Page 40 of Three Days of Holiday

“It’s Christmas Eve and other than being outside celebrating like we should, I’ve let down the whole family.” I left out the ancestors and future generations to focus on the people I’d hurt right now. I’d tell Hope about the others later.

Hope leaned over my bed and peeked out the window. She pulled on the blinds, letting in light, andpointed to the snow as it drifted slowly from the sky to coat the ground. I planned to spend Christmas in my room alone, but it was nice to know some people got to have a white holiday.

I stared out as she spoke so I wouldn’t have to look at her face full of pity. “Just so I’m sure we’re on the same page, did you let us down by losing the competition or by sleeping with the Causebay?”

My head fell back onto my pillow with a groan. “Both.”

I lost to Will. To Causebay Family Farms. How?

I had the underdog spirit, enough Pinterest boards to decorate Martha Stewart’s mansion, and moxie. How did we lose?

“Holly, neither of those things makes you a disgrace.”

“I didn’t say I was a disgrace. I said I was a letdown,” I said, my words slurring not because of apparent alcohol but just sadness.

Hope rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You didn’t let anyone down. You’re not a failure.”

We already had this argument, twice, during her previous visits, but I prepared to have it over again.

Except before we could get started, something dinged off my window. The glass rattled. Hope and I both turned, staring at it.

“Did you hear that?” Hope asked.

I nodded. “The entire house heard that.”

Had a bird hit the window and flown away? Hope leaned closer, looked out, and her face lit up in a bright smile.

“What?” I asked, almost gathering the energy to move over in bed and look out with her.

She leaned back a second before the window rattled again. But this time I was looking at it and saw the small rock before it made contact. Immediately after that, another one smacked against the glass. Hope’s smile grew, and she crossed her legs on my bed, pushing away from the window.

“It’s windy out there, I guess,” she said, absolutely lying.

Never in my entire life had it been windy enough to pick a rock up from the ground and slam it into my window on the second floor.

14

WILL

Hope’s head left the window, and I threw another rock, hoping like hell I had the right room. I braced, waiting for someone—more than likely one of the Halliday brothers—to come rushing out of the old farmhouse and shoot me. No one made a peep on the first floor, but behind me a dog howled and then was joined by a second one.

I spotted the top of what I believed was Holly’s head. She had her hair piled up on her head in a high bun, pieces flying everywhere. She’d never looked more beautiful.

“Come on, Holly,” I whispered to myself, searching for another stone in her gravel driveway.

I selected three more right as the window squeaked open sounding like she tore through layers of paint.

“Will, what are you doing?” Holly whisper-shouted with her head sticking out of the space.

Wasn’t it obvious? I came to win her back. I wasn’treally sure I’d ever lost her, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“Can we talk?”

I won the taste-off, but rather than walk away from the hall ecstatic with what that meant for my future, I finished up my interviews for three local papers and found a hollowness in my chest—one only Holly filled.

She seemed to hesitate with her answer but didn’t realize I already parked my ass in her driveway, prepared to beg.

“Just give me a few minutes,” I pleaded as Holly stared at me.

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