Page 23 of A Cozy Kind of Christmas
He was too wholesome.
Too earnest.
Too polished.
Too conceited.
And yet here he was, taking up every corner of her mind.
She leaned against the hard plastic chair, ignoring the throng around her—families loaded down with baggage and brightly wrapped gifts racing to make it to their gate, business travelers with their heads buried in their laptops, the overhead speakers paging people about to miss their flights.
She banged her head softly against the uncomfortable chair, wishing she could pound out the rush of sweet memories.
Connor had managed to worm his way in through seemingly romantic gestures when they began hooking up. Like Thanksgiving Day, when she’d been happily curled up on her couch watching the Macy’s Day Parade alone, content not to be at the office for once, and he appeared at her door with bagels from her favorite shop around the corner, a spiced latte, and an entire pre-prepared meal complete with the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Or on the first day of December, when he waited for her after work and scooped her away for sushi, ice-skating in Central Park, followed by hours of wandering through neighborhoods with hot chocolates in hand, taking in the holiday lights and decorations.
For a while there, she almost believed it might be real.
It wasn’t, Jo.
She blew out a breath and let her head flop against the chair.
None of it was real.
It was all a ploy.
A ploy for her job.
“You’re diabolical, Connor,” she whispered to herself as the gate agent announced that her flight was about to board. “And you’ve met your match.”
FIFTEEN
MEG
The next day Meg was zipping down I-84, Rosemary Clooney’s holiday album blasting on the stereo, the mighty Columbia to her left, and the rocky cliff sides of the Gorge carved out in front of her, dusted with a sprinkling of snow. A blur of memories assaulted her.
The last time she’d been out this way was when she was on her first assignment forNorthwest Extreme, covering an adventure race that would take her up wicked trailheads and launch a much bigger mystery into what had really happened to Pops.
God, you thought he was dead then, Meg.
She shuddered.
It was impossible to reconcile the man she had adored with the reality that he had abandoned her, Mom, and everything he knew for the sake of astory.
A freaking story.
Who does that?
Who lets their only child believe they’re dead?
Her therapist had gently suggested that Pops’s obsessions had been rooted in his mental health.
And that was the part that scared Meg most.
The part she’d tried to explain to Matt.
If she was being honest, it was a path that didn’t feel that far off. She inherited his obsessive tendencies—the looping thoughts, the need for control, the way her mind could spiral and fixate.
It was one of the reasons she had worked so hard to stay self-aware.
