Page 48 of Checking It Twice
“I’m observing.”
“You’re staring at that bakery window like it personally offended you.” His thumb brushes across my knuckles, and I catch the way he’s studying my profile. “Headache coming back?”
“No headache. I told you, I’m fine.” I squeeze his hand reassuringly. “I’m just trying to figure out how they got that gingerbread house to defy physics.”
I glance at the display of gingerbread houses that probably took someone forty hours to construct—mastery that makes store-bought cookies seem like a personal failing.
“It’s just very... committed,” I say.
“To what?”
“The fantasy. All of this.” I gesture at the perfect street, the perfect decorations, the perfect small-town Christmas cheer happening around us. “It’s like someone took a Hallmark movie and made it real.”
He stops walking, turning to face me with those storm-gray eyes that see too much. “Is that bad?”
The question catches me off guard. Because the honest answer is no—it’s not bad. It’s beautiful and warm and everything I didn’t know I was missing. But admitting that feels dangerous, like giving up some essential piece of protective cynicism I’ve built my adult life around.
“It’s just different from what I’m used to.”
“Different how?”
I think about my last Christmas—takeout Chinese food and a Netflix marathon, the careful distance I maintained from anything that looked too much like hope. A quick phone call with Bryn. A couple of texts from my mom. Possibly a late-night session with Roberto just to feel something…
“Louder,” I say finally. “More... involved.”
His mouth curves into that devastating half-smile. “You don’t do involved?”
“I do involved. I’m very involved. With work. With my apartment’s organizational system. With maintaining a healthy skepticism about—”
He kisses me.
Right there on Main Street, with half the town probably watching, he cuts off my defensive babbling with his mouth. It’s soft, brief, unlike the heated tension that’s been building between us. But it’s public. Deliberate. A kiss that saysminewith zero regard for our audience.
When he pulls back, my thoughts have scattered like startled birds.
“What was that for?”
“You were spiraling.”
“I don’t spiral.”
“Clare Bear, you were about to launch into a dissertation on the socioeconomic implications of small-town Christmas displays.”
Heat crawls up my neck. Because he’s right. Because somehow, in three days, he’s learned to read the signs when I’m about to disappear behind walls of analysis and professional detachment.
“Maybe I was,” I admit.
“It’s okay to like it here.” His voice drops, taking on that rough edge that makes my pulse stutter. “It’s okay to like... this.”
This. The fake relationship that feels increasingly real. The family that’s absorbed me like I belong. The man who somehow makes me forget why keeping my distance was ever important.
“Come on,” he says, tugging me toward the next shop. “Mom’s list isn’t going to shop itself.”
The hardware store smells like wood shavings and possibility. Karen’s sent us for ribbon and battery-operated lights, but Mitch gets distracted by a display of vintage ornaments.
“She’ll love these,” he says, holding up a set of delicate glass snowflakes.
“They’re beautiful.” And expensive. And completely unnecessary. And somehow perfect for a woman who’s spent the weekend treating me like the daughter she never had.
