Page 121 of The Unhinged Christmas of a Cat Lady
“I know.” She cuts in gently, fingers still resting on my sleeve. “I know. What I meant was…” She lets out a slow breath. “They made me realise something. About what you see when you look at me. And what Sim-Sim sees.”
My heart doesn’t know which way to go—up or down, hope or dread.
I stay silent.
She doesn’t move her hand from my arm. Just looks at me; not hesitant, not rehearsed. Just honest.
“Sim-Sim gave me a necklace,” she says. “Expensive. Sparkly. Clearly designed to impress.”
I say nothing. Not because I don’t have things to say (I’ve got plenty), but because I can tell this isn’t the bit where I speak.
“It felt like… like he was trying to buy me,” she continues. “Or… I don’t know. Win me. I don’t think that’s what he meant. Not really. He gave me what he thought I’d like. What he thought I should like.”
She gives me this small, almost sorry sort of smile.
“And that’s when it hit me. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through… he doesn’t actually know me. Not properly. Maybe he never did. And maybe that’s on me. Because I never showed him. Not all of me. I never felt like I could.”
Her fingers tighten slightly on my sleeve.
“But with you…” she exhales. “With you, I’ve been nothing but chaos. Half-together, half-unravelled, running late, forgetting things, having kittens as an accessory—”
“You make it look good,” I mutter, mostly to stop myself from blurting something much more ridiculous.
She smiles, but it’s still laced with something serious. “I’ve been myself, Jasper. Fully myself. And you never flinched. You never tried to change it or neaten it or hide it.”
She glances down at the slippers, the pastel manes just visible below the kitchen island.
“You gave me the best present I’ve ever been given,” she says, voice low now. “Because you saw me. And you wanted me to have something that made me feel like me.”
She pauses, then adds, “When Sim-Sim saw them last night—when I went to talk to him, to tell him… he just said, ‘Oh, must you wear those childish shoes?’”
Something tightens behind my ribs.
Miranda looks up again, gaze steady.
“That was when I knew,” she says. “Really knew.”
And I forget to breathe.
She slips off the bar stool without another word.
And then she’s in front of me—close—stepping between my knees like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She cups my face. “Merry Christmas,” she whispers.
And then she kisses me.
Deep. Certain. No hesitation, no half-measures. Just her, warm and real and entirely, impossibly her.
My hands find her waist without thinking, anchoring her to me like maybe I’m scared she’ll vanish again if I let go.
But she doesn’t.
She’s here. With me.
In unicorn slippers. And chaos.
And she chose me.
