Free All I Want For Christmas Is You by Jessica Scott Page B

call.”
    “Sure. I get that all the time. Anyway, you two probably need to turn around. Bad accident up ahead, and the road is going to be closed until we get it cleaned up. With the storm coming in, you’re not getting by any time soon.”
    “Where are we supposed to go?” Sam asked. “I don’t think this thing has four-wheel drive.”
    “Well, maybe if you two weren’t making out like a couple of horny teenagers, you’d have paid better attention to the roads.” He pulled a single key off his loop. “My parents’ house is about a half a mile that way.” He pointed back the way they’d come.
    She swallowed the resurgent lump in her throat. Her mom had told her about Garrett’s parents last year when it happened. She’d been deployed.
    She’d sent flowers from Iraq because it was the only thing she could think to do from half a world away.
    Patrick accepted the key.
    “I’ll find you tomorrow with the key.”
    “Sure.” He stepped back away from the car, using his flashlight to guide them as they turned around. “Now get your asses out of the storm before I have to dig you out in the spring.”
    It was easy enough to find the Rierson’s house. Set back in an old field, the driveway that led up to the old log cabin had recently been plowed.
    The silence between them was quiet. Comfortable.
    And filled with needy tension.
    They walked into the old house and Sam felt an aching sense of the familiar twisted now with age and experience. It was the same and not the same. It felt smaller, somehow, from the house she remembered as a teen.
    She paused in the entryway as Patrick closed the door behind them. For a moment, the world fell away, taking the darkness and the sadness and the emptiness with it. Leaving a warmth, a sense of being home in its place. Funny. She hadn’t spent time in this house in years but it felt…good.
    She glanced over at Patrick. Saw him watching her. Standing close, too close and not close enough. She met his gaze and in that moment, realized with aching clarity that they were alone.
    Really alone.
    Her mouth went dry.
    He waited. In the shadows and the snow by the door, he waited.
    She wanted him to move into her space and kiss her and make her feel alive again.
    But she knew this man. Despite the chasm that had grown between them, she knew him.
    And she knew that he would wait. Would stand quietly by until she made that first choice.
    She would never be alone.
    But that first hesitant step, she had to make by herself.
    He wouldn’t force her.
    It was one of the things she loved about him. He was steadfast and loyal and good.
    And she was losing him through her own inaction.
    She stood there then, taking in the sight of the man who’d stood by her the day she’d told him she was pregnant with someone else’s child.
    The day he’d held her hand and told her he’d always be there for her.
    The day he’d gone with her into the hospital and went through labor and delivery to bring their daughter into the world.
    He’d never left her alone.
    Not even now when she’d left him alone in the cold and the dark.
    It was a long moment. The storm whipped against the outside storm door, slamming it open, then shut and startling them both.
    Shattering the moment and leaving a chill between them. She shivered at the suddenness of the feeling.
    He stepped to her then, running his hands down her arms. “I’ll start a fire.”
    She let him go because she was a coward. Because she was afraid. Afraid of what he made her feel.
    Of what her life would feel like without him.
    Of what her life would feel like if all the emotions she’d locked away came tumbling out.
     
    ***
     
    The fire was warm on his face. It penetrated the flannel and the wool and heated his skin.
    But it didn’t heat the fear in the seat of his soul that said he was losing her. That she was slipping further away.
    He’d hoped she would make that step. That after the car and the changing room, she would trust him enough