone, the look so brief I barely know whether I really saw it or not. He plants his hands on his hips, beholds the beautiful chaos, and says, “Perfect.”

Perfect.

Even with flecks of white peppering the floor and chairs, it’sperfect.

I cannot express how much being here is like breathing for the first time, despite how often Brian manages to take my breath away. The freedoms afforded to me, the care presented, the consistent behavior, it’s all so much more than I could have ever dreamed of.

Right now, when Brian is refusing to let me do anything to contribute, he still makes me feel like I have worth. Right now, when thepointis that I am useless to him, he still makes me feel like he values my company.

He treats me like a person.

I don’t think I ever completely realized how my parents never even granted me that much. To them, I was extra labor, extra income, extra emotional support. Being here, now, I do not understand how anyone can survive in so much anger and negativityall the time.

It’s exhausting. It makes you irritable. It fuels its own awful cycle.

Being here, now, I pity them. I pity them and mourn what could have been.

“Whatcha thinking about, A-mail-ia?” Brian asks when he places our dinner on the counter and swipes a cookie off the stove.

Christmas music swells. I take in my home. It bursts with life, character, joy. Peace infiltrates my bloodstream, and I say, “I’m grateful. For everything.”

Brian laughs, offering me a cookie. “Well, of course you are, silly. You tell me that every day.”

My stomach tightens, and I flinch before I can take the offered cookie. “I don’t, though. I don’t tell you nearly as much as I should. After everything you’ve done for me—”

He mutes me with the cookie. “You tell me when you smile. When you do everything in your power to fight me on not letting you help out. When you hum along to the songs I play in the car on our way to work. When you laugh. Gratitude pours out of your actions every day, A-mail-ia. Just because your head voice has been trained to tell you horrible things doesn’t mean that what it says is true. You’ve been lied to constantly, so now you lie to yourself. But I know you’re grateful. I see it in your character.”

A tear slips down my cheek as I take the cookie.

He swipes the drop off with his thumb and wipes it on his sweater vest. “Is it good?” he asks while I chew.

I can only nod as I sniffle.

“Excellent.” He touches his fingertips to his lips and turns to get plates out of the cabinet, murmuring, “Dessert first usually is.”

Before I can decode if that means something, he’s humming along to “Jingle Bells” and dishing out our roast.

Chapter Twenty-six