Page 61 of Holiday Unscripted
“I don’t—” I start to say and he glares at me. “I gave you a towel, didn’t I?”
“I was naked in the pool in the middle of the afternoon, and your grandparents were over,” he hisses at me. “You gave me a dissolvable bathing suit.”
“Nate,” I say his name as I flip the chicken over, “that’s what you do when you have a crush on someone.”
“You had a crush on me?” he asks me and I have to look away.
“It was working its way up.” I can’t help the laugh that comes through me. “It was definitely there not long after,” I confirm. “It might have even started when I saw you come out of the pool.” I shrug. “We’ll never know.” I go and get a plate, putting the chicken on it and then looking at him. “Plus, I think you broke my heart not long after when I caught you making out with Taylor at the side of the house.”
“You were fifteen,” he shrieks, “your father would have killed me.”
“Whatever, you were four years older than me, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Twenty-six and twenty-two is not that big of a deal. Thirty and twenty-six, not that big of a deal. Fifteen and nineteen, very much a big deal.”
I add in some butter and then fry up the onions and then the garlic. Adding in the veggie stock that we bought and then the cream, making it thicken a bit, before I add the pasta. “Now we wait eight minutes or until the pasta is done.” He nods at me, walking to wash his hands and wipe down the counter where he was cutting the stuff.
“Do you want some wine?” he asks me, looking over his shoulder at me as he dries his hands.
“I would love some.” I wait for him to turn around before walking to him and gripping his hips in my hands. “And I’d like to make out with you more.”
He grins as he grabs my hips and lifts me up on the counter, my legs opening for him to stand in between them. His head slants to the side. “Have I told you you’re beautiful today?” he asks me and I put my hands flat on his chest, feeling the way his heart beats under them. Our hearts beating in sync, it’s something I’ve never done with another person in my life. But him. Always with him. Always with Nate.
“You have not.” I smile up at him as my hands go up his chest to lock around his neck at the same time the lights flicker a couple of times. “I need it to hold off for another ten minutes, max.” I look over at the stove, seeing the pasta boiling. “After that, it can go off.”
“The stove is gas,” he reminds me, “but we might be eating by candlelight.”
“That sounds romantic.” I smile at him and he bends to kiss me.
“Then let me start looking for those candles.” He starts to turn away but I pull him back.
“I’m really fucking sorry I didn’t force you to talk to me back then.”
“I’m fucking sorry I thought you left me,” he says softly. “But you have to know, Elizabeth”—he pushes the hair back away from my face—“that that night…” He holds one side of my face in the palm of his hand, and I press deeper into it. His thumb rubs my cheek back and forth. “It was, hands down, one of the best nights I’ve had in my life.” His eyes stare into mine. “It was as if everything that was happening or had happened all led to you.” The words sear my soul as if you lit a fire, heated a branding tool, and marked my heart with his name on it. “The morning after, not seeing you there. It broke my heart.” The lump starts to get bigger in my throat. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“But it does,” I quickly add, “it matters now, just as it did back there. The only thing is, we can’t change what happened back then, but we can change things going ahead.”
He smirks. “Elizabeth, you live halfway around the world.” The smile is sad, his voice low. “There is no going ahead.”
Even though I know he’s not trying to hurt me, it still does. “I know that,” I reply, heaviness now forming in my chest. “What I meant is”—my fingers go to the back of his hair—“going forward, we both know that night meant something to both of us.”
He nods. “Wrong time, wrong place.”
“No,” I say, breathlessly, “right person, wrong time.” He kisses me softly as the lights flicker again.
“I’m going to go and search for candles before we are really without lights.”
“Okay,” I say softly as he turns to walk out of the room. One of my hands falls to my side as I put the other one against the pain in my chest. “Right person, wrong time,” I mumble. “With you it’s always going to be the right person.”
CHAPTER 24
Nate
CHRISTMAS LOVE
“That was…” I put down my fork on the empty plate. “The best meal I’ve had?—”
“If you say ever, I’m going to know you are lying.” She looks over at me, her face illuminated from the two candles in the middle of the table, as well as the tree that is also lit in the corner. Even though the lights are still flickering on and off, I decided that we would eat by candlelight. Especially when her face lit up as I walked back into the kitchen with four candles in my hand.
