Page 164 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
“Nuh-uh. Lie down.”
“What?”
“Lie down.”
“Hazel, you’re the bride.”
“And you’ve been running around like a coked-up headless chicken for the last few weeks, so let me take care ofyoufor a little bit.”
She had that glint in her eye that said she was going to argue with me until dawn if necessary, so I obediently lay on the bed while she bustled around.
She tucked my feet into two sock-like things, did the same with my hands, then used a headband to secure my hair away from my face before laying thecoldestmask known to man on my skin.
Then, she repeated it all for herself, lying down next to me.
“Okay,” Hazel said, wriggling her feet. “Now, tell me when you started sleeping with Thomas.”
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “It’s not… I don’t…Ughhh.”
“Ohh, it’s like that.” She paused. “You like him, right?”
I said nothing.
“I mean, you’ve realised that, yeah? Because it’s pretty obvious from where I’m standing that you really,reallylike the guy, so I’m just wondering if you’ve caught up yet.”
I sighed, staring at the canopy of the bed draping above us. “Yes,” I said softly. “I… know… how I feel about him.”
“Ooh. You’resoin love with him.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I said nothing again. I’d thought it a thousand times. I’d admitted it to myself in silence. But saying it out loud felt like something I could never take back—after all, thoughts could be washed away, but words could never be unsaid.
And I was mildly terrified of saying something I could never take back.
And it was so, so stupid, because it didn’t matter. My feelings existed whether I kept them to myself or screamed them from a rooftop. I was too old to be so silly about this, but here I was.
Being silly.
“What are you so afraid of?” Hazel asked quietly, turning to look at me.
A small laugh bubbled out of me. “Everything. Absolutely everything.”
“Yeah. I thought you might say that.” She sighed, rolling her head back to stare at the canopy again. “Does he know how you feel?”
“No. I mean… Maybe. Probably? He’s not stupid. I’ve just… never said it.”
“He has?”
“Yeah.” I told her what happened the night of the Christmas markets, and she laughed through the entire story of the next morning. “Stop laughing! It’s not that funny.”
“Oh, it is. I’m so mad nobody told me that! What do you mean you just woke up and found out our parents and grandparents knew exactly what you’d been up to the night before?”
“It was the most embarrassing moment of my entire life,” I replied. “Mum was pointing out my hickeys like we were bird-spotting!”
“There were that many?”
“No! He’s just terrible at following instructions. He had one job: do not make them visible, and he failed at every turn.”
“You don’t have hickeys now.”
