Christmas Home (The Coming Home #6)

43. Ruther

forty-three

Ruther

T he panic hit me the moment I realized where Corey was going to meet Roth and Solace. I could feel the flames sweeping toward my face and would’ve given in to it had Clyde not pulled me down the road and distracted me.

That was something so different from how things had been before. Nothing could pull me out of a panic before I met Clyde. Not that anyone had ever tried. My dad was mostly embarrassed by it. As a grown man, I figured his embarrassment stemmed from guilt over Mom and him not being there the night the mansion caught fire.

They’d been coming back from Nashville when they pulled into the driveway and saw all the firefighters battling to put out the blaze. My life had only been spared because the Cross sisters, our neighbors, had spotted the flames and called it in before it reached my room.

The mayor caught my attention before I could get lost in the memories and, luckily, put me to work replacing the old bulbs. The task was tedious enough to distract me from my dark memories.

Emanual and Amos were so funny together. Their love for each other and the town was so apparent. Emanual was fast to adopt something that made the town more connected and more of a community. Amos seemed to go along with whatever his husband did.

Their soft touches and occasional glances showed that even after decades, they only had eyes for each other. I wanted that for myself, and after Emanual said something funny about Amos being particular about how things were decorated in their cabin, I laughed and looked over to where Clyde was hanging the decorations.

Our eyes met briefly, and I smiled and waved. God, that man melted my insides. I wanted so much to sweep him away and into my bed to make love to him for hours. But that wasn’t something I could do yet.

There were still so many trust issues he was dealing with. Having heard about his past, I understood. There was a lot of bad stuff brewing there. He went to therapy and the support group religiously. It only goes to show how important the decorating was to him that he didn’t go to the group this morning.

Usually, he’d show up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning and tease me for being grumpy about being dragged out of bed at such an ungodly hour. Still, he’d ply me with donuts before kissing me stupid and running off to Nashville for his group session.

Jake escorted him to Nashville because he said he needed to spend time with his parents, who lived there. I knew it was an excuse to drive him there, which was very kind. Jake’s adoptive mother was Clyde’s counselor, and you could tell it was a collaboration to give Clyde the support he needed.

When I suggested to Clyde that I drive him, he froze. “Maybe, but I-I need the group to be about me. I’m sorry,” Clyde said and began getting anxious about it.

“Shh, I get it, but I want you to know you can lean on me too if you ever need, okay? No pressure, just I want you to know I’m here.”

Relief flashed across his handsome features, causing my heart to go all aflutter. So much damage had been done to such a beautiful soul. He didn’t know it yet, but I’d turn the world inside out to make him happy. Even in our short time together, I was completely head over heels for him.

“You done with that one?” Amos asked, drawing my attention back to the work at hand.

I nodded. “How many more to go?”

The mayor laughed. “Not that many but after this, we need to check all the lights and hang them on the town hall.”

I almost complained, almost said something off the cuff to make Doc and Amos laugh, maybe even act like a sullen teenager, but this made my sweet Clyde so happy, I couldn’t even pretend to be frustrated about the work.

I glanced back over and heard Clyde singing “Jingle Bells” at the top of his lungs, off-key, by the way, and Todd telling him to stop before he got them arrested for disturbing the peace. That just caused Clyde to sing louder.

We worked all day on the decorations. When we were done, the street looked good, but damn, those decorations were ugly and outdated. If the project we were doing was half as lucrative as Corey’s most recent numbers suggested, one of the first things I was going to do was donate the money to replace all this with something modern.

I had a feeling the lighting ceremony was going to become one of Crawford City’s new traditions, and now that this was becoming my town, I wanted to do everything I could to make it a better place. Not just for me but for the people I was quickly beginning to consider my friends. Maybe even family , I thought, then shook that out of my head—no need to jump ahead of myself there.

I liked the town, and yes, it was going to be my home, but that didn’t mean I needed to have grand thoughts of them being what I’d never really had, at least outside my relationship with my late cousin. Even that never lent itself to the kind of family where people showed up for the holidays or leaned on each other when things got tough.

No, I’d never had that kind of family. If anything, my parents became more distant, my father more tyrannical, after the accident. I shut that thought down. No need to let them and their peculiarities ruin the day.

After we finished decorating, all the volunteers met at Amos and Emanual’s house for hot cider and warm cookies that Amos had slipped away to bake. We sat around the comfortable living space while old Christmas music played on actual vinyl records on a massive stereo system that looked like it came out of the nineteen seventies.

I can’t say the effect wasn’t wonderful, though. Clyde sat next to me on the oversized sofa and snuggled into my side as we watched the other volunteers talk about the day’s adventures and then the latest town gossip.

“Who’s hungry?” Amos asked when a freckle-faced boy I hadn’t seen delivered several boxes of pizza. I hadn’t known they were going to feed us, or I wouldn’t have had three of Amos’s chocolate chip cookies.

Crawford City should’ve been all this for me through the years. Happy holidays seeping into happy memories. But even if the fire hadn’t happened, my parents were more about appearances than anything else.

We were seen and not heard in this town. I think we visited the family estate because people didn’t know or relate to us here, which gave my family some anonymity. Well, fuck that. Now I wanted everything this town had to offer.

I leaned over, kissed Clyde’s temple, and pulled him against me. His snuggling in further just made this feel even more right. My parents might have seen the world very different from what I did, but their actions had inadvertently led me back to this town that was becoming so important to me. If for nothing else, I had to be grateful for that.