Page 113 of Merry Me
I laughed under my breath. “I kind of want to, though.”
Her mouth curved. “Well…you’re off to a decent start.”
“Excuse you,” I said, scandalized. “I risked a lifetime ban from wedding vendors everywhere for hijacking this sleigh. I deserve chocolate. And possibly a statue.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Dasher.”
She laughed again, and it wrapped around my ribs and settled there. Easy. Warm. Real.
We rode in silence for a few beats, the soft clop of hooves on snow the only sound between us.
And then she said, “You didn’t change into someone better, Easton.”
I looked over at her, my brows tugging in question.
“You were already perfect,” she said, her voice steady. “I just wasn’t ready to believe someone could love me like that…without it falling apart.”
My chest pulled tight.
“I kept waiting for it to break,” she added softly. “And when it didn’t…I broke it myself.”
I squeezed her hand, my thumb brushing over her knuckles. “But now?”
She glanced at me, a smile flickering at the corners of hermouth, quiet and sure. “Now I want to see what it looks like when I don’t run.”
Natalie toyed with the edge of her scarf, not nervously this time—just distracted, thoughtful. Her gaze flicked to the snow-laced trees ahead, then back to me with a smile that tugged something deep in my chest.
“I’ve watched all your movies,” she said casually, like it wasn’t a confession. Like it didn’t mean everything.
I tilted my head, grinning. “Even the one with the talking dog?”
She laughed. “Especially that one.”
That sound—fuck, I’d missed it. Laughter that cracked something open in us both. Easy and unguarded.
“I always told myself it was just curiosity,” she added. “But it wasn’t. I missed your voice. Your face. Even when it wasn’t really you up there.”
That stopped me. My grip tightened slightly on the reins, not from nerves—just the force of feeling everything at once.
“I kept thinking,” she said, a little softer now, “that you looked like you were trying to be okay. Like you had everything you were supposed to want…but you were still missing something.”
“You,” I said simply.
Her eyes met mine, steady and unflinching. “Yeah. Me.”
And there it was.
No deflection. No retreat.
Just the truth, sitting between us like the quietest kind of promise.
“You know,” she murmured after a while, “this still feels a little surreal.”
I turned toward her, my voice low and certain. “It doesn’t to me.”
Her brow lifted slightly, amused. “No?”
I shook my head. “I knew the second you let me back in, it was over. For anyone else. For anything else. I’ve got you now—and there’s not a force in the world that’s taking you from me.”
