A Very Grumpy Lumberjack Christmas

18. Luke

18

LUKE

B y the time Noel opens the bathroom door and steps out, I’ve managed to regain a little bit of my composure and take care of what I needed to without her around.

It’s been so long since I’ve had anyone here, constantly in my space, that I had forgotten how hard it can be to find any time alone.

To think.

To try to accomplish anything without someone looking over my shoulder or asking questions.

Even when she slept last night, her presence was so intense.

Each breath.

Every brush of her skin against mine.

All of it filled more than just my bed.

The only way I managed to leave her this morning was by convincing myself it was worth it—for the end result.

Assuming it goes the way I hope it will…

I recline on the bed, back pressed against the headboard, watching as she steps out from the bathroom, scanning the small cabin for me as if she’s worried I won’t be here .

Her eyes meet mine, and my spine stiffens. Worry twists a knot in my stomach, seeing how red and puffy it is around the blue.

She’s been crying.

Why?

At this point, there are so many possible reasons.

The pain of losing her father.

Distress over missing Christmas with her mother.

Frustration at being stuck here with me.

My first instinct is to go to her to tell her everything will be okay, but I can’t do that because I don’t know that it will.

I can’t do a damn thing about the first two issues, and when it comes to us…

A vise tightens around my bare chest, and the longer she stands in the doorway, staring at me, the harder it becomes to ignore what we’ve been doing.

Pretending.

We’ve fallen back into what we were before, ignoring what we can’t be after .

It’s a shitty situation.

No matter how hard either of us tries to pretend everything’s normal and the snow outside is creating a fresh page for us to write a new chapter on, the past and everything that comes with it lies just underneath that first layer of pristine icy white.

Come tomorrow—or whenever the storm dies out—we’re going to have to fully face what waits beneath the surface.

Even if both of us would rather go along pretending that isn’t the case.

“Come here.”

I pat the side of the bed, half expecting her to reject my offer, given the uncertainty in her gaze and the evidence she’s been crying so vivid and fresh .

Could I blame her?

If she’s ready to end our charade and keep her distance—as much as possible in this tight space—until she can leave, there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

She smiles softly, then moves off the jamb and approaches with another one of my shirts covering her.

Christ…

There’s something about her wearing them that makes my heart thunder against my ribcage violently. That possessive caveman thing that overtook me when I threw her over my shoulder and dragged her up here in the first place rekindles every damn time that plaid hits her skin.

Though, I can’t deny how much I enjoyed her sweater and fucking her in it last night, as I promised…

This is far more enticing.

My cock stirs against the soft fabric of my sweatpants as she approaches.

She climbs up on the bed and crawls toward me in a way that makes my hands itch to reach out and snag her, to draw her up and over me. But I have no idea where her mind is at.

Or where mine is.

Besides the obvious desire to kiss her, touch her, and make love to her as many times as possible during our time together, the rest of my head is a jumbled mess of conflicting thoughts.

Some heartbreaking.

Some terrifying.

Many too intense to even consider addressing.

I force myself to resist the desire to ravage her, instead holding up the book as she settles next to me. “You ready for more?”

Her brow rises as her gaze darts between the yellowing pages and my very obvious erection straining against my sweatpants, with no real way to hide it. “Of you or the book?”

A grin tugs at my lips, knowing she’s still very on board with the former. “Either.”

Noel hesitates for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip in that way that makes me want to take it between my teeth and take her . “I don’t think we should leave Scrooge hanging.”

“Agreed.”

As much as I’d love to roll her under me right now and make her come—plus do something about my aching cock—we need to take a breath.

She snuggles up to me, pressing her head against my bare chest, and wrapping my arm around her. I open the book to where we left off and begin reading again.

My other hand finds her hair, dragging through the damp, silky strands darkened by the water, but they’ll be bright again in an hour or so once the heat of the cabin dries them.

The same kind of bright and sunny she has always brought into my life.

There was a time when I never thought I would feel this kind of warmth again, this kind of easy affection because God knows she’s the only one who ever gave it to me.

I never wanted it from anyone else.

Never even tried to find it after she left.

No one would ever compare to Noel.

And now, she’s in my arms, lying here so comfortably on Christmas Day, trapped inside this cabin by a storm that seems intent on keeping us together when life has driven us apart.

Noel leans into my touch and trails her fingers over my bare chest and abs in slow, lazy motions that make my muscles tense under her.

It isn’t sexual.

Far from it .

But it’s the closeness I’ve been missing, that I’ve been dreaming about.

The sex is incredible, but this type of intimacy—simply snuggling up together to read and absently touch each other because it feels natural and right—it’s what I crave the most.

She has to feel how hard my cock is pressed against her, but she doesn’t mention it, and neither do I, both of us putting aside the passion that has overwhelmed us since yesterday to focus on just being instead .

And the most classic of Christmas stories—besides the original one.

As Scrooge searches for meaning with the three ghosts and the other characters suffer from his greed and uncaring nature, I can’t help but search for some meaning or something to learn in what is happening with Noel.

Why bring her back to me only to tear her away again?

It seems cruel.

This whole thing has played out so much like the book, that as I read the words, my heart aches more and more.

Like the Ghost of Christmas Past forcing Scrooge to remember a time when he was so innocent, I’m forced to remember years with Noel when we didn’t see a world beyond Mistletoe and our love for each other.

When we were happy.

Content.

Loving in a way people only dream about.

But just like Scrooge never realized Belle was slipping away from him, I never saw it happening with Noel.

I never expected her to leave.

When she did, it left me as cold as the man in the story became.

Everyone always calls me a grinch. And they aren’t wrong about that.

I’ve become bitter.

Secluded myself in this cabin on the mountain.

Avoiding any social interaction.

Ignoring that my heart once beat instead of feeling like a broken, hollow hole in my chest.

Yet the more I read, the more I see parallels on the page that I never did before. All the times I’ve delved into these words since she left, I only ever felt one thing—pain.

Glaring agony at having lost her.

But this time, with her snuggled against me, listening to me in the warm calm of the cabin while the blizzard rages outside, my plight seems to mimic Scrooge’s.

This—last night and today—is the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Seeing what could have been if things had been different—if we had made different choices.

This is how it should be.

Spending Christmas together, wrapped around each other, happy.

The past two days have shown us what we could have again if things change…

“Luke?”

Noel’s voice cuts through the endless questions running around my head.

“Yes, Snowflake?”

She spreads her palm flat over my heart. “You seem tense.”

I set the book down next to me and tilt her face up so I can see into her eyes. Concern lingers there. The same I’ve held for her with everything that’s happened.

But I’m not ready to come clean with her.

I’m not mentally prepared to let it all unravel by revealing how the story on these pages feels like it’s speaking directly to me .

It’s so much easier to fall back on something that I can pretend is not about feelings and is only about feeling.

I drag my thumb across her bottom lip. “Maybe because your touch is about to make my cock explode.”

She laughs lightly, grinning. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

“Dear God, don’t do that.” I dip my head down and kiss her, savoring the sweet maple flavor still there from breakfast. “Please, please don’t.”

“I won’t.” She whispers the words against my lips, then pulls back and shakes her head, laughing again. “Do you remember the year my dad thought it would be a great idea to read this on Christmas Day?”

It would be impossible to forget.

“I do.”

Shaking her head, she sighs and drops it against my chest again. “That was one very long Christmas, but I still loved it.”

“Me, too.”

Her father did it with different voices for each character, almost acting it out in a way that made it impossible not to enjoy it—even though it became an almost all-day ordeal with us and my parents as his audience.

She releases a little wistful sigh. “He did a great Scrooge.”

“Are you saying mine sucks?”

The way things have been playing out, I feel like I am the man.

Noel shakes her head, grinning up at me. “No, but you were never the theatric type…”

“No, I wasn’t.”

Though I certainly became more reclusive after she left, I never particularly enjoyed being the center of attention before that. Not like how Noel glows and lights up even more around people and in the spotlight.

Everyone says opposites attract, and when it comes to the two of us, that seems to have been true.

But even the strongest magnets can be pulled apart.

It just takes a tremendous force—like her desire to leave and mine to stay colliding with a catastrophic impact.

I drop my head back against the headboard, running my fingers through her hair as she resumes her teasing, soft touches over my chest and stomach.

A comfortable silence falls over us for a moment before she tips her head up. “What do you think he’s doing right now?”

Her question freezes me in place unable to move.

What if I say the wrong thing?

Losing her father is still so fresh.

The wound still so raw.

And today, being Christmas, is likely similar to rubbing salt into it.

But one answer comes to mind, and it seems like the right one.

“Probably watching over the town tree to make sure it doesn’t blow over in the storm.”

I feel her grin against my chest. “You’re probably right…”

Burying my face in her hair, I pull her against me tighter. “He’ll also be watching you, too, though. Always.”

“I know.” She draws a little circle over my heart, then drags her fingertip across it, creating an invisible pattern that I realize is a snowflake. “I think that’s why I’ve been able to function at all, just knowing he’s watching over me. How proud of me he was. Though, I do worry about Mom. She’s up there all alone. What if something—”

“Hey”—I shake her gently until she looks up at me—“your mom is fine. My dad and I went up to the house a couple of months ago, checked the roof, all the trees around it, helped her with a few little repairs. We made sure she was ready for winter since she was going to be there alone for most of it.”

Her eyes soften, tears forming in them. “You did? ”

I nod and tilt her chin up. “I should have told you before, so you wouldn’t have worried. Just because I abandoned this town and wanted nothing to do with it didn’t mean I would ever abandon your mother, Noel. She knows I’m always here, and so are my parents. If she needs anything during this storm, she’ll call either them or into town if they can’t get to her. But I’m confident she’s okay, and we’ll check as soon as it’s possible to get down to the lot and the phone.”

Noel releases a long, slow breath. “You were always so good at that.”

“At what?”

“Talking me off the ledge.”

I couldn’t that night, though.

I couldn’t talk her out of leaving.

Even though we haven’t reached that part yet, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and what he shows Scrooge races through my head.

That is my future.

Living alone.

Being called a grinch or a Scrooge—or worse.

All because I’ll be losing her again.

She stares up at me for what feels like an eternity, her cheek still pressed to my chest, hand splayed next to it, naked leg thrown over my sweatpants-clad thigh.

All my muscles tense in anticipation.

I don’t know what she’s thinking or what she’s going to do.

But something about the look in her eyes tells me it’s going to mean something.

Noel pushes up onto her knees and slides her leg across my waist to straddle me, looping her arms around my neck. My body thrums, my cock hardening against her core as she aligns them with only the thin fabric separating us.

It can’t block the scalding heat of her pussy along my length.

And despite all my best efforts not to fall back into bed with her like this—at least, not for a while—it seems she has something else in mind other than finishing our book.