She couldn’t ask him to do any more.

It would make her love a burden.

It wasn’t a flaw in him. It was actually because he was just so...

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get some decorations on this thing. Well, let’s start with a fire, because now I’m freezing.”

“That’s the hazard of going outside half naked in this weather.” She grinned. “Not that I’m complaining.” She didn’t want to slide into morose thinking. She didn’t want to think about when the sun would rise. She didn’t want to think about anything but this moment.

Because this would be the moment that sustained her. The moment that moved her on. That moved her into a place of acceptance about what they’d had, and what was possible. Because that was the issue; that was why she was so hurt. It was believing they could have had more if only... If only he could change. And she realized that he couldn’t. That he needed to be who he was to survive, and to be there for his family.

It wasn’t a deficiency in him.

It was almost sadder than if he just wasn’t good at all.

But only almost.

And this was their moment. So she was going to take it.

He built a fire, big and warm, almost enough to take her robe off. But she felt like maybe decorating the Christmas tree naked was a bridge too far.

They took strings of sparkling white lights out of boxes, and he put up a ladder so that the lights could get wrapped all the way around, all the way to the top.

There were large sparkling red globes, and gold stars, and when they were finished, she had never seen anything more beautiful.

A Christmas tree that was theirs. That had nothing to do with her mother’s stress with the season, or her childhood guilt over making her mother put any extra effort into anything, because she already worked so hard, and she definitely didn’t deserve to feel guilty over the presents that she couldn’t buy Tansey.

Just something that belonged to them. And even in this moment it was absent the sadness that had been inside of her ever since...

Ever since she had met this man, and then had to figure out how to live a life that didn’t have him anymore.

Ever since they’d lived one summer that had defined so much of who they were. Because even he had admitted that it had changed him.

And maybe that was the real thing that she needed to understand. That it had been fate, even if it had been a bruised and bloody fate, one that they’d had to fight to find the meaning of.

Maybe she had to accept that sometimes she had to go through hard things, terrible things, to become who she was supposed to be.

Wasn’t that every highbrow Hollywood movie? The complicated happy ending, rather than the traditional one.

She had certainly never seen that sort of happy ending in real life.

In real life, her mother was having a happy ending by herself, in Palm Springs with other people her age, laughing and drinking and enjoying life by the pool. Reaping the benefits of having been a good mother, a hard worker, and not having to do it anymore.

She didn’t have a man. She didn’t need a man. The lesson of her heartbreak had been that she didn’t need one to be happy.

Tansey had needed her heartbreak for her fame, and she needed this bittersweet moment to find the next phase.

Flint was important to her. But that didn’t mean he was her forever, not in a way that meant he would be in her life always.

He was forever in terms of how he’d changed her, though.

And maybe that was the most real way for a relationship to last.

“Hang on just a second.”

He went behind the reception desk, and bent down for a moment, and then music filled the room. Old-fashioned Christmas carols. And she looked around the glittering space, looked at the way his body was in the firelight and the way the tree sparkled.

It was the sweetest, sexiest moment of her whole life. And she didn’t know how those two things combined to become one thing, but they had. Did.

He reached his hand out. “Want to dance?”

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“Me either. But I want to.”

She took his hand, and he lifted her up off the couch, and twirled her in time with the music, her robe spinning out around her, exposing her legs, and maybe more, but there was no embarrassment with him. She laughed, and he brought her back to him, and they swayed back and forth, and whether or not it could be called dancing was up for debate.

But it was perfect. This moment, was perfect. Even if she couldn’t see past it.

And with the music swirling around them, and the firelight glowing, she stretched up on her toes, and she kissed him.

His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might burst through his chest.

He had never liked Christmas. He had never liked any of the symbolism associated with it. But for him, he knew that this would always be Christmas. Every time he had to sit through an endless family present-opening session, every time they went down to the fanciest restaurant in Lone Rock for their annual Christmas Eve dinner, he would think of this. He would think of her.

The only person he’d ever wanted to do a romantic thing for. The only person who had ever made him wish that he was someone else.

He didn’t waste time regretting the things that had happened. He didn’t waste time railing against the universe anymore for taking his sister away from them. Because it didn’t do any good. It only reopened old wounds.

But this made him want to do that. She had always made him want to do that, and maybe that was the biggest reason he had let her go. Because she made him wish that things could be different. And he knew that that was an endless trap that you could fall into and never get out of.

But right now, he just wanted the moment. He wanted to surrender to it. To her.

And so he did. He kissed her, with every ounce of desire in his soul. He held her against him, relishing the feel of her curves against his body as he did.

He kissed her. Kissed her like he might die if he didn’t, and he wondered if part of him had. All these years when he’d been without her. All these years when he’d told himself that he didn’t need her. That he had done the right thing. How can anything but this be right?

He cradled her face in his hands, kissed her deep, kissed down the elegant column of her throat, sliding his tongue over the line of her collarbone. At the same time, his hands found the belt on her robe, and undid it slowly, pushing it away from her body. Letting it fall to the ground. She was beautiful. And it was like unwrapping a Christmas present. The only one he’d ever cared about. The only one he could remember ever wanting.

She was famous now. A woman the whole world wanted a piece of.

But she was a woman that he had. A woman whose body he knew better than his own, even though before tonight it had been two years since he’d seen her. Two years since he’d touched her.

Mine.

The word welled up inside of him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted anyone or anything this badly.

Maybe he never had. Because he hadn’t let himself.