If This Was a Movie (Evergreen Park #2)

Chapter 19 – Jules

NINETEEN

JULES

The next day, when I walk over to the main house bright and early, Sophie is already awake, bouncing off the walls with excitement and telling me I need to dress extra warm for our outing to the tree farm. We’re in the car before nine and get there as soon as it opens.

Once we park, I watch Sophie and Nate argue about whether or not she has to wear a scarf and a hat and gloves. Nate wins, only for Sophie to tell her dad five minutes later thank you for making sure she was warm.

It’s interesting to watch them interact. Nate, who clearly wants Sophie to have the world—everything she ever wants or could want, yet having to weigh that against what’s best for her. Meanwhile, there’s Sophie, who thinks her father hung the moon, even if his rules suck sometimes.

I don’t have many early memories of my dad before the divorce, and the ones after are tainted with an air of not belonging or being a burden. Watching Nate interact with his daughter with a wide smile and a tap to her red nose, her resounding giggle at almost anything he does, heals something inside of me I thought I had long bandaged over.

After entering the farm, we wander for what feels like forever, and it takes us much too long to pick out a Christmas tree, with Sophie and I nitpicking at each and every option then shushing Nate anytime he has input. Eventually, we find the perfect tree that even Nate approves of, and I hold Sophie back while he cuts it down and hauls it back to the registers before we sit in a small cozy café for the required cocoa.

“Can we please pick out an ornament in the shop now? Please, please, please?” Sophie begs her dad, a chocolate mustache over her lips. I sit back and watch them, Nate sighing and grabbing a napkin before wiping his daughter’s face.

“We have a million at home, “ he says, and Sophie rolls her eyes at him like she’s fifteen instead of five.

“So? We get one every year! It’s a tradition.” She stares at her dad, and eventually he smiles and nods. “Yay!” she shouts, standing and then reaching for my hand. “Come on, let's go pick some out!”

“One,” Nate yells from behind us as she tugs me out of the café to the ornament shop next door.

“I need to get an Ashlyn ornament,” Sophie says, looking through the racks and racks of ornaments along the back wall of the store. It’s a mess of reds and greens and pinks and blues and whites, each meant to symbolize different milestones and interests in someone’s life. There’s a new baby one, an engaged and married one, ornaments for pets and sports and hobbies.

“You don’t have one already?” I ask with shock.

In the few days I’ve known her, I’ve come to realize Sophie’s biggest interest and obsession is Ashlyn. Most of her clothes are licensed for the magical doll, her entire room is decorated with it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without the doll in hand.

“Nope, last year I didn’t even know about Ashlyn,” she says, as if to say, a year ago she was such a baby, she didn’t even know about the world's coolest toy.

“Really?” I ask, still a bit shocked, considering her level of devotion. I suppose kids do fall in and out of interests rather quickly, though. Hell, I think in the span of one year I told my mom I wanted to be a horse trainer, a ballerina, and an astronaut. It’s actually a miracle dance ever stuck.

“Yup! Daddy got me her when I broke my arm last year. He said she was magical and she’d make me feel better, and she looked like a pretty ballerina he knew. That’s why I knew that Santa could make Ashlyn come to life and marry Daddy.” A rush of heat rolls over me with understanding. “She already existed! He just had to find her again.”

A ballerina he knew.

“When did you break your arm again?” I ask, trying to be casual.

“Uh, I don’t know. The beginning of the year. I was with Grandma and Grandpa at their mountain house, and I slipped on ice. I wasn’t too sad because even though it was right after Christmas, I got so many presents.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty cool,” I say, but my gaze is scanning the store, looking for her father. When I find his tall frame, though, his eyes are already on mine, taking me in and watching us like he’s afraid if he blinks we’ll disappear.

I understand that feeling.

A week ago, Nate Donovan was a sour memory that hurt when I touched it. Now, it’s holding this tiny spark of hope I keep trying to put out, but I can’t seem to make myself do it. I’ve sworn off love and men, but maybe I was too hasty? What if this really could be something special, some once in a lifetime, movie-worthy romance, and I’m just too scared to give it a shot?

A few hours later, we’re back at the house, watching Sophie put on the final ornaments. We stopped for lunch on our way home before we came back, Nate and I putting up the tree, stringing the lights, and hanging all of the delicate bulbs out of her reach.

I move to stand beside Nate, who’s watching Sophie show each ornament to her doll with a small smile on his lips.

“Found out the Ashlyn obsession is pretty new,” I say, trying to break the ice.

“Did you now?” he asks, eyes not moving toward me like he's afraid to hear what I’m about to say, what Sophie may have revealed.

“Oh yes,” I say. “Your daughter told me you got her because she looks like a pretty ballerina you know.”

A light blush crosses over his cheeks. “She told you that?” he asks.

I smile and shrug. “Something tells me she isn’t very good at keeping secrets.”

Nate shakes his head with a small laugh. “The worst, actually. But you can’t deny you look just like the doll.”

“So you bought it…” I start to say, watching the doll dangling in Sophie’s hand.

“After we met.”

“Before or after I blocked you?”

“Before. I remember thinking about texting you, taking a photo, and sending the doll to you, but you didn’t know about Sophie and…” His words trail off, and suddenly I feel the urge to know, to ask once and for all.

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I ask.

He lets out a bone-deep sigh before running his hand over his head.

“You know, I’ve asked myself over and over since I saw you again. Probably would have saved us a lot of heartache. At least a dozen times when you were here, I almost mentioned her, but there was never a good time to bring it up, you know? We were…brand new. I didn’t want to fuck it up. Turns out, not mentioning it was our downfall.”

“I get it,” I say, because I do. “I get protecting her until you knew for sure there was something there you felt comfortable exposing her to.” I think of all the men my mom dated before she met Stanford, the way she’d parade them as some new dad. The way they’d buy my affection with toys only for them to leave, my mom in tears and me just confused.

A heavy silence hangs over us, and I hate it, feeling like I steered us in a shitty direction, so I try and move forward.

“So you bought your daughter a doll you thought looked like some chick you hooked up with?”

He looks at me, gives a light shake to his head before taking two steps and cutting the distance between us in half. His hand moves up then pauses, like he wants to touch my face, before it falls again.

“You were never just some chick I hooked up with, Jules, and you know that. You were always more. So much more, I didn’t understand it at the time. But then my daughter ran to you on a crowded street, as if she knew too, like she could feel the pull of you to us.”

My heart skips a beat or two before it kicks back into action doing double-time.

I open my mouth to say something—to remind him that I’m not here for that, to remind him and maybe myself that I’ve sworn off love and men and it’s all for the best, really, it is—but before I can, an alarm goes off on my phone, reminding me to leave for my class that’s in thirty minutes.

“I gotta go,” I say in a whisper. “Practice at the center.”

“Yeah.” This time, when his hand lifts, he lets it rest there on my cheek, the warmth of his palm radiating through my skin in a way I really, really like. “Yeah, you do.”

“Will you come see our decorations when you’re done?” Sophie asks, her voice high and squeaky and hopeful and breaking the moment. I step back from Nate and slowly, like he’s still categorizing what it was like, lowers his hand. “We’re not done, but it’s going to be magical!” She closes her eyes as if she’s visualizing their future masterpiece, and I smile. “I just know it.”

“I don’t want to interrupt—” I say, but she cuts me off, moving closer and holding her hands together like she’s pleading.

“Please?” Her eyes go wide, and I wonder how anyone is ever able to resist her, or if she genuinely always gets her way.

I’m leaning toward the latter as I find myself speaking without the approval of my logical mind. “Okay, fine,” I say. “I should be back around six.”

“Perfect. I’ll make dinner, if you’re okay with eating with us,” Nate says.

Once again, I answer without thinking.

“Yeah, that works.” My voice is breathy as I speak, his eyes still locked on mine as they go warmer, as my belly flips over and over in ways it should not. Finally, he breaks the look, and I turn away like I’m meaning to escape.

But even when I’m across town at my studio, I feel that tether in my chest, just like Nate mentioned and I denied, pulling me back to the place where a little girl and her dad are decorating their home, waiting for me to return.

I think about what Nate said the entire drive to the community center and then throughout the entire rehearsal. Thankfully, Gina was feeling better and able to dance tonight, so I didn’t need to dress up, but unfortunately, that means I had time to think.

Think about the mess I had gotten myself into.

Think about Sophie and her sweet smiles and her all-consuming belief in Christmas magic.

Think about how I swore off love and romance and how my commitment to that is wavering in just a few days in the presence of Nathan Donovan.

What would happen if I risked it?

What would happen if I fell into the fantasy of it for the next month and let myself believe this was real, that this wasn’t dangerous for my sanity?

This is what’s running through my mind as I park in the drive at Nate’s house and walk in the front door with a gasp, Sophie running my way in excitement.

“Do you like it?” she yells.

“Wow, you guys did an amazing job,” I say with an impressed laugh, toeing off my boots in the entryway. Nate walks over to me, grabbing my coat and hanging it as I step into a Christmas wonderland.

The tree we decorated together stands in the corner, glowing bright and covered in multicolored ornaments, a red and white tree skirt at the bottom, an angel that looks suspiciously like Sophie at the top.

The mantel over the fireplace has faux green garland and snow, and on every surface there’s something Christmassy, from holiday art Sophie has done over the years pinned to the walls to a tiny Christmas village taking up the dining room table.

“My mom and sisters have given me very specific decorating notes over the years,” Nate says, explaining.

“It wasn’t like this when I came,” I say, still looking around, then going red as I realize what I just revealed.

He comes over to me, standing next to me in the doorway to the living room and smiling.

“The clutter gets to me. I can deal with it for only so long, so by the day after Christmas, I’m itching to take it all down. When Sophie leaves to be with my parents in the Poconos, I always use it as an opportunity to pack everything away and clean.”

“Ah, makes sense,” I say.

“I wish it could be like this forever,” Sophie says with a wistful sigh, and I smile at her, but then her eyes go wide and a giddy, excited smile spreads over her lips. “Look!” She points over my head.

“Wha—” I start confused, but when Nate and I both look up and see a bundle of white and green tied with a red ribbon over the doorway we’re standing in…

“Mistletoe! That means you have to kiss!”

“Oh, I?—”

“It’s a Christmas tradition!” she shouts, then claps her hands. Glancing at Nate for some kind of out, some explanation to his daughter as to why that’s not how that works, all I see is a small tip of his lips.

“Sophie must have hung them up when I wasn’t paying attention.” There’s a chair a few feet away, and when I look up, the sprig is taped to the frame haphazardly. It’s not like it wouldn’t be very on brand from what I’m learning of her. Meddling seems to be in her nature, just like her aunts. “It is the rules though,” he says in almost a whisper, lips spreading in a bigger smile. “We wouldn’t want to let the girl down.”

“What?”

His body shifts then, his hand moving to my hip in a way that burns through my thin leggings. It’s gentle and hesitant, and the look in his eyes—the mix of nervous and excited—has my body shifting unconsciously to face him.

“If this was a movie, I think this is when I’d kiss you,” he whispers under his breath, mine catching with his words.

“Yeah, probably,” I say back, and he smiles again, pulling me in a bit closer. Again, without the permission of my logical side that has seemed to have gone dormant, I move to my tiptoes, shifting my body as his head dips down.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear a tiny gasp from Sophie, but it only takes a moment before I’m lost in the feel of Nate’s lips on mine.

It’s gentle and PG-rated at best, just a soft brush of his lips to mine, but it has my heart racing all the same, even more when his hand moves to my jaw, pulling me a bit closer, deepening the contact of our lips.

My hands move up, winding around his neck and holding him there, and all I can think is I am so totally fucked.