A Very Grumpy Lumberjack Christmas

23. Noel

23

NOEL

L uke’s confession sucks all the air from my lungs.

When I try to force myself to inhale again, the cool, crisp air is filled with that pine scent that doesn’t come from the trees but from the man standing next to me, who just bared his soul and opened his heart to me again.

This entire time, he’s held that in.

Somehow, he’s been able to keep that shocking truth about what he’s been doing—or not doing—the last eight years to himself, and the even more stunning declaration that has rendered me speechless has to have been eating him alive from the inside out every time we touched, every time we kissed, every time his cock slid inside me…

A shiver rolls through me at the memories, but now they’re painted with the new knowledge that can’t help but change the way I see them and everything that’s happened.

I swallow through my suddenly dry throat. “I guess we’re not pretending anymore…”

Because that’s what we’ve been doing.

Pretending.

And we both knew it .

I just didn’t realize how hard he was pretending, how much he was withholding.

He flinches at my words and glides back from me.

“Luke, I can’t—”

Grasp any of this.

Get my mind around how any of it could be real.

Handle him standing in front of me and telling me he loves me.

“I wasn’t going to lie to you, Noel. I never did. I won’t start now. You asked a question, and I answered it.”

I shake my head, fighting the burn of tears that hits my eyes. “You-you…God, Luke, you didn’t have to tell me that .”

Because it might be what finally breaks me.

His evergreen eyes hold mine, and the determination there sends a little shudder down my spine. “Yes, I did, Snowflake, because I’ve been wanting to say it for the last two days, since the moment you climbed out of that fucking car in the ditch. From the second our eyes connected and before either of us said a word. Since that moment, I’ve been dying to say it.”

I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my head, allowing the hockey stick to clatter down to the ice. “No…”

Shaking my head, I open my eyes and start to skate back to where I left my boots.

“No what , Noel?”

His voice wavers, and it almost makes me stumble.

It almost makes me stop and turn back to him.

But I force myself to keep skating away. “You can’t do this to me, Luke.”

He releases a little frustrated sound that makes me wince. “I can’t do what to you, Noel?

I turn and drop into the snowbank, tug off my mittens, and start unlacing my skates. “You can’t put me in this position again.”

“ What position? ”

Does he really not know?

Does he really not understand?

I tug off my first skate, toss it back into the bag, and get to work on the second one.

The sound of his skates cutting across the ice draws my eyes up, and he stands in front of me, his jaw tight, pain etched across his handsome face. “Look at me, Noel, and answer me: what position am I putting you in?”

One where I have to admit that I still love him, too.

That I always have.

That this isn’t just a fling or us falling back into what we were once for a few days to try to relive good memories.

That this is more than simply being snowed in with nothing better to do than fuck.

I would have to admit that this was two people who always loved each other, despite the time and distance between them, trying to figure it the fuck out when there isn’t any way to.

Somehow, even with trembling hands and tears blurring my vision, I manage to get my other skate off and tug on my boots.

I snag my mittens, pull them on, and push to my feet.

Luke’s dark brows draw low over his questioning eyes. “Where are you going?”

That’s a very good question.

The only answer that comes to mind is, away from here .

Away from you…

But I don’t say it.

I release a heavy breath, one filled with all the anguish now starting to build up inside me. “My mom’s.”

He issues a frustrated growl. “I told you, Noel, you’re not going to get down the mountain to the lot or back up the road right now.”

I meet his gaze and see so much pain in it that I’m immediately taken back to the last time we had this fight, to the last time this conversation split us apart. “I can’t stay here.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He has to know why.

Luke would have to be blind not to see how his confession is affecting me, how he has affected me over the last few days. He has to understand that this is tearing me apart again.

I take off along the bank of the lake, and he mutters a curse under his breath. But I don’t let it stop me. I keep walking without looking back, trying to step in the holes he left on his way up here to avoid the deepest parts of the snow.

Tears sting my eyes, both from the chilly air and the fact that I know he’s going to come after me and catch me.

He’s so much stronger than me.

So much faster.

His legs are longer, and even though I got a head start, it isn’t going to do me any good.

It only takes a few minutes before he’s on me.

I hear the crunching of the snow before his arm loops around my waist and he tugs me back up against him, hot breath against my neck, fluttering my hair and heating that sensitive skin behind my ear.

“Don’t run away from me again, Snowflake. I don’t think I could survive it a second time.”

Agony sears through my blood, racing to every part of my body, trying to crush my will.

I fight through it, drawing on every ounce of strength I can find not to lean into his hold or turn in his arms and do something even more stupid. “I can’t have this argument again, Luke. I can’t pretend anything has changed when it hasn’t. ”

His body stiffens behind me, and his lips feather over my ear. “Everything has changed.”

I wish that were true.

I wish what happened over the last few days did change things.

There were several points when I thought they might, when I believed the spark we had, the connection we still shared, might be enough, but it’s not when we’re both in the same position we were in eight years ago, when we’re stuck worlds apart.

“Let me go.”

Luke releases a little growl of frustration, but he doesn’t fight my request.

He slowly slips his arm back, allowing me the freedom to push forward through the snow, but he doesn’t let me go .

Trailing after me, close enough that I can hear his footsteps, Luke doesn’t say anything else. He just lets me stalk ahead—or more like stumble through the snow—until I reach the cabin.

But I don’t pause or go back inside.

Because there isn’t anything in there for me.

Not anymore.

We had a great couple of days, even in the worst of circumstances, even though I wanted and needed to spend this Christmas with Mom, but now, after hearing his confession, I know that Luke has been here waiting for me all this time.

And I can’t go back in there.

He was my first everything.

The first boy I ever held hands with. The first one I ever kissed. The first one I ever slept with. And I was his, too—and apparently his last, if what he said was true.

You know it’s true .

That little voice inside my head mocks me, making acid churn in my stomach and work its way up my throat as I stumble past the cabin toward the path that leads down to the lot and my escape.

“Noel, don’t. It’s too dangerous right now.”

Luke’s warning cuts through my downward spiral, and I look at the sharp decline in front of me through the trees and how heavy and thick the snow is despite the canopy above the ground in this area.

But I don’t have a choice.

I can’t stay here.

It would be far more dangerous than trying to get back down to a phone.

“I have to go, Luke.” My voice cracks on the words, and I hear his sharp intake of breath, but I can’t bear to look over my shoulder at him to see what he’s doing or the look on his face.

Because I already know that look.

I saw it eight years ago, the last time I did this to him.

The first time I broke his heart.

He follows me quietly for a few hundred yards, well past where he apparently made an attempt to get down and turned around, abandoning the idea.

Without his footsteps to lead me down, I try to remember the way the trail veers through the trees.

I make it another couple of yards beyond his guides, take a step, and sink up to my hips in the snow.

“Goddammit.” Struggling against my chilly confines, I kick out with my legs, but the pack around me doesn’t budge.

And I know it won’t.

There’s a reason we call these “spruce traps.” If you get too close to a tree out here with this much accumulation, it can suck you straight down like quicksand.

Kind of like Luke has …

He comes to stand over me, keeping well enough back that he doesn’t fall into the same area. “I think you stepped off the path.”

I glower at him. “No shit.”

His lips twitch the tiniest bit.

Gaping at him, I point a mittened hand at him. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t look so fucking smug .”

He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back slightly so his full height looks even more staggering from down here. “I warned you.”

The same words I used on him up at the lake come back to bite me.

Hard.

This feels a lot more serious than what I did to him, though.

If he wanted to, he could leave me like this for a while, make me suffer, prevent me from leaving or trying to, at least. He could keep me here to force me to continue our conversation without fear of me running from him.

But the Luke I knew would never do that.

He wouldn’t make me suffer—at least not this way.

After a moment of staring me down and apparently taking gross pleasure in my failure, Luke releases a heavy sigh and squats down to slide his hands under my armpits and pull me free.

Only my UGGs stay buried in the snow.

He holds me high, my feet dangling, my red and green fuzzy socks the sole thing keeping my feet from the cold air.

Another sigh slips from his lips, and he shifts his hold on me to set my ass on the more solid ground.

“Keep your feet up and dry.”

I scowl at him. “Like I didn’t already know that.”

“It’s been a long time since you lived here. I don’t know what you know or remember anymore.”

The dig hurts after the last few days, after what we shared, but I can’t really blame him—can I?—because I’m doing it again.

I’m fleeing.

I’m trying to get away from him before we have the same argument, and that seems to only be leading to another one.

He reaches down into the holes in the snowbank with his long arms and tugs out my boots, then tips them over and shakes them to get any snow out.

I hold out my hands, but instead of passing them over, he drops to his knees and slips them on my feet—like Prince fucking Charming and the glass slipper.

Goddammit.

Goddamn him.

And goddamn this blizzard.

None of this would have happened.

If I had just stayed home with Mom, if I had accepted the reality of Christmas without a tree, I could have had Christmas without Luke Crisp.

Is that really what you want?

To pretend it never happened.

To forget how good it was.

Is that what you want?

My chest tightens, remembering all the hours we spent wrapped up in each other over the last few days, and my pussy clenches, wanting it more.

He stays squatting, staring at me, waiting for me to say something or make a move.

But there isn’t anything left to say.

I finally release a shaky breath and push myself up. He rises and offers me a hand, but I bat it away, brushing past him and back down what I think is the path .

Now that the trees have disappeared, it’s a little harder to navigate, to remember exactly where to step, but I can see the barn now, and there won’t be as many dangers—like possibly stepping into a well around a trunk like I just did over there—down this far on the mountain.

I could still slip and fall, maybe roll through the snow, but I don’t want to think about it, nor do I need to, because I hear the crunch of the snow behind me, and he’s right at my back, watching over me, protecting me, like he always did, like I always counted on him to do.

The air seems to shift before he speaks. “You’re really just going to walk away after everything that happened over the last few days, after what I told you?”

I whirl to face him and find him much closer than I anticipated, close enough that I can reach out and touch him without even stretching for it.

His proximity momentarily stuns me, and I wobble slightly before regaining my balance and pushing my mittened finger into his chest. “After the last few days, after everything that happened, what you just told me was a fucking trap .”

His brow furrows as he leans into my touch. “What exactly are you accusing me of, Noel?”

“This?” I spread my arms out wildly. “You threw me over your goddamn shoulder and locked me in your cabin. You made sure I didn’t have any means of escape, which you admitted by not bringing the snowmobile up. Then you seduced me and—”

“Whoa!” He holds up a gloved hand. “I’m going to stop your tirade right there, Snowflake, because I did not seduce you. If I remember correctly, you were the one who came into the bathroom when I was in the shower.”

My cheeks heat at the memory, and I swallow thickly, staring up at him. “ You kissed me .”

“You didn’t stop me.”

Fuck.

Having the truth thrown back at my face doesn’t feel good.

And it is the truth.

At any time, I could have stopped him.

I could have said no, and he would have let me be, continued to take care of me during the storm, but never touched me once the entire time we were trapped together.

Luke is nothing if not a gentleman—outside of sex, that is—so really, it isn’t fair for me to pin that on him.

But I can’t admit my own role in what happened between us this Christmas because it would be admitting how much I hurt him.

After hearing his words up on that ice, I now comprehend that it’s far worse than I ever knew.

And that will be my ultimate undoing.