Page 26 of One Week With You
“I definitely would’ve burned this place down.”
He laughed, holding his hands up close to the heat, turning them this way and that. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m here.”
The snaps and crackles from the fire sharpened the silence in the room. My eyelids grew heavy as the adrenaline crashed and the chill began to ease from my bones.
“Whyareyou here?” I asked. “Not that you can’t be here of course. It’s your place. But…”
“You didn’t reply to any of my messages.”
I hung my head. “I’m sorry. I was going to, but I didn’t know what to say. I guess I needed some time. You didn’t need to travel all the way here for that.”
“Yes, I did. I wanted to see your face when we talked. I just wanted to talk, Talia. Also, I didn’t think it was safe for you to be alone. Actually, safe’s the wrong word. I didn’twantyou to be alone.”
“What?” I screwed up my face in confusion. “I’ve been up here almost a week. Why now?”
“You said you wanted time and space to think. I figured a week was enough.”
Something about that, respecting my boundaries, my wishes, warmed me inside.“You planned to come up here the whole time?”
“Pretty much,” Rafe said, and didn’t look the least bit sorry about it.
“But why?”
“I told you. I’m here to spend Christmas with you. No one should be alone on Christmas. You would’ve regretted it.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” I wasn’t about to tell him about the stomach-sinking doubts I’d had that morning.
A knowing look settled on his face. “Yes, you would. Maybe not yet. But come Christmas Eve, you’d have felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“The loneliness,” he said quietly. “It hits you when you least expect at this time of year. It happens to the best of us. Even those that don’t mind being alone most of the time.” His gaze drifted to the floor. “Christmas is different.”
“Oh.”
Inexplicably, my eyes stung. How many Christmases had Rafe spent alone before our family came along?
“You already felt it, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said weakly. “I’ve been fine.”
“Of course you have. You’re the kind of person who’d survive no matter what. But I know you. You need people around you. You’re sunshine, and people gravitate to you, they always have.”
I watched him intently now, a thrill rolling through my limbs. “You think I’m sunshine?”
“That’s my nickname for you.”
“You have a nickname for me?” I wasn’t sure why that made me so happy, but I felt the pinch of it in my cheeks. “Since when?”
“The moment I first laid eyes on you, walking towards me with the biggest goddamn smile I’d ever seen. You might’ve noticed I don’t do much of that.”
“Once or twice.” I shrugged, playing it off, all the while my heart felt like it was beating right out of my chest. “Maybe.”
His mouth twitched. “That day you wore a pale yellow T-shirt and with your long blonde hair you looked like the sun.”
My smile faded at the gravity of his words. The first time I met Rafe he’d looked at my offered hand like he wasn’t sure how hands worked. I thought he’d hated me. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember what he was wearing.
The importance of this moment shifted something inside me. This was the most he’d opened up to me in years. If ever.
