His Holiday Crush
Author: Cari Z.
Date: 2020-12-14 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Holiday; M M Romance; Romance; Christmas; Contemporary; Lgbt; Contemporary Romance; Fiction; Gay; Family
Description: Workaholic attorney Max Robertson is one meeting away from making partner at a big NYC firm when his best friend calls and guilts him into coming back home for Christmas. But there’s a reason he hasn’t been back to Edgewood for a decade—too many bad memories. The plan was to go for just one night, until a wild deer and a snow bank wrecked everything. Former Army Sergeant Dominic “Nicky” Bell is the new guy on the Edgewood police force, so of course he drew the short straw and is stuck working the night shift. But his evening gets turned upside-down when he gets called out to a wreck in the sno
Publisher: Entangled Publishing LLC (Brazen)

Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Cari Z. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

10940 S Parker Rd

Suite 327

Parker, CO 80134
rights@entangledpublishing.com

Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Amy Acosta

Cover design by Mayhem Cover Creations

Cover photography by svetikd and Dasha_Romanova/Getty Images

ISBN 978-1-64937-117-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition December 2020

Dear Reader,

Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

xoxo

Liz Pelletier, Publisher

This book is a true labor of love, and I’m honored to share it with you. I hope you enjoy the town of Edgewood as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter One

Max

I glanced at my phone, which I’d just hung up a few minutes ago, and suppressed a groan. Why had I said yes to going back home? Why? My best friend had cornered me right before the most important meeting of my career, and I’d made some panicked, vaguely assenting noises. Agreeing under duress was grounds for invalidating any promise, but I didn’t think Hal would care about the legalese.

Get your head in the game, Max.

I stared at myself in the mirror of my boss’ private bathroom and adjusted my tie, a textured black silk with narrow silver stripes, for the fourth time. It was just the classy touch the suit needed, sober but not stuffy, which was the impression we were shooting for with this client. I shifted the knot the tiniest bit to the right then nodded. Good, it was fine, it was perfect, just like how this meeting was going to go.

Everything else would be perfect as well if I could figure out a way to get out of going back to Edgewood.

Maybe I’d focused so hard on just one thing for the past three weeks—this meeting—that my brain couldn’t comprehend anything else that got thrown at it. Like random requests from my best friend for me to spend Christmas with him and his family in my hometown, rather than them coming to stay with me like they often did. Gah, I hadn’t been back to Edgewood in over a decade. I hadn’t wanted to be there.

I still didn’t want to be there.

“Why didn’t you just say no?” I snarked at myself as I adjusted my tie yet again. Because it was Hal, that was why. When he blindsided me by asking me to come back for Christmas—the girls’ first major holiday since their mom had freaked out and left, and his reason for wanting them to be in familiar, comfortable surroundings instead of my tiny apartment in the city—all I could think to say was, “Yes.”

“Max, you almost ready?” Marcus called from somewhere in the office—probably at his desk. He might as well have been grafted to it for all he moved from it most days.

“Almost!” I replied.

It wasn’t every day I could say that my future literally hung in the balance of what happened next, but today was that day for me. This wasn’t just a potential client meeting. This was one that I had brought in and I was taking the lead on. The billables it would bring our firm had the potential to kick me into another tax bracket and net me a promotion as well if I shared enough of the glory with my mentor. Which, of course, I would—Marcus had shepherded me through the first three years of my career, and he deserved to share the credit once I started bringing in real money. Partner-level money.

If I got this promotion, I would be the first person hired in my year to get to the junior partner level in Staller, Weisz and Coast. If I got this promotion, I would have enough money to move out of my tiny top-floor apartment and live some place that didn’t somehow feel hot and cold at the same time. Some place where I wouldn’t have to put Hal on a fold-out couch and convince the girls they didn’t hear roaches in the walls at night when they visited. If I got this promotion, I would finally be able to take the vacation I’d been planning for what felt like forever—go down to Florida and visit my mom in the Keys then spend a solid week on the beaches of Miami getting a tan and finding a friendly guy to enjoy the evenings with.

Basically, I had to get this promotion, and that started with this meeting going well.

I smoothed my hair back one last time, turned my phone off and tucked it into the pocket specially designed for it inside my jacket—who even knew suits were made with pockets like that? I definitely hadn’t before I got to New York City—and exited the bathroom. Marcus was at his desk like I’d thought, but he was standing, shuffling through the brief I’d typed up last week for probably the fifth time today.

“Are you sure about this initial offer?” he asked with a frown. Marcus had the broadness of a football player well into retirement—wide shoulders, big chest, and a belly that he tamed with an aggressively fitted waistcoat. “It seems a bit low to me. Once you start dealing with players at this level, they care more about paying enough than paying too little.”

“It’s five percent above what they were paying before,” I said, shutting the bathroom door and coming over to the desk. “And there’s a clause for renegotiation after the first year on page fifteen.”

Marcus shrugged and made a meh sound then glanced up at me. “Hey—looking pretty good, Max. Is that one of the suits Clara helped you find?” Clara Staller was Marcus’s wife, a woman with a deep understanding of fashion and an uncanny ability to pick clothes that would make almost anyone look good. She’d cornered me at my first company holiday party and gently let me know that black—straight-up solid black, like the suit I’d been wearing at that very moment—was only for funerals and federal agents, not lawyers with big corporate clients. She’d given me some good tips and the occasional nudge in the right direction, and now I could swim with the sharks without looking like a tasty guppy.

Usually. A lock of my golden-brown hair fell across my face, still unruly after multiple applications of gel. I sighed and pushed it back into place. “Yeah, a few months ago.”

“It’s a good one. Unlike this clause.”

No, no, nope. I wasn’t even going to think about that clause right now or about reworking it. I had too many other things swirling around in my head. Like a trip to Edgewood I was most definitely going to find a way out of.

“The clause is fine,” I said firmly. “It’s standard for an initial presentation, and it’s too late to take it out of the paperwork anyway.”

Marcus stared solemnly at me for a long moment before his square, ruddy face broke into a broad smile. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Way to stick to your guns, son. That’s what I’ve been looking for from you. That’s the attitude you need to win in this business. Be firm, but flexible, and don’t let the client or your co-counsel bully you into making rash decisions.”

“I learned from the best.”

He chuckled. “I’m happy to be sitting in on this meeting, but I don’t honestly think you’re going to need me. You’ve worked really hard on this, and it shows, Max. Trust me when I tell you that the other partners are paying attention to your dedication to this firm. Ever since Peterson left, you’re at the top of their list.”

That was a funny choice in words. Peterson hadn’t left. The twenty-seven-year-old guy had been carried out of here on a stretcher after suffering a heart attack in his office two months ago. His office that was the one next door to mine. He’d almost died while I’d been right next door, too focused on work to even notice.

I mentally shook myself out of it. Now wasn’t the time for that kind of recollection. Or for worrying about unintended promises—no way I was going back home. Now was the time to get my game face on and land my first big client.

“Even so,” Marcus said. “It never hurts to revise your paperwork.”

I chuckled and grabbed the second folder with my copy of the paperwork from Marcus’s desk and checked it one last time. I wasn’t the sort to swagger—at least I didn’t think I was—but I couldn’t help feeling confident.

I finished looking over the paperwork then closed it up in the folder and squared my shoulders. With a nod at Marcus, I led the way, marching down to the conference room.

I was going to close this deal and rake in the accolades from the firm’s partners while I hammered out the details of what this client wanted from us. Maybe I’d even go to a bar tonight and find a warm, willing someone to have a private celebration with—someone who didn’t mind lying back and letting me take the lead. There was no one special, but there didn’t need to be—I had been focused like a laser on my career for the past three years, and that focus was finally paying off. Finding a boyfriend could happen later. Getting the promotion that could catapult me to partner level?

That was going to happen right now.

…

One lunch meeting, two hours, and three signatures later, Marcus was grinning proudly and pounding me on the back as soon as the conference room door closed. “You nailed it,” he said, voice quiet so it didn’t carry to the clients, who were being seen out by Jessie, but still effusive. “I couldn’t have handled that meeting better myself. I thought by the end of it, they were going to beg to sign with you.”

I grinned back at him. “It did go well, didn’t it?”

“Like I said, couldn’t have gone better. What on earth did you do to impress the old man so much, huh?”

“I complimented his taste in movies.” Actually, I’d complimented his taste in classic cars, which had segued into a discussion of Bond films and eventually come around to talking about his business needs and how he might benefit from a different law firm representing him.

But that wasn’t the sort of detail Marcus cared about, and sure enough, he simply shrugged and said, “Well, whatever works is what I always say. I’ll approve the overtime so you can keep Jessie here late tonight to get things sorted for the next round of talks on Monday.”

“Of course,” I said, taking out my phone to write last-minute notes and set some reminders. The moment the screen lit up, it buzzed with an incoming call.

I was so startled I almost dropped it. Hal, the caller ID read. Why was he calling me? We’d just talked a couple of hours ago.

Actually…now might be as good a time as any to call off the trip.

“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” I told Marcus.

Marcus gave me one more clap on the back and walked away, and I answered the call just before it tipped over into voicemail.

“Hal, hey, I’m glad you called back. Listen, things are ridiculously busy here. We just landed a major client, and I need to let you know that—”

“Hi, Max!”

Oh god, it wasn’t Hal. It was Marnie, his older daughter, newly turned eight and very proud of it. All the briskness dropped out of my tone as I replied, “Hey, sweetie! What’s going on? Why are you on your daddy’s phone?”

“I wanted to call you, Max! Daddy said he talked to you, but he forgot to let me talk to you, so I found your picture in his phone and pushed it. I put you on speaker so Steph can hear, too.”

“Wow, that’s…you’re…” Unexpectedly good with her dad’s phone. “It’s so nice to hear from you, Marnie. Listen, I’m still at work and have some things to finish, but I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can—”

“Max, you don’t have to call me!” She giggled. “You’ll be here already. Daddy said so. You can just talk to me in the face!”

Oh damn…I loved the way she mixed her metaphors, but I was less enthusiastic about letting her down. “Well actually, sweetie, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to your daddy about. See, it’s so busy here right now that I don’t think I’ll be able to get up to see you this holiday.”

There was a long silence, finally broken with, “But…but Daddy said you would.”

“Daddy” had ambushed me with the invitation in a moment of distraction, and I’d given in. Now I needed to extricate myself as painlessly as possible, but it wasn’t going to be easy. I glanced at the clock on the conference room wall and winced. “I know, girls, but that was before my schedule got so out of hand, and now—”

“But you told Daddy you would come!” Marnie’s voice was getting shrill and a little distant, like she was rearing back from the phone. “First Mommy won’t come back and now you won’t come at all, and we can’t go and see you, and Christmas is going to be so sad!”

I could picture her little face crumpling, and I didn’t even want to know what Steph looked like—she’d almost completely stopped speaking since her mom left.

Oh my god, I was the worst person ever.

I was the Grinch who stole Christmas.

“Okay, okay. Please don’t yell. I…I’ll be there,” I said recklessly. There had to be a way I could do it. Even if it was just one night, I could do that for Hal and the girls. “Tonight, okay? I’ll be there tonight.” I could be out of the office by three, pack up and be on the road by three thirty, get to Edgewood by seven thirty, and have a little time with the girls before they went to bed.

We could drink hot chocolate, open the presents I’d sent them ahead of time, and I could talk with Hal once they were asleep and see how he was really doing with the divorce. Maybe convince him to bring the girls up to the city for New Year’s, once the furor over this deal died down a bit.

I could do it. Given the way Marnie was crowing right now, so excited I could make out the sound of her feet hopping against the floor, I’d better do it. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she shrieked. The hopping got louder—maybe Steph had joined in.

“Anything for you two.” I was wrapped around their little fingers, case in point. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay, Max, bye!”

I ended the call then pressed the edge of my cell phone to my temple and sighed. I really didn’t want to go to Edgewood, but I didn’t have a choice anymore. I couldn’t let the girls down, yet I also couldn’t throw away months of work on this client.

“Max? You okay?”

Jessie, my assistant, stood uncertainly at the conference room door.

I forced a smile. “I’m fine. I know it’s unusual, but would you be available to help me do the prep work for Monday’s meeting tomorrow afternoon? I’ll make sure you’re paid overtime.” I’d make sure of it if I had to pay her myself—the partners didn’t tend to approve overtime on weekends for admin staff, but screw that. I needed the help, and Jessie knew her stuff.

“That’s fine, Max. I’ll be around. Just give me an hour or so’s notice, okay?”

“Great, thank you.”

She nodded then grinned. “It sounds like the meeting went well. Are you happy with the results?”

I grinned back. “Very happy.”

Unfortunately, Marcus was not happy when I told him of my sudden plans.

I did my best not to wince at his disapproval. “It’s a family emergency,” I added when Marcus’s frown verged on turning into a scowl.

“Is someone dying?” he asked bluntly.

I shook my head.

“Then how is it an emergency?”

Given that he hadn’t made a single birthday party his wife had thrown for their sons since I started working here, I knew this wasn’t hyperbole on his part, but it didn’t matter. I’d made a promise to Marnie and Steph, and I wouldn’t break it.

“I have to go. But I’ll be back tomorrow,” I assured him. “There’ll be plenty of time to get the preliminary work done before the meeting on Monday.”

“Max.” Marcus shook his head heavily. “You’re this close to securing a real future for you in the firm, and the last thing you want is to falter right before the finish line. You can’t afford any distractions right now. You’ve signed the client to a preliminary agreement, but that’s not going to be enough to hold them here if they feel undervalued.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t.” But I also wasn’t going to make my best friend and his family feel undervalued, especially not this close to the holidays. I couldn’t go back on my word now, I just couldn’t. Not after talking to Marnie.

Besides, it was just one night.

“I’ll handle it, sir.”

It wasn’t the first time Marcus had been angry at me, and it wouldn’t be the last. Experience had taught me it was better not to dwell on other people’s feelings, especially when I had no hope of changing them. Right now, I needed to get home, pack, and get on the road. To Edgewood, land of a dozen decent memories and a thousand bad ones. Well, really only a few bad ones, but they took up so much space in my brain that they felt limitless.

Whatever. I wouldn’t be there long enough to dwell on the past.

…

A quick change of clothes and a hastily packed overnight bag later, I was cruising along on the I-87 highway on my way to Edgewood for the first time in ten years. My jaw ached from clenching it so much, and not just because of the snow making the visibility crap. Returning to the town where my worst memories lived had never been part of my plans. But I could set aside my issues and make the girls’ holidays a little less bleak, at least for one night.

Which reminded me I needed to call Hal about my plans. I said his name aloud and waited for my phone to dial.

He answered after a single ring. “If you’re calling to bail, Max, I swear to God—”

“I’m not calling to bail.” Of course, if I hadn’t already talked to Marnie, I would have been calling to bail, but he didn’t need to know that. “I just wanted to let you know I’m on the road now.”

“Really?” Hal sounded both surprised and pleased. “That’s great. I thought I’d have to fight a lot harder to get you back here, honestly.”

“Well…”

He sighed. “Here it comes.”

“I’m only staying for the night.”

“You’re coming all this way just to spend one night here?” Hal exclaimed.

“I’ve got a prep meeting tomorrow for a big deal going down on Monday, and I have to be here for those.”

“Have you ever heard of Zoom?” my best friend asked sarcastically. “I understand it’s all the rage these days.”

“Ha, ha,” I deadpanned. “Yes, I’ve heard of Zoom, but these sorts of meetings are never as effective online as they are in person.” Hal didn’t say anything. “Hal. C’mon, you know I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t a big deal, but this client could make or break my career with the firm. I’ve been working toward this moment for the past three years. Three years.”

“Max,” he said on a sigh. “I know how hard you work, and I’m glad things are finally coming together. And hey, it’s really not necessary for you to come out if you’re this busy. The girls will understand.”

The hell they would. “You’re such a liar. They’re singing and dancing about it, aren’t they?”

“To the tune of ‘Let It Go,’” Hall affirmed, a little bit of good humor entering his voice. “Look, if you’re sure, then I’ll let them stay up late tonight so they can spend time with you when you get in. It’s sweet of you to do this for them.”

“And you.” Because now that I was listening to him, really listening, I could hear the stress in Hal’s voice. Of course he was stressed—he was running his own contracting company, taking care of two young daughters over their school break, and going through a divorce, all without any backup. Suddenly, I felt like crap for not doing better on the visit front. Even a single phone call a week might have made a difference for him, but I’d been so wrapped up in this deal that I’d forgotten everything except work. “I’m coming for you, too.”

“Eh, I’m doing okay. Nicky’s tour ended six months ago, and he settled back in town, so he’s helping out with the girls when my neighbor can’t.” Nicky was Hal’s brother, four years younger than us. I barely remembered him. “Be careful on the drive, all right? They’re forecasting a hell of a storm front coming through. Snow’s already coming down here.”

“You bet.” Hal and I said good-bye, and I felt good enough to turn the volume up on the radio. Holiday songs on all stations, familiar and merry and mindless, just what I needed to listen to when I had too many things to think about already.

The first two hours of the drive were a breeze, but my cheer began to ebb as the snow piled up higher and higher between the lanes and on the side of the highway. By the time I turned onto State Route 10, the veil of snow beyond my windshield made it hard to see anything. My wipers might as well have been standing still for all the good they did me. The road was practically abandoned—not surprising, considering the destination—which was good, because I didn’t want to hit anyone. I wasn’t going to stop, though, rear-wheel drive bullshit and poor visibility or not.

That wasn’t exactly careful behavior. If I turned around now, I could get back to Schenectady in under fifteen minutes and find a hotel. But if I did that, I’d spend the one night I’d decided to take to see Hal and his daughters by myself, which completely defeated the purpose of driving up here for the night in the first place.

Nope. Not happening. I’d be fine. I was almost there. There were no signs, but there didn’t need to be. If you took this road for long enough, you’d end up in the center of the little town of Edgewood, population around twenty thousand—up to triple that in the summer when the tourists came to play in the wilderness areas of Adirondack Park.

The radio played a vibrant version of “Let It Snow” as I peered through the windshield—how appropriate. I was close. I was so close. I could practically see the streetlamps in the distance. I could see the—

Deer!

It jumped right out in front of my car, freezing in the glare of my headlights. I jerked my wheel hard to the right, toward the shoulder. Jump away, jump away! The deer didn’t move, but I still missed it by inches.

I didn’t miss the snowbank, though. I hit it with the front right corner of the car, which crumpled with an ear-splitting crunch and sent the rest of the car careening in a half spin until the whole thing ended up lodged sideways in the bank. My airbag saved me from hitting the steering wheel, but I still felt like I got punched in the face as I sat there afterward, quietly stunned as my brain tried to process what my body had just gone through.

“—it snow, let it snow, let it snow! When we finally kiss good night—” I shut off the radio in a daze.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “Holy—fuck.”

Where was my phone? Shit. I needed to call someone. I needed help. There was no way I was getting my car out of this snowbank by myself. I knew that much without trying. I’d need a tow.

I fumbled for my phone and stared at it for a moment. I should call…um…my insurance, to let them know about the accident? Hal, to let him know I’d be late? A tow company? In the end, though, the only numbers my fingers could reliably find were 9-1-1.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Um…” C’mon, brain. “It’s not really an emergency, but, ah…I crashed my car.”

“Are you or anyone else involved in the accident injured, sir?”

“It’s just me, and…no. Not really. Not much.”

I thought I heard the operator sigh. “Sir, if you’ll give me your location, I’ll notify the local police department to come and assist you.”

Right. Not an emergency. I passed on my information and was told to expect someone within the next ten to fifteen minutes. “It’s the best we can do in this weather, sir,” the operator informed me, and I got it. There had to be a lot of people crashing thanks to this snowstorm, and mine was a single car, non-injury accident. I wasn’t exactly a top priority.

My engine wasn’t running, but the inside of my car was still marginally warmer than the outside of it, even now that the passenger-side window was cracked. I sat there and did my best to stave off serious case of the “what-ifs.” It wasn’t working.

What if I’d hit the snowbank harder? What if I’d rammed the deer? What if I’d died on a country road a week before Christmas and made Hal feel guilty about me being an idiot forever? How would the girls take it? Shit. It didn’t bear thinking about.

At least I hadn’t hit anyone else. That was a mercy.

I scrubbed my trembling hands over my face, wincing a little at the pressure it put on my right cheek. That was going to bruise. My jaw bristled with a five o’clock shadow, and my hair had gone from stiff to floppy after hours melting under the blast of the heater. I had to look like a total disaster right now. Ha, a perfect match for my car.

Like a match flaring up in the darkness, a pair of headlights appeared through the falling snow ahead of me. I resisted the urge to get out and wave them over to my side of the road—if it was the police, they’d stop. If it wasn’t, then I’d do better letting them drive on and get home to their own family anyway.

The vehicle, a Jeep with an Edgewood PD logo on the side of it, pulled in across the road from me, leaving its headlights on. A figure got out from the driver’s side and headed over to me, one hand holding up a flashlight. I tried to roll down my window—nothing. The battery must have gotten fucked up, too. Great. I heaved a sigh then opened the door and got out of the car.

“Hi there, Officer,” I said, waving a hand before crossing my arms over my chest—shit, it was cold out here. I could barely see the person behind the glare of their light. “I’m really hoping that you’re my ride.”

For a long moment, there was no reply, and I wondered where I’d gone wrong. Was this not really a cop? Was I about to get murdered by a flashlight-wielding serial killer?

Calm down the lizard brain, man.

“Yep,” the guy said at last. His voice was a little rough, like he’d just downed a shot of whiskey. “That’s me.”

A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Maybe this crash wasn’t the worst thing ever, if it meant getting rescued by this guy.

Chapter Two

Dominic

Dinah’s Diner was the first place you saw coming into Edgewood and the last place you passed leaving it. It was the unofficial hangout of the force, with good food that was fairly cheap, as long as you didn’t mind Dinah listening over your shoulder as calls came in over the radio. I was halfway through a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes when I got the call from dispatch with word of a car accident on Route 10. No injuries, but the car was undriveable, from the sound of things, and the guy needed someone to come and pick him up.

I sighed and put my fork down. I was the only person in the diner tonight other than Dinah and her husband Troy, who doubled as the line cook. It was just seven thirty, but with this weather, nobody else was dumb enough to be out and about. As Edgewood’s officer on call until tomorrow morning, it meant that this and whatever any other unlucky soul or drunk dumbass decided to do in the next twelve hours was all on me. Dinah, a plump redhead in her sixties wearing a handmade gingham apron over her Metallica T-shirt and jeans, patted me on the hand before pointedly filling my travel mug with coffee.

So much for catching up on my reading.

“What’s the name of the guy I’m off to rescue?” I asked over my radio as I set a twenty down on the table. Dinah scowled at me, but I put my plate on top of it and resolutely didn’t let her pull it out and bring me half of it back as change.

“Uh, hang on…looks like a Mr. Max Robertson.”

I’d just taken a sip of my fresh hot coffee, and hearing that name promptly sent it down the wrong tube. I coughed, trying not to swallow my tongue as I came to grips with what I was hearing. Max Robertson? Back in Edgewood? Or, you know, on the road five minutes outside of it. Shit, I hadn’t thought about him in…

Days, at least. It had been days. It wasn’t reasonable to think about your first crush any more often than that, and I was a reasonable guy.

Calm down. It might not even be the same Max Robertson. There were probably hundreds of them. Thousands.

Yeah, but how many of those thousands would bother heading here?

“Max Robertson?” Dinah put one hand on her hip as she frowned thoughtfully at the snow. “You think she means Maxfield Robertson? Max Senior’s boy?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying for noncommittal. Judging from the look on her face, I hadn’t quite managed it.

“Wasn’t he best friends with your brother?”

“He still is, as far as I know.” I got up from the booth and grabbed my thick, puffy down jacket. “Hal and the girls go to visit him in the city once a year or so.”

“Has he been back to visit before this?”

“I don’t know.” My brother had never mentioned anything about Max coming here. But I’d only been back in town myself for about six months, and four months of that had been absolute chaos after Ariel left.

“Huh.” She looked at me. “You should bring him by for some supper.”

Oh boy. “I’m sure he’s got somewhere to be, Dinah. Probably Hal’s.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like Hal’ll have anything edible going at home. Face it, honey, your brother cooks from boxes. I’ll make enough for the boy to take with him. On the house, of course.”

“Dinah—”

“It’ll just take five minutes.”

I sighed. There was no gainsaying Dinah sometimes, especially when her ultimatums involved food. “I’ll see what he wants. He might not be hungry.”

“If it’s Max Jr., I know he’ll be hungry for my cooking.” She shooed me out the door, the bell clinging merrily as I walked out into the snow. Christ, it was coming down hard.

I blew once on my hands then grabbed my gloves as I headed for my Jeep. After graduating from the police academy, once I was hired by Edgewood PD, they’d asked if I minded using my own car as my police vehicle. It was a small department, and vehicles that could get around in any weather were hard to afford. I didn’t mind, anything to help me pay it off faster, but I surreptitiously checked it for dirty napkins or drink containers before I left the diner parking lot.

I had to stop panicking.

It might not be the same guy.

…

I clung to that thought as I drove down Route 10, keeping my eyes open for any sign of the car accident. After what had happened with Max—with his dad, more specifically—I don’t think anyone expected him to come back here, especially not with his father still living on the outskirts of town. Mayor Robertson had been a great guy: extroverted, garrulous, and a good money manager. Everybody had loved him, until he got behind the wheel while drunk and hit another car coming home from a fundraiser.

It happened during Max and Hal’s senior year, back when I was just a freshman. The girl who died, Everly, had been a classmate of theirs.

After the accident, Max had spent a week at our house and barely said a thing the whole time. I remembered his shouting match with his father in my parents’ driveway and how his dad had forced him into the car. That was the last time I saw him, apart from Everly’s funeral. He and his mom left Edgewood right after that. Hal didn’t like to talk about it, so I hadn’t brought up Max more than once since then.

I shook my head free of the memories and focused.

Visibility was crap, even with the Jeep’s floodlights. I drove slowly and looked out for anything that stood out among all the white. Aha. There, up on the right side of the road, just past the bridge. The car’s lights were out, but the shadow of it was distinct against the wall of snow it had crashed into. Damn. I hoped he really was uninjured and not just in shock while he’d talked to 911.

I parked on the righthand shoulder, grabbed my flashlight, and got out of the car. The silhouette of a man greeted me, resolving into a familiar face as I got the light up.

Oh, shit. It was him. It was Max “Don’t call me Maxfield” Robertson. Same dark blond hair, same oddly bright blue eyes—like someone had opened up a fresh can of aquamarine paint and infused it with sunshine. He’d always looked like a movie star to me, only he’d gone from teenybopper dreamboy to A-list icon. He was ridiculously handsome in a pair of tight jeans and a dark, V-necked Henley.

He also looked ridiculously cold—why the hell wasn’t he wearing a coat?

“Hi there, Officer,” he said, and fuck, yep, I hadn’t misremembered that voice in the ten years since I’d last seen him. Max was an average-sized guy, but his voice had broken low and stayed that way. “I’m really hoping that you’re my ride.”

It took me a second to realize that he hadn’t used my name. Could he not see my face? Did he not recognize me? Not the time, I muttered internally. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said after a moment, pausing to clear my throat. “Are you all right, sir?”

“Apart from some wounded pride and a kiss on the cheek from my airbag, I’m fine.” He glanced at the car. “It won’t start. Otherwise, I’d have moved it further off the road.”

I took a look at the car—a four-door BMW sedan—and decided it was okay as-is for now. None of it was sticking out into the lane, at least. “It’ll keep,” I said. “How did the crash happen?”

“I did a great job of dodging a deer but a really crappy job of dodging a snowbank.” He rubbed his hands along his arms. “Can we talk more about it in your car? I don’t mean to push, but I’m freezing.”

Jeez, of course he was. “Sure thing,” I said. “Do you have anything with you that you want to bring, Mr. Robertson? A bag, maybe a coat and hat?”

His eyes shut for a moment. “Right. Yes, let me grab that.” He opened the back door, and I heard a zipper swoosh up and down for a moment. When he straightened up again, he had a backpack at his feet and was shrugging a thick leather jacket on over his shoulders. He looked a little sheepish. “I forgot all about it.”

Yeah, there had definitely been some shock happening here. I decided not to press, just nodded and led him back to the Jeep. His shoes slipped on the snow—he was in a pair of black, shiny loafers. Loafers, seriously. I grabbed his arm to help keep him upright but let him get into the Jeep himself. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Don’t drive off without me, okay?”

“Very trusting, Officer,” he replied, amusement lacing his voice despite his obvious cold and discomfort.

“Nah, you just look like the kind of guy who knows when he’s beat.”

Max laughed. “You’d be surprised.”

His laugh sent a shiver down my spine. I wanted to hear it again. All of a sudden, I was grateful to Dinah for offering up her diner. It would give me a little more time to spend with Max, and I wanted as much time as I could get. Hal would understand.

I put reflective neon tape on the edges of Max’s car and made sure the doors were locked. Odds were nobody would break into it out here, but I didn’t want him coming back to find a raccoon had made a nest out of his leather interior. Once that was done, I hustled back to the car and got into the driver’s seat. Max had his seat belt on, his hands still folded under his armpits. I turned the heater up to high then drove until I found a spot to turn around.

“Thanks for the rescue,” Max said once we got headed the right way.

“It’s my job.” I wanted to smack myself as soon as I said it—I mean, it was my job, but right now it was also completely my pleasure.

“Still, I appreciate it, Officer…” He glanced at my jacket, but my ID was on the shirt underneath it. Once he saw it, though, once he realized I had the same last name as his best friend…

“Dominic,” I blurted. “My name is Dominic.” Would that be enough to clue him in? I held my breath.

Max chuckled. “No standing on formality, huh? Nice to meet you, Dominic. I’m Max.”

Oh, didn’t I know it. He was the focus of every embarrassing dream I had freshman year.

We drove in silence for a while, before Max made a noise and suddenly pulled a phone out of his pocket. “Shit, I should call Hal—my friend. I was supposed to be at his house over an hour ago.” He shut his eyes and groaned. “One night, one freaking night I’m coming to visit, and I crash my car right before I get to town. His kids are probably going to bed soon. I might not even see them.”

“Not on a weekend,” I said without thinking about it then winced. Had I given myself away? Did it matter if I had? It wasn’t like I could remain incognito forever, not with Max actually staying in Hal’s house. I went over almost every day to visit and make something edible to stick in the fridge. I was definitely going to be seen.

To my relief, Max nodded. “Right, of course. Still, I should call him, let him know what happened and that I’m okay. I’m sure he can come and pick me up if you need to leave me somewhere in town and get back to work.”

Nothing else had come in over the radio, which meant that nothing else was pressing, but since there was a place to go, and Dinah was waiting for us anyway… “How about Dinah’s Diner? It’s a local place near downtown.”

Max’s smile brightened his face somehow, despite both of us being completely surrounded by darkness. “Dinah’s is still around? I used to love that place! She had the best pie, and—oh wow,” he said, leaning forward a little as we hit the outskirts of town. “Christmas lights on every lamppost?”

“It gets better. You just can’t see the tinsel shapes with all the snow. There are Santa faces and candy canes and menorahs up there, too.”

“Holy shit, that’s merry.” He sat back and looked out at the passing lamps like they were signs in a language he didn’t understand. “How did the city council ever vote to spend the money on this?”

“Mayor Clawson is very convincing when it comes to holiday aesthetics.”

“Clawson…Mary Clawson, the lady who owns the fabric store?”

I nodded. “She’s branched out to include all kinds of crafts, and she does scrapbooking classes on weekends and after-school projects for kids. You can’t go into her store without slipping on glitter and glue some days.”

“Huh.” He was silent after that, and as much as I wanted to, I didn’t know how to break it. It had to be strange, coming back to the place you’d grown up and finding out how much it had changed. I’d been gone for years myself, but it was different for me. I’d always known I was coming back.

I parked in front of Dinah’s Diner. “You want to make your call before we go in?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah.” He glanced down at his phone. “Yeah, do you mind if I—I’ll be right behind you.”

“No problem.” I got out of the Jeep and left him in the car as I headed into the diner. The steps leading up to it had a fresh layer of salt on them, and the smell of an apple pie baking hit me as soon as I opened the door.

“I see how it is,” I said to Dinah as I stamped the snow off my boots onto her mat then hung up my jacket on the rack. “Us regulars have to suffer through cold pie, while fancy newcomers get the special stuff.”

“You don’t have to suffer through any of my pie if you don’t want to,” Dinah huffed. “Where’s the guy?”

“He’s in my car calling Hal.”

Her eyes lit up. “It’s Maxfield, then?”

I shook my head. “Don’t call him that, Dinah. You know he always hated it.”

“Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs.” She looked outside again. “Ah, here he is!” The door jingled, and before it had a chance to stop, Dinah was on Max like white on snow. “Well, look who the storm’s blown in!” she crowed, opening her arms.

Max, to his credit, went from startled to smiles in the blink of an eye. “Dinah!”

They embraced, and she pounded his back hard enough that my own ribs hurt from watching it. “Whoa, easy,” Max said, breaking away with an apologetic wince. “I’m still a little tender from the seat belt.”

“Oh, you—of course! Damn it.” She looked at me. “Why didn’t you stop me from hugging him if you knew he was hurt?”

I opened my mouth to defend myself—because honestly, what—but Max was already all over it. “No, don’t blame Dominic. I only just realized that I’m a little sore there.”

She looked at him, holding him at arms’ length and staring him up and down. “Good lord, you’re skinny. Is food so expensive in the city that you can’t afford to eat more than one meal a day?”

“It’s more that everything tastes like disappointment compared to your cooking.”

Dinah chortled and smacked his arm. “Still charming, I see. Just like your—” She paused, caught herself, but Max clearly knew what she’d been about to say, if the way his smile dropped off his face was any indication. “Just like you used to be,” she finished gamely. “Go on, you two, go sit down. I’ll get you some food. Do you still like meat burgers, Max?”

“Who doesn’t like burgers?” Max asked as he hung his coat up next to mine.

She shook her head sadly. “Vegans, that’s who. Always asking for veggie burgers and tofu patties. I’ve got a whole vegan section on the menu now, just in case.”

I bit back a chuckle at Dinah’s tirade. I heard it at least once a day.

“Well, I’m not a vegan, and I’d love a good old-fashioned burger, thanks.”

“I’m still full from the meatloaf earlier,” I said when she looked at me.

“Nonsense, you didn’t even finish it. How do you take yours these days, Max?” she asked as he settled into one of the diner’s gold-vinyl booths.

Max tilted his head slightly, and—yeah, shit. That plus the smile was pretty charming. “Cooked medium, with lettuce and tomato, please.”

“Cheese? Cheddar, pepper jack, American, swiss, Monterey Jack, feta, goat cheese?”

“Pepper jack, please.”

“Good choice. Fries? Salad?” Her tone of voice said you better pick the fries, buddy.

“Fries are good.”

“Great!” She turned toward the kitchen. “Troy! Walk a couple of cows through a garden and put one in a pepper patch! Frog sticks for both!”

“What?” Troy yelled from the back.

“I said—lord.” She shook her head. “He’s taken his damn hearing aids out already. I’ll be back with some coffee and water in a minute, boys.” She headed back for the kitchen.

Max caught my eye and grinned. “I don’t remember her being so…colorful with her orders.”

“It’s totally a schtick,” I confided. “One of the mayor’s marketing schemes involves really playing up the ‘small town charm’ of Edgewood, or so she says. Dinah has interpreted that in her own special way.”

“I like it.” He unrolled his set of silverware from the napkin and smoothed it out in front of him, like his hands couldn’t quite stand being still. “And how has the police department pumped up their ‘small town charm?’”

“We make sure to rescue a cat stuck up a tree at least once a day in the summer,” I replied, doing my best to keep a straight face. “We really make a big deal out of it. Why should the fire department get all the good press, after all?”

“Solid effort. What else?”

“Officers and other city workers take turns dressing up in the town mascot’s uniform for holidays and parades.”

A crinkle of puzzlement developed between Max’s eyebrows, and he stopped fiddling with the napkin. “Town mascot?” he asked as Dinah showed up with the drinks.

“Oh yeah. Mayor Clawson got the idea when she visited her son and daughter-in-law in Japan. Apparently, a lot of Japanese towns and cities have mascots, and she thought it would be fun if we did, too. Edgewood is now the happy home of Edwina the Blissful Beaver.”

Max almost dropped his water glass. “Hold on, what? Edwina the Beaver?”

“Yep.” I was really enjoying the look on his face. Maybe a little too much. “The mayor made the costume herself. It’s basically a big brown beaver with manga eyes wearing an apron.”

“Creepy as hell,” Dinah grumbled, adding her two cents as she poured the coffee. “She tried to get me into it for the Fourth of July parade last year. I’ve never been so glad to be a size twenty in all my life.”

“Nobody really likes wearing the costume, but it has been really popular,” I said. “Like, there was actually a Buzzfeed article about it. Now the mayor and Lauren—she’s my work partner—and the DMV’s office manager take turns being Edwina.”

Max’s eyes were comically wide. “And your partner doesn’t mind?”

I shrugged. “She gets overtime pay to do it, so no.” Lauren actually hated dressing up in the thing—“Does Mary not get what beaver is slang for?” she’d demanded more than once—but with four kids at home and a husband who had disabilities and couldn’t work, she jumped at any chance to make a little extra money.

“Edwina the Beaver. Wow.” Max sat back against the booth, holding his coffee mug but not drinking yet. “Does Edgewood still do the big tree downtown? And the nativity scene at the church?”

“Yes to the tree, no to a permanent nativity. Baby Jesus was stolen three years ago, and we still don’t know who took him.” I held up my hands when he looked at me incredulously. “Hey, I wasn’t even here three years ago. Don’t look at me! The past two years there’s been a nativity play on Christmas Eve. They get live animals brought in and everything.”

“Mary tried to get a real camel for it the first time around.” Dinah shook her head. “I told her you can’t just rent a camel, they’re a specialty item, but she tried until she was blue in the face. She finally settled on dressing her Labrador up in a camel costume.”

Max was laughing now. He was gorgeous when he laughed, his eyes brighter than ever, lines appearing in the corners as his grin stretched wide. I bit my lip as my stomach swooped in reaction. “What did she use for camels last year?”

“Blow-up dolls, same as she wants to use this year. They’re easier—way less mess than real animals.”

“Blow-up…wait, what?” I couldn’t help it—the thought of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus surrounded by a bunch of open-mouthed porno blow-up dolls was enough to make me lose it. I put my coffee down and laughed, covering my face with one hand. Me cracking up made Max laugh harder.

“Why are you—oh my god!” Dinah slapped her dishtowel across the edge of our table. “You filthy things, get your minds out of the gutter! They’re in the shapes of animals, not people! They’re cartoon-like!”

“That—that doesn’t make it better,” Max gasped. “That kind of makes it wo-worse…”

I had to put my head down on the table, I was laughing so hard. With any luck, our little church would have the filthiest nativity display on the East Coast this year. Maybe Buzzfeed would do another article on it.

The bell on the kitchen counter rang. “Order up!” Troy shouted like it was the middle of the lunch rush. I glanced his way—he’d gone all out for the holidays, which meant he was using a red Santa hat instead of a net to hold back his long, gray hair.

Thirty seconds later, my second dinner of the night thunked down onto the table, followed by bottles of ketchup, mustard, and whatever hot sauce had been on sale at Costco that week. “You boys eat up and enjoy,” Dinah said with a smile. Lipstick had seeped into the wrinkles in the corners of her mouth, stretching it out into more of a rictus than a grin. She looked tired, and I felt guilty for keeping her here.

“We’ll be out of your hair soon,” I promised her.

“Aw, honey, are you kidding me? What’ve I got to rush home for, huh?” She patted my shoulder. “I’ll box up the pie for you to take home.” She vanished into the back.

“She hasn’t changed much.”

I glanced at Max, who was staring after Dinah with a strange, sort of wistful expression on his face. “I kind of worried,” he said slowly, “that everyone I used to know would be completely different. I could pick Dinah out of a lineup any day, though. She’ll probably die with that fire engine red hair.”

“She will if she has anything to say about it,” I agreed. “Uh…are you…” I wanted to ask if he was okay, if he really didn’t recognize me or if he just didn’t care, and half a dozen other questions flashing through my mind, but I worried that anything I said would break the spell.

Max sighed. “Sorry, I know I’m being weird. Don’t listen to me. It’s just…I haven’t been here in a really long time.” He resolutely bit into his burger, and his expression of forced calm melted into pure happiness. “Ohmmgdd,” he muttered around his bite.

“Right?” What the hell, it wasn’t like I’d gotten to finish the meatloaf. I poured a pool of ketchup out onto the edge of my plate and began to eat. Silence reigned for another few minutes as we worked on our plates.

“So,” Max said once his burger and half of his fries had been annihilated. He sat back and pulled down the zipper on his jacket, and—damn. It was all I could do to keep my food in my mouth. “Tell me about yourself.”

Oh god, open-ended inquiries. I swallowed then took a sip of my water. “What do you want to know?”

Max didn’t quite smile, but there was a hint of interest in his face that even someone as blind to subtlety as I usually was could see. “Whatever you want to tell me. Seriously, it’s not a trap, but I’ve got some time to kill before my ride gets here, and you’re not rushing off. We might as well get to know each other better.”

He’s flirting with you, my brain screamed unhelpfully at me. It was all of my teenage fantasies come to life, and I had no idea what to do with it. He’s flirting with you! Do something, do something, do something!

The pressure was on, and I’d never been good at handling interpersonal pressure. So I said the first thing that came to mind, which was, “I think my house has rats.”

Max’s flirty face became a slight frown. “What?”

Oh god, end me. “Uh, I just bought a house, and it’s really in need of remodeling, and every night I hear noises in the walls,” and now I was babbling but I couldn’t stop, “and I’m actually hoping it’s rats because if the place is haunted, I’m burning it to the ground.”

“That wouldn’t be a very good return on your investment.”

“That’s why my fingers are crossed for rats.”

“I get that.” He looked thoughtful. “Are you doing the remodel yourself?”

I shrugged. “All the parts of it I can. Not the plumbing or the electrical work, but the walls and floors, yeah.”

“What do you think you’ll tackle first?”

“Ugh, it has to be the insulation. I’m dying to work on the kitchen, but it’s a moot point if I freeze to death one of these nights. And I can’t afford to heat the whole place the way it is now.”

To my complete amazement, the rats and home renovation didn’t kill the mood. Max actually knew quite a bit about construction—which wasn’t too surprising, since his dad had owned the largest construction outfit in the county before the “trouble” went down. We talked about appliances, about flooring, about the devil that was wallpaper and how to deal with it—we even talked about where I might look for a farmhouse sink. Our conversation was so engrossing, I totally forgot my brother was due to pick Max up until the door jingled and he walked inside the diner.

“Hey, Max!” he called out, and Max was on his feet, grinning and walking into Hal’s embrace before I even finished my wince.

“Where are the girls?” Max demanded as the two hugged hard.

“They were already in their pjs, so I asked our neighbor to watch them until we get back. Jesus, are you all right? Is the car totaled?”

“I hope not. Either way, I’m sure I can find a rental tomorrow.” Max sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than that he was really sure.

Hal patted him on the back once more, finally let him go, then looked over at me. “Shit, you didn’t tell me it was Nicky who picked you up!”

Max frowned. “Nicky? It’s not. This is Dominic.”

Hal looked between the two of us like we were crazy. “Max, Nicky is Dominic. You can remember every article and amendment of the Constitution but you can’t remember my little brother’s name?”

“No, of course I remember Nicky’s name, I just—” He turned to me, and this was it. Playtime was over. I was about to go from Dominic the competent cop he’d just low-key flirted with to Nicky, Hal’s little brother.

“I didn’t recognize you at all,” he marveled, looking me over with a fresh perspective. “At all. Jesus, you’re taller by a foot. And you’re so…different.”

“Uh…surprise,” I said, hating that I sounded so small saying it. This was it. Now he was going to—

And then he blushed, blushed as he stared at me, and I thought, Oh. Hey. Maybe this isn’t over before it begins after all.

Chapter Three

Max

Oh my god. Little Nicky had become Dominic, a man with a couple of inches on me, broad shoulders like his brother, and a face that had gone from the heart-shaped cherub of his youth to a sword-wielding Archangel Michael. He looked a lot like Hal now, actually, except without the permanent lumps across the bridge that were the results of a few broken noses. His hair was a couple of shades lighter and a little longer, with just enough curl in it that it would wrap around my fingers if I ran my hands through it.

Or if I grabbed it. Not hard, just enough to—

“Max. Max!” Hal snapped his fingers at me, and I blinked.

“Sorry,” I said, belatedly realizing that I’d been staring at Dominic for the past ten seconds without speaking. “Right, sorry. I’m—” Stunned. Stricken. In awe. “I’m tired,” I finished, because there was honesty and then there was being frank to the point that it was uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to make Dominic or Hal uncomfortable.

“Tired?” Hal caught my chin with his hand and turned my head to the side, looking at the bruised half of my face with concern. “Or maybe you’re concussed. Do we need to get you to a doctor?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not concussed. I hit the airbag, not the steering wheel, and I wasn’t going all that fast in the first place. I’m just a little banged up.”

“Max was in a little bit of shock,” Dominic told Hal. “But I’ve been keeping an eye on him, and there’s no concussion.”

I was touched that he’d been looking after me, but Hal only frowned, no doubt focusing on the shock part. “There’s an urgent care place not a mile from here. It wouldn’t be out of the way.”

“Hal.” I pulled his hand off my face but didn’t let it go immediately. Hal was a worrier, and naturally tactile. When I’d come out in high school, everyone had assumed Hal and I were dating, we were so close. That assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth—Hal had wanted to talk about nothing but girls and football, even when he had his arm slung around my shoulders or his feet buried under my legs on the couch.

Dominic, on the other hand…

What was I saying again?

“I really am fine. It’s just some bruises and a few scrapes, not worth going to a doctor for. If I feel worse in the morning,” I continued, already knowing what he was going to say, “I promise we can go then. But after the long drive, and the meeting I spent all morning getting ready for…” I shrugged. “I really am just tired. And I need to get back to the city tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that earlier, but…” Hal shared a look with Dominic I wasn’t sure how to interpret. “The weather is supposed to get worse before it gets better. Plus, with your car being broken, you’re not going to make it back to the city until Monday.”

Shit. I shut my eyes and resisted the urge to snap, because the universe really didn’t seem to understand just how little I wanted to be in Edgewood for an entire weekend. I wanted to go back to how things had been five minutes ago, when Dominic was just the incredibly good-looking cop who’d picked me up off the side of the road and shared dinner with me, instead of the brother of my best friend who I hadn’t even recognized. I wanted to see the girls and sleep in the cozy spare room, make pancakes for everyone in the morning, then get back to work securing this client and my future with the firm.

Looked like I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, and that was no one’s fault. If I had to stay in Edgewood, at least I’d brought my laptop and could still get some work done. “Fine. That’ll give me extra time to get my car to a mechanic and find a rental. But I’m definitely leaving on Monday.”

Hal clapped his hand on my shoulder—gently, for him, but it was right where the seat belt had dug in when I hit the snowbank. I held in my wince, though. I didn’t need another push toward urgent care. “The girls will be thrilled. Let’s get back home, huh? You can get a shower and jump into bed.”

“Sounds great,” I said then turned to Dinah. “What do I owe you for our dinners?”

She and Dominic began to protest at the same time. “No, honey, it’s on the house—” “Really, I can’t let you—”

“What’s that?” I held a hand up to my ear. “Forty dollars? Damn, prices have gotten steep around here since I’ve been gone.”

Dinah put her hands on her hips and huffed. “Forty dollars? For two burgers? Does this look like the Ritz to you? Ten bucks a plate, same as it was before. If you’d wanted goat cheese, now, that would be extra.”

“Twenty, got it.” I pulled two twenties out of my wallet and put them down on the table. “Keep the change.”

“Max, no, that’s way too much!”

“Don’t tell me how to tip my favorite waitress,” I told her and held out my hand to shake. “Thanks for the burger. It was delicious.”

“Oh, stop that,” she muttered and used my hand to pull me in for a hug. She was warm, smelled like coffee, and reminded me a little bit of my mother.

Once I let her go, I looked at Dominic, who was frowning at the money. “Please let me treat,” I said to him. “It’s the least I can do for making you go out in this weather to rescue me.”

“Rescuing people is my actual job, Max. I don’t mind doing it.”

It gave me a weird little thrill in my chest to hear him call me Max. “Still.”

“All right, Mister Moneybags, enough.” Hal took me by the shoulder and turned me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.” He called back to Dominic, “You still coming over tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ve got the next few days off,” he said.

“Great. I’ve still got to work a half day tomorrow morning, and with all the fresh snow we’ve gotten, the girls have plans for you, Uncle Nicky.”

Dominic smiled. It made his whole face light up, and I suddenly couldn’t look away. “Tell them to get ready, because I won’t go easy on them like I did the last time.”

“Marnie said you cried,” Hal retorted, opening the door. The merry little jingle of the bell wasn’t enough to distract me from the sudden blast of painfully cold wind. I zipped up my jacket and shoved my hands into the pockets.

“Anybody would cry after taking an ice ball to the face!” Dominic called out as the door closed behind us.

…

Hal’s familiar old Toyota truck was still warm inside, thank God. He grabbed my bag from Dom’s Jeep and slung it into the backseat as I settled in the front. It was a little strange, seeing Steph’s car seat back there. Ariel had always kept it in her car—the family car, she’d called it. Hal’s had been almost solely a work vehicle.

He caught me looking, of course. “She took the CRV with her,” he said gruffly as he shut the door. “Guess I should count myself lucky she bothered to take the car seat out before she left.”

“I’m so sorry.” It was inadequate, like the first and seventh and tenth times I’d told him that over the phone, yet it was all I could think to say. “And she hasn’t…you haven’t talked for…”

“About a month,” Hal said, his lips thin. “She called around once a week before that, and then last time she made it clear she wasn’t coming back, so I just…stopped answering. We communicate via email, mostly.”

Ouch. That had to be hard on the kids. “How are the girls handling it?”

“They’re fine. They’ve got me, they’ve got Nicky, and they go to a counselor the school recommended once a week.” He started up the truck then glanced at me. “You’re not gonna have a problem with my brother being around, right?”

I frowned. “Why would I have a problem with that?”

Hal shrugged. “Fuck if I know, but it seems safer to ask outright than to assume things anymore.”

“I won’t have a problem with Dominic being around. He’s your family, Hal. Of course he should be around, especially with everything that’s going on.” He hadn’t been, not for years, thanks to his time in the army. I’d seen Hal’s sister Christine twice in New York, but never Dominic.

“Good. You just seemed a little weird with him back there.”

I didn’t bother to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Because I haven’t seen him in a decade and he’s changed, a lot. Plus, I didn’t recognize him when he came to pick me up. It’s embarrassing.” And he’s hot, and I didn’t want Hal to know I was having those kinds of thoughts about his little brother. I wasn’t sure I wanted Dominic to know I thought that, either. What were the odds that he was gay?

Actually, from what I remembered of him, the odds weren’t terrible. He hadn’t dated, he’d never been interested in girls—or in guys, honestly—but he’d been young. Fifteen to twenty-five was a huge jump in a person’s development. Probably almost nothing I knew about “Nicky” could apply to “Dominic” now.

“It’s a fuckin’ godsend that he’s back,” Hal confessed, turning his truck out of Dinah’s parking lot and onto the main road. “He’s real good with the girls, and he wasn’t around a lot before this, so he’s still kinda novel to them. Makes them want to listen to him, better than they listen to me sometimes.”

“He sounds like just what they need.”

Hal jammed the shifter into third gear. “What they need is their mother, but me and him are what they got. It’s better than nothing, I guess.”

I remembered how hard it had been to go from having two parents to rely on to just one. It hadn’t been easy on my mother to go it alone, either. I hated that she and Hal had that in common now. “The girls adore you,” I said firmly. “You’re their rock. You always have been.”

Hal didn’t speak for a few minutes, just kept his eyes on the road and drove. I let the silence linger and looked out at the kitschy streetlights, the thick, clean snow glowing in heaps beneath them, and listened to the sound of the truck’s tires navigating us safely through the mess of it all. “I worry about them,” he said right before we turned down his street. “I worry all the time I’m not doin’ enough. Those kids ought to have more than me. How can I—I’m not their mom, Max. I can’t be what she was to them.”

“Ariel wasn’t able to keep being that, either,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “And that’s not on you. They’ll get used to things being different, as long as some things stay the same. That’s you, Hal, you and Dominic.”

I’d moved on after my father’s immense screw-up and the subsequent divorce, if leaving town and not returning for ten years counted as moving on. The girls would, too, especially with a dad as doting as Hal on their side.

And I’d do my part as well, making sure this short visit was the most fun they had this Christmas.

…

Hal’s house looked very little like the Christmas pictures I used to get from them—the inflatable Santa in his sleigh was missing from the front lawn, there were no reindeer made from fragile white branches perched on the porch, and the only lights illuminating the house were a single strand of blue icicles hung over the door, which was lacking its usual wreath.

Shit. Things were different.

“It’s late, for the girls,” Hal said as he shut the engine off. “They might be asleep.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” I replied, seeing two little faces peeping through the corner of the big bay window. They vanished when I got out of the truck, and a moment later, the front door opened.

“—phanie! Marnie! Shoes!” a woman’s voice called, but the girls were already down the porch steps, grinning as they ran onto the snowy front walk toward us.

“My feet!” Marnie squealed, bouncing from foot to foot dramatically. “Save me, Max!” She threw herself at me hard enough that I almost fell over, and I was grateful she was too close to see the pained wince that twisted my face for a second. I was going to be hurting for the next few days for sure. I barely had a chance to pick her up before Steph, younger than her sister by three years and a lot slower, caught up, her little hands pawing at the edge of my jacket as she whined.

“My little hellions,” Hal said with a smirk as he came around the truck with my bag in one hand. He picked up Steph and tucked her against his side, managing to keep a hold on her tiny body despite her wriggling. “What were you girls thinking, runnin’ out in the snow like this? You should have stayed inside with Phee!”

“But then we couldn’t have said hi to Max,” Marnie said, her voice full of duh undertones.

“You could have said hi to him once he was inside.”

“It’s not the same! And he always meets us in front of his building in New York!”

I did, but only because they wouldn’t make it up to my apartment any other way. I hadn’t realized it had become something of a ritual in the girls’ minds. “Thanks for coming out to say hello,” I said, kissing Marnie on top of her head. Steph made an unhappy sound, so I leaned over and kissed her, too. “I’m freezing out here, though! Let’s go inside, huh?”

“Okay!” Marnie pushed out of my arms and ran back inside, mincing the whole way and groaning about her too-cold toes. I exchanged a look with Hal that encompassed a whole conversation, starting with I would have carried her.

I know, but she apparently wanted to walk through the snow. Kids, huh?

Yeah, seriously. With that, Hal passed me Steph, who stopped struggling as soon as she was in my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck and turned her face into the fleecy collar of my jacket, and my heart melted.

Mrs. Jackson, Hal’s longtime neighbor, met us at the door. She was an older woman around Dinah’s age, her hair mostly white, wearing a Christmas tree sweater with actual glowing lights on it. “Sorry about that,” she said to Hal with an eye-roll. “I’d have gotten them into their boots before you showed up if I’d known they were going to try and turn themselves into little snow angels.”

“They’re wily that way,” Hal agreed, setting my bag down in the foyer before pulling the lady into a hug. “Thanks for lookin’ after them. I really appreciate it, Phee.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.” Her sigh was a little melancholy. “It’s the other grandparents’ turn to have Vanessa and her kids for the holidays, you know. I miss the chaos.”

“Come over anytime you want some more of it.”

“I’ll do that.” Mrs. Jackson looked my way, but thankfully she didn’t ask any questions. I’d had enough interrogation for one night. “It’s nice to see you again, Max.” There was nothing but real welcome in her voice, and tension I was barely aware was painfully stiffening my shoulders and neck flowed out of me. I had to stop freaking out inside when I met anyone in town who wasn’t Hal or his family.

“Thank you,” I replied. “It’s nice to see you, too.” It actually was—Mrs. Jackson had always been friendly to me when Hal and I were kids, even though her daughter Vanessa had had the worst crush on me—unrequited, obviously.

“Mm-hmm. You all have a good evening. Bye, girls!” She waved to Marnie and Steph then walked out the door and shut it gently behind her.

Now that I was inside the house, I was relieved to see that the Christmas spirit hadn’t entirely deserted the Bell household. There was a tree in the far corner of the living room, so heavy with ornaments, lights, and tinsel that I was a little surprised the branches could hold it all up. Beneath it were a heap of bright, inexpertly wrapped presents, and paper snowflakes, snowmen, reindeer, and candy canes were stuck all over the walls as high as little hands could reach. “This place looks great.” I gave Steph another squeeze before setting her down on the carpeted floor. She smiled up at me, and it was like I could feel my blood pressure going down, just by being with them. “Did you girls make the paper decorations?”

“Yes!” Marnie shouted from the dining room, where she was wiping her feet off with a dish towel. She had her dad’s thick, curling dark-red hair, spilling out of its ponytail holder in all directions, and his blue eyes and wide smile. “We made some in class and then my teacher taught us all how to make stencils so we could do more at home, and Daddy helped me cut them all out, and then Steph and I spent all day decorating them!” The pile of markers, crayons, glue sticks, and bottles of glitter on the dining room table attested to all the work she and her sister had put into things. “Do you like them?” she continued, trotting back into the living room and stopping in front of me. “I made most of them, and Steph did a few, too.”

Steph pointed at a very, very purple snowflake taped to the bannister of the stairs.

“Yeah, like that one,” Marnie said. “But I did the ones with the unicorn reindeer!”

Unicorn reindeer? Looking a little closer, I could see that some of the reindeer cutouts had not just a set of antlers, but tiny horns taped to their foreheads. “That is incredibly creative,” I told her. “They all look amazing.”

The girls beamed, and Steph took my hand. Her hair was still obediently lying in its braid, a redder shade than Marnie’s, and the face that looked up at me was the same heart shape as her mother’s. The only thing the girls had in common was their eye color and their verbosity—or, at least, that had been true the last time we’d visited. Steph had yet to say a single word tonight.

“I’m so happy you’re staying for Christmas!” Marnie said.

“Mmm, for a while anyway,” I replied, suddenly reminded that I was going to have to call Jessie tonight and cancel our meeting for tomorrow. It was hard to think about work when I was with the girls, but I knew I needed to.

If I wrote a list of what I needed Jessie to do, and worked from my laptop here, I should still be able to get everything ready by Monday.

Marnie interrupted my musings. “Did you bring presents?” she asked excitedly. “Can we put them under the tree?”

“He already mailed them,” Hal reminded her from where he was hanging up his coat. “You asked him that on the phone last week, remember?”

Her shoulders deflated. “Oh, yeah.”

“Maybe they’ll get here tomorrow,” I suggested. “As soon as they’re delivered, you can put them under the tree with the others.”

Marnie’s good humor was instantly restored. “Okay! Maybe Mom’s will come then, too!”

I watched Hal take a deep breath and saw Steph look down at the floor. “Maybe they will,” Hal managed after a moment. “For now, it’s past your bedtime.”

“Not mine,” Marnie protested. “Just Steph’s.”

“Both of yours.” Hal reached his arms out to Steph, and she let go of my hand and folded easily into his embrace, still quiet. “It’s after eight.”

“There’s no school tomorrow!”

“Marnie Josephine Bell,” Hal said with all the authority of a tired, cranky parent. Marnie sighed heavily but began to stomp up the stairs. Hal followed, carrying Steph, and I grabbed my bag and came up last of all. The guest room was on the second floor, if I remembered right.

Hal motioned to the right side of the hall. “Last door,” he said, nodding his head that direction. “Sheets are fresh, and there’s a clean towel and washcloth on the dresser.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

He made a face at me. “I invited you here. You think I’m not going to try and make you comfortable? You’re as much my brother as Nicky. You belong here with us.”

I couldn’t have spoken then if I’d been on the witness stand—trust Hal to take the awkwardness out of being here in just five words. Luckily, Marnie made sure I didn’t have to talk.

“Daddy!” She whirled on him with the air of a girl who’d just been struck by lightning. “Is Uncle Nicky still coming over tomorrow? I was going to call him and check, but I forgot!”

“He’ll be here,” Hal promised her.

“Are you sure?” she persisted. “Maybe we should call him now.”

“Maybe you should go brush your teeth, how about that?”

“Maybe we should call him first, and then I could brush my teeth.”

Hal pointed a finger firmly at the bathroom door. “Maybe you should brush your teeth right now, before I take your phone privileges away for the rest of the week.”

“God, Dad.” She turned and stomped into the bathroom.

“Eight going on eighteen, I swear,” Hal muttered to me, absently rocking Steph from side to side. Her eyes were closed, her arms tight around her father’s neck. “The girls share this bathroom. Your room is the old master. It’s got an en suite, no worries there. I’m still downstairs.” Hal had helped rebuild the master bedroom downstairs when his mother’s knees got bad. When he’d inherited the house, he’d modified the new space for him and Ariel.

“I’ve got it,” I said.

“I’m wiped. I’m going to bed after I get the girls down.” I wasn’t surprised—I could see the exhaustion in his face. “I’m going in to the office tomorrow morning to handle some last-minute scheduling issues and a few things my lawyer has set up for me, but I’ll be back by noon. Nicky’ll be around to help take care of the girls, though, so don’t worry about having to look after them on your own.”

“That’s reassuring for them, but I wouldn’t mind either way.” I’d known the girls since they were babies, and though I’d never visited them in their own home before, I’d taken care of them for short periods of time while their parents went on date nights in New York City.

“Sure you won’t mind having Nicky around, then?”

Would I mind having the ridiculously handsome guy who’d rescued me from the cold, chatted with me over dinner, and made me feel warm for the first time all day around? Hmm. “No,” I managed, trying to keep the rapid beating of my heart from reflecting in my face. “I definitely won’t mind having Dominic around.”

Chapter Four

Dominic

I got to my brother’s house at eight in the morning then sat there in my Jeep for a minute, looking at the door. “It’s just another day with the kids,” I told myself. “You can do this. You do this all the time.”

Except it wasn’t just another day with the kids. Max was there, too. Max who I’d spent all night thinking about. Max who I looked up in the high school yearbook I still had in a box just to check and make sure he really looked as good as I remembered.

It was worse. He looked better than that now. He’d been cute verging on hot in high school—now he was hot, verging on nuclear. And I was supposed to while away an entire day with him, like I couldn’t remember his locker number or like I hadn’t creeped on him and Hal when Max came over by lingering in the hall outside wherever they’d parked themselves. I hadn’t been especially close to my brother back then, although he’d had my back no matter what. It wasn’t until he had the girls that we started to move beyond our childhood roles, and once I came back to Edgewood, we’d become practically codependent.

Tap-tap. I startled and looked at the source of the tapping noise, which was—Hal, covered in flannel from chest to head, at the driver’s side window. Great. I opened my door. “Sorry,” I said, getting out and rubbing my hands together. Shit, it was cold.

Hal frowned. “You sleep okay, Nicky? You look like hell.”

I shrugged. “Bit of a late night, but I’m all right.”

“On call, huh?”

No, just digging up the past, but he didn’t have to know that. “I get overtime and everything, like a real adult.”

Hal snorted. “It’s overrated. You bring your gloves?”

“No.” I’d forgotten them in my mad rush out the door, so that I could get here and sit like a stone in the driveway.

“You know the girls are gonna want to play outside today. Take mine.” He pulled off his heavy workman’s gloves and handed them over.

“Hal, seriously—”

“I’m going to be in the office, remember? Not working at a site,” he insisted. “Just come on inside. Max made pancakes.”

“He did?” Oh man, he could cook, too? I really wasn’t going to have anything to do here today.

“Yeah, pretty good ones. They’re thin and lacy, the girls love ‘em.” Hal opened the door and ushered me inside, and for a second all my worries melted away at the cheery, slightly haphazard appearance of my nieces sitting in the dining room, surrounded by their homemade decorations and digging into a pile of pancakes. Max sat on the far side of the table, and he looked up as soon as I entered.

The bruises on his face weren’t too bad—he didn’t seem to be in pain, at least not enough to keep him from smiling. I could take a lot, but that smile on his face literally made my heart beat faster. Jesus, this day was going to suck if I couldn’t get my nerves, not to mention my libido, under control. I waved. “Hey.”

“Uncle Nicky!” Marnie called out. “Come look at our pancakes! They’re snowflakes!”

“Snowflakes? Wow.” I slipped off my boots—I hadn’t bothered to tie them tight yet, knowing I’d have to leave them by the door once I got here—and came over to admire the pancakes. They were, in fact, lacy little snowflake pancakes. They were pretty, if not very filling. “Those are lovely.”

“Max used one of the squirt bottles we used to keep the gecko food in to make them.”

“I washed it thoroughly first, I promise,” Max said with a wink at me.

I had to sit my ass down before my knees gave out over another innocent and totally not flirty gesture from Max. “They look pretty tasty…” I managed, and then my inner competitive jackass came to the fore. “But probably not as good as my snowman grilled cheeses.”

“Snowman grilled cheeses?” Max looked at Steph first, but she was doggedly focused on her pancakes. Marnie picked up the thread again.

“They’re grilled cheese sandwiches with the bread cut like a snowman, and there’s so much cheese it oozes out the sides. They’re super good.”

“Super good, huh?” Max looked at me. “That sounds like a challenge.”

I shrugged. “I mean, I’m sure your pancakes are nice, but they won’t hold a candle to my grilled cheese.”

“How can you be sure when you haven’t even tried my pancakes?” He nudged the platter my way, and I gave in and scooped a few onto the plate in front of me.

They were dusted with powdered sugar. I tried not to let on how cute I found that. I doused them with syrup then cut a bite. Mmm…vanilla…raspberry? Oh man.

I glanced over at Max. He looked smug. It suited him, but of course I couldn’t let him know that. “They’re okay,” I said after swallowing. “But I still think my grilled cheeses are better.”

“You have to make them for lunch,” Marnie said imperiously. “That way we can eat both today and then pick the best!”

“You’re absolutely right,” I told her. “What do you think, Steph? Grilled cheese for lunch?”

She nodded, which I knew was about as good as I was going to get this early in the morning.

“You two are gonna turn my kids into little bon vivants, and I’ll never be able to feed them Eggos and Hot Pockets again,” Hal commented from the closet, where he was pulling a heavy coat on over his flannel shirt.

Max grinned. “I doubt that. Remember when we tried to get them to eat those cocoa-pistachio truffles last year?”

“Those were gross,” Marnie chimed in. “Too bitter, and the nuts were green.”

“It just meant more for me and Mom,” Hal said then made a face like he’d bitten into a bitter truffle himself. He shook it off and came over to the table. “You two have fun with Uncle Nicky and Max this morning.” He kissed Marnie’s head, then Steph, taking a moment to brush her bangs back from her forehead.

“You’ll be back by lunch?” I confirmed.

“Yeah, definitely. There’s plenty of cold cuts for sandwiches if you decide you don’t want to cook.”

“Because toasting bread and cheese is super hard.”

Hal rolled his eyes at me then glanced over at Max. “Don’t let them run you into the ground too hard,” he said, mostly joking, but I knew there was a thread of truth there. “Try to think of this as an unplanned vacation. You need to tap out, do it. Nicky can handle the girls by himself.”

Max’s smile for Hal was small yet genuine. “I appreciate the concern, but I think I’ll be fine. Dominic can keep me on the level.”

Warmth started to creep over my cheeks as he effortlessly included me. He also kept calling me Dominic instead of Nicky, like he understood the difference, and it was doing things to me. “Go on, worrywart, get out of here before you’re late,” I told Hal, partially because he really was running late but mostly because I wanted to forestall my blush.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Ruthless taskmaster.” Hal gave the girls one more kiss apiece then walked out the door. It shut with a gentle creak and carried away the easy atmosphere with it.

Or so I thought, before Max nudged my plate. “Eat up before they disintegrate,” he said. “They’re nice, but they won’t last under that much syrup for long.”

I gratefully turned my eyes back to my breakfast. “You admit they have a weakness, then.”

“A minor design flaw, really more of a motivational challenge than anything else. Who could leave something like this on the plate for long, after all?”

“Not me.” I grinned and ate another bite.

…

The girls polished off their pancakes then put their dishes in the sink and headed upstairs to finish getting dressed without me having to say anything—damn, I had them trained. I grabbed Max’s plate along with mine and went to load everything into the dishwasher.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, getting up to help.

“You cooked, I’ll clean,” I told him. “You can tidy up for me after lunch.”

“Thanks.” He poured himself another cup of coffee and took an appreciative sip—I didn’t blame him; Hal was frugal in a lot of areas, but he liked good coffee—and leaned his hip against the counter. I turned my attention back to the dishes fast before I took an appreciative look at him and made a fool of myself. “The girls told me they wanted to do all sorts of things today,” he said, “including ‘go ice skating with Mrs. Jackson’s dog’ and ‘ride a unicorn reindeer to see Santa at the mall.’ What’s on the actual agenda?”

“The Santa thing is happening closer to Christmas,” I said after taking a second to recollect Hal’s list of to-dos for the girls. “Minus the unicorn reindeer, I’m sad to say.”

“Pity. That was the part I was really looking forward to.”

I risked turning around to smile at him. “If you really want to court the impossible, you can go grab Phee’s ancient Chihuahua and see if he tolerates you skating around an ice rink with him instead of barking his head off, but I doubt it’ll happen.”

Max shook his head. “I’ll pass. What else?”

I shrugged. “The usual stuff. Snowmen in the backyard—although they’ve melted and been rebuilt so many times at this point they’re kind of hideous. We can put some hot cocoa into thermoses and go on a walk in the park—the girls like to look for animal tracks. We can visit the library or go to the children’s museum—it’s like an indoor playground that nods in the direction of education here and there,” I added when I saw the confused look on his face. “What sounds good to you?”

“The snowmen and hot cocoa would be fun.” He scratched his chin, which he hadn’t shaved that morning. The hint of golden scruff looked good on him. “Maybe the park, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve been for a walk in the woods. But I’ve got to schedule in some time for work today at some point.”

Of course he did. Were all lawyers this busy? I almost thought better of it, but eventually the question slipped out. “Why did you stay away for so long?”

Max looked down into his coffee mug. “Edgewood didn’t have anything I wanted that I couldn’t get in New York,” he said after a minute. “And Edgewood has plenty of things I don’t want, so on the whole I figured it was better to ask Hal and Ariel and the girls to come to me and leave all the rest of it behind.”

That sounded kind of grim. I mean, I could understand avoiding the reminders of his family’s worst days and the car accident. Plus, his mother didn’t live here anymore, but… “Why did you decide to come back now, then?”

A second of awkward silence later, I realized how invasive I was being. “Shit. I’m sorry. Don’t answer that.” If I could have reeled the words back in, I would have. “I get stuck in cop mode sometimes,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to pry.”

“I don’t mind telling you,” Max said, sounding a little surprised at himself. “It’s because of the girls. Marnie called me up and basically begged me to come visit, and I’d been planning on saying no, but after talking to her…” He shook his head. “It’s hard having a parent suddenly vanish from your life. I didn’t want to make their first Christmas without Ariel any tougher for them.”

Oh wow. That was actually really sweet of him. I knew he got along with the girls—everything they ever said about Max was positive, and of course he was best friends with Hal, but until right now I didn’t know he felt so strongly about them.

Max smiled and tilted his head, and I tried hard not to stare. “Anyway, I—”

Whatever else he had been going to say was cut short by the sound of elephants tromping down the stairs. A second later, the girls careened into the kitchen, dressed in weather-appropriate and vaguely matching clothes. “We’re ready!” Marnie announced. Her snow pants were electric purple, whereas Steph’s were neon pink. I think Ariel had been afraid of losing her kids in the snow or something when she bought them.

Not that she ended up giving a shit about losing her kids in the end.

I tried to turn my mind away from her—thinking about Ariel always put me in a bad mood fast. I could understand wanting to get a divorce and even understand her divorcing my brother. I couldn’t understand how she could just pick up and leave one day, leave everything, leave her children, and not give a shit about the turmoil her leaving produced. Edgewood PD had looked for Ariel for three days before she finally bothered to make contact from two states away.

No, I couldn’t think about her now. I shook my head a little and draped a smile over the sour taste she left in my mouth. “You guys look great. Should we start by introducing Max to the snow family out back?”

“Yes! And we can make a new one for him, too.” Marnie started to run for the back door.

“Gloves, hat, and jacket first, please.”

“Ugh!”

An eternity later, we made it into the backyard, where Marnie immediately began to explain how the five misshapen snowmen were “Daddy, Mommy, Uncle Nicky, Steph, and me.” There was enough fresh powder for her to scrape together a starter ball. “Help us make a you, Max!”

“You got it,” Max said. He let Marnie work on rolling her ball around and started a new one then handed it to Steph, who was following him around like a duckling. “Do you want to help me get it going?” he asked her gently. She nodded, and they started to roll it around together. I watched them until Marnie loudly reminded me that we needed three balls for a snowman, so I had to do one, too.

The powder was fresh, but it was too cold for it to stick well. In the end, Max’s snowman ended up being about the same height as Steph’s, but he didn’t seem to mind. We found sticks for the arms, carved a face into it, and then drew on a suit jacket and tie. “Very fancy,” I said with a chuckle.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“We’re all very beautiful, but we could be more beautiful,” Marnie said critically. “Can we use some food coloring on them?”

That threw me for a bit of a loop, but… “Sure. Let me go and get it.”

After I handed over the basic red, yellow, blue, and green bottles, Max and I both stood back and watched as the girls experimented with the dyes, spattering drops, squeezing streaks and making attempts to mix them into new colors in the snow. Five minutes in, it looked like a rainbow had been brutally murdered by our snowman crime family, but the girls were having a fantastic time.

“I’m not sorry that they’re handling this part by themselves,” Max said quietly from his place beside me. “I love them, but this is the only jacket I brought.” It was a luxurious one, too, way nicer than my old camo coat, with a sheepskin collar and dark brown leather that looked like it would feel silky soft under my hand.

Or someone’s hand.

Anyone’s hand.

“It’s nice that they’re old enough to entertain themselves pretty well most of the time,” I agreed. “Marnie is really good at including Steph.”

Max looked contemplative. “I remember how adamant Ariel was that she was done after Marnie. Hal told me he’d basically given up on more kids, and then all of a sudden she changed her mind on Marnie’s second birthday.”

I didn’t want to talk about Ariel—I already knew I didn’t have anything nice to say. “She’s never been really consistent,” I managed in an even tone. Max glanced sidelong at me, one eyebrow raised. Shit, maybe that hadn’t been even enough. I knew he’d been friendly with her, not just for Hal’s sake, either—he and Ariel had run the drama club back in high school.

“Talk to me a little about Steph.”

Thank goodness for people who read the room. Not that Steph was a particularly easy subject right now, either, but she was better than talking about her mother. “About the not-talking thing?”

He nodded.

I exhaled harshly. “She hasn’t handled her mom’s departure very well,” I said. “Ariel dropped her off at kindergarten that morning. She was supposed to be back to pick her up at noon, and of course she didn’t show. The teacher tried to call her, and when that didn’t work, she called Hal. He called me, I got the rest of the cops involved, and we started a search.

“The whole time, Hal had to be strong for Steph, tell her that Mommy was fine, that she was going to be back soon, though he was worried she’d driven into a ditch somewhere.” I shook my head. “Marnie was more obviously bothered by it all when she found out that Ariel was missing, while Steph…she internalized it, in some way. By the time Ariel made contact three days later, Steph had completely stopped communicating. She didn’t say a damn word to her mother over the phone.” Ariel had cried. But if anyone deserved to cry over this clusterfuck, it was her.

“Steph is communicating with her counselor some now, though, and she’s participating in school again. She’ll speak every once in a while to Marnie, and sometimes to Hal, but for the most part, she stays quiet.” It was disconcerting, watching my niece go from a bubbly, outgoing girl to a silent, grave little phantom of a child. Five-year-olds were meant to be exuberant, and I sometimes worried that Ariel had stolen her daughter’s vivacity when she abandoned her.

Max winced and shook his head. “I can’t believe she put everyone through that. That’s rough.”

It was, but dwelling on it wasn’t going to make things any better. Ariel was out of the picture for good now. We had to work at moving on, and I was determined not to look back. “She’s getting better,” I said firmly. “She’s got Hal and Marnie, and she’s got me.” I glanced at Max. “She seems to like you, too.”

Max smiled, and the mood lightened along with his expression. “Steph’s always been my buddy. Marnie is everyone’s friend, but her little sister had a reputation of being choosy from infanthood. I was sure the first time I met her that she was going to hate me. She was just six months old, and she hadn’t even let Christine hold her for more than five minutes without yelling her face red yet. When Hal handed her to me, though, I held her up and looked her in the eyes and…” He shrugged. “She settled for me right away, let me put her down to sleep that night without a single tear.”

“That was when they visited you in New York, right?” My vision of Max as a corporate shark with a swank Manhattan apartment wasn’t really jiving with the reality of Hal and his young family spending a long weekend with him there every year.

“Yeah. Hal and Ariel brought a travel cot for Steph and set up in my room, and Marnie and I sacked out on the couches in the living room.” I don’t know what my face looked like, but whatever it was made Max laugh. “What, you think I can afford more than one bedroom in New York City? I’m lucky the kitchen and the bathroom have most of a wall between them—they literally share a sink. It’s a long one, built into the same countertop, look.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled for a minute then handed it over to me.

There was the kitchen…and there was the bathroom…and there was… “What the hell?” I marveled. “How can the landlords get away with this setup?”

“You’d be stunned what you can get away with calling an apartment in New York,” Max said. “I went to law school with a guy who slept in a walled-off section of a locker room. He said all the tile made it pretty easy to keep clean, actually.”

“A used locker room? Like, an active one?” Max nodded with mock solemnity. “Jesus Christ, I’m feeling way better about having to deal with something as mundane as rats now.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

He looked like he was about to say more, then Marnie piped up, “Uncle Nicky, I got green in my scarf!”

…

One hasty wash-and-dry cycle and an early lunch later—my snowman grilled cheeses were amazing, as usual—and Hal was back to take over minding the girls while I drove Max over to talk to the mechanic who’d taken in his car. Unfortunately, the news was nothing good. I glazed over at “cracked cylinder head” and waited out the mechanic’s prediction of a week to get parts in and get the repairs done.

Aside from a clenched jaw and a long exhale, Max took that pretty well, honestly, but then—

“Since you’re here, are you gonna see the old man while you’re waiting on your car?” the mechanic asked, trying for casual but failing miserably. Of course he knew who Max was—the family name was distinctive, and being a busybody was pretty much everyone’s side hustle in this town.

Max had stiffened, his smile fixed in place like a wax figure. “No,” was all he said.

After we left, we jumped back in the Jeep, and I let it idle while the heater worked its magic. Max was still tense if the tick in his jaw was any indication, so instead of heading straight back to Hal’s, I asked, “I know you mentioned work this morning, but do you want to take a walk?”

He’d mentioned wanting to go to Adirondack Park, and now seemed as good a time as any for it. Besides, Hal had things under control at home, and I was kind of looking forward to having a little more one-on-one time with Max.

“Sure,” he said after a moment. I didn’t give him a chance to second-guess, just fired up the Jeep and drove for the trailhead.

Technically, Edgewood was already part of Adirondack Park. The park itself was a combination of state and private land, and there were lots of little villages and towns like ours inside of it. There was a pretty big balancing act between allowing private owners the freedom to do what they wanted with their land and preserving the landscape for wildlife and recreation, but most people agreed that what the tourists wanted, the tourists got, and that meant the conservationists had won out over the clear-cutters for now.

It also meant that getting into an uninhabited but well-walked part of the Park was pretty easy. The trailhead was just a ten-minute drive from the mechanic’s. We started hiking from there, up a steady incline that traced a path around the well-wooded hill ahead of us until it reached the very top, where the trees had been cleared to give hikers a better view.

“I like this trail,” he shared as we stepped side-by-side along the slightly icy path. “Hal and I used to ride our bikes here all the time when we were little. We liked to pretend we were explorers looking for wild animals. We never saw any bears or bobcats, though.” He half smiled. “Which is probably for the best.”

“I used to follow you sometimes.” I said it before my brain could take it back. Way to set yourself up looking pathetic, Dominic. The way Max was looking at me didn’t make me feel pathetic, though. There wasn’t a hint of pity in his face—only curiosity.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want to interrupt. You were Hal’s friend, you know? Not mine. He was pretty good about sharing things, but I don’t think he’d have shared you back then.”

To his credit, Max didn’t immediately leap to defend my brother, who I knew full well had gone through a little-shit phase in middle school. “Maybe not,” he said at last. “I like getting the chance to get to know you now, though.” He sighed. “I feel like an idiot for not recognizing you when you picked me up, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t, too. It gave me a chance to meet you before the past started butting in.”

God, if that wasn’t an opening line, I didn’t know how to recognize one. I still didn’t leap, though. I was too nervous. Last night had been good, this morning had been better, but…what was this all about? What did Max want? To be better friends with his bestie’s brother, or something more?

“I kind of wish we could have met again somewhere else, though,” Max said before I could ask any of the questions buzzing around in my brain. “I know I’m ‘interesting’ to people, given everything that happened with my dad and the fact that I haven’t been here for so long, but honestly? I can handle an eighty-hour work week way better than I can handle questions about the past. Having to think about everything that happened before my mom and I left feels…overwhelming.”

Wow. I’d just gotten more honesty than I’d been hoping for. It took a moment for me to process it all, and Max’s smile started to slip away. “I know it’s kind of pathetic, but—”

“It’s not pathetic. Overwhelming sucks,” I said before I lost my nerve. “I had a hell of a time at first when I left the military. There are a lot of companies in bigger cities that advocate for hiring vets, but I just couldn’t handle being around so many people. I came back here just to take a breather, at first, but even with the nosiness—and people asked me a ton of questions when I first got back, it was ridiculous—I can handle a small town way better. Plus the police were hiring, and I met the qualifications, and…” I shrugged. “It just came together.”

“I can’t imagine moving out of the city.”

I knew a lot of people felt that way about urban living, but I personally couldn’t fathom it. “Doesn’t it get kind of lonely?”

Max chuckled. “It never gets lonely. That’s part of the charm—you’ve always got people around you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know most of them, right?”

“That’s also part of the charm,” he replied wryly. “Although I’ve always had the best time when Hal and the girls came out for the holidays.”

I wasn’t surprised. “He was really supportive about me coming back here when I finished my tour,” I said, looking down at my feet to make sure I didn’t slip and fall on my face.

I didn’t want to bore Max with details about my life, but when I glanced over, he was looking right at me with nothing but genuine interest in his face. “He set me up in my old room in the basement, told me I could stay as long as I wanted to. I didn’t want to intrude in their family life, though, so I bought my own place as fast as I could.”

“Hence the remodel with the rats.”

“Yeah. It was the best thing I could find in my budget, and even then…” I wagged my hand back and forth, to indicate the sketchy nature of my living arrangement. I didn’t regret buying the house, but there was a lot that needed to happen before I could do something like have the girls over or think about bringing a date home. “Hal’s offered to help me out with it, but he’s working all hours these days, and I don’t want to dig into his off time.”

“You should let me take a look. I’m good with all kinds of tools.”

“I bet you are,” I muttered, and Max laughed. He laughed hard enough he slipped on the ice, and it was only a quick reach for his elbow on my part that kept him from going down onto his knees. Although… Shit, I needed to get my mind out of the gutter.

Max wiped the corners of his eyes. “Thanks.” He didn’t pull out of my grasp, and I didn’t immediately let go, either. “How about tonight?” he offered.

My heart started to beat so hard it hammered against my rib cage. Was this really happening? Was my crush really volunteering to help rebuild my house? “Y-Yeah. That would be great.”

Max beamed. “Great.”

Oh damn. This was really happening.

Chapter Five

Max

It should have been stranger, making plans with Nicky Bell. I really hadn’t known him well when we were kids—he was right about Hal being possessive when he was younger. But I wasn’t making plans with Nicky, even though I’d been hanging out with “Uncle Nicky” all afternoon. I was making plans with Dominic, the hot cop who’d rescued me off the side of the road, and that felt completely right. They were the same person, and yet I knew there was no chance in hell of me shutting the door of awareness that had burst open as soon as I saw Dominic.

I’d barely noticed the guys around me for months, and then all of a sudden, I couldn’t get enough of my best friend’s little brother. Way to embrace a sudden change in plans by jumping into the deep end head-first.

I knew from the moment we made the plan that I’d have to talk to Hal about it as soon as possible, though. A lot of people underestimated Hal—they thought his rough looks meant a rough mind, yet nothing could be further from the truth. He’d put himself through college while running his own landscaping business, and he had a head for math that I couldn’t touch. He played hard and he loved harder, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he was definitely going to notice the new vibe between Dominic and me. The best thing to do was to own it.

Once we got back, I was able to get in an hour of work—checking in with my assistant and emailing her some paperwork—before laughter and the delicious smells of dinner pulled me to the kitchen. We had Mrs. Jackson’s—I couldn’t call her Phee, it just seemed disrespectful even though I was an adult now—lasagna, with a green salad on the side. Marnie gave Dominic and me a blow-by-blow account of what they did with Hal that afternoon, only pausing long enough to breathe.

“Slow down, kiddo,” Hal said after a few minutes of watching his oldest practically vibrate in her chair. “You’ve got all night to tell them this stuff, but dinner won’t be hot forever.”

“We have a microwave, Dad,” she replied in a “duh” tone of voice. “I can reheat it.”

“You can save some of the stories for later, too.” He looked between Dominic and me. “She spent half an hour telling me about all the fun you guys had this morning, too. It sounds like they ran you ragged.”

Dominic’s neck pinked a little bit. Was he blushing because he was embarrassed for some reason or because he was thinking about how much he’d enjoyed today? “Yep, it was nice to have backup.”

“Max was really good at watching us,” Marnie agreed. “He knows special ways to get food coloring out of clothes.”

Hal raised an eyebrow. “How many clothes are we talking about here?”

“Just the outside ones!”

“They won’t stain,” I assured Hal. “Trust me, food coloring is nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve had to soak out of my work clothes.”

“That’s what you get for going to all those awful company holiday parties.”

“It’s a burden,” I agreed. “Hopefully, I’ll be too busy after I get back on Monday to participate.”

“Is your car gonna be ready by then?”

I shook my head. “Ha, no, not even close. But I’m sure I can get a rental, and the worst of the storm is supposed to be done by tomorrow.”

“Which means tonight is going to be bad.” Dominic shook his head. “I should get back to my place and cover up some more holes.”

“Take Max,” Hal said, offering me up like a sacrificial lamb. “He looks useless, but he actually knows his way around a hammer. Get him to hang some drywall for you.”

Dominic looked a little nervous—maybe he was regretting asking me over after a solid day of putting up with me already. “Like anyone wants to watch me hang drywall,” I said, trying to give him an out.

“I would,” Dominic said, and the pink rose up to his face. He pushed his chair back and grabbed his empty plate, and Steph’s as well. She’d finished her dinner a lot faster than Marnie, since she still wasn’t talking. “I’ll just…dishwasher.”

Hal looked from his brother to me. He didn’t say anything, but I could see the gears turning. Yep, we needed to talk, before he took me out to the woodshed and started making demands about my intentions toward his baby brother.

“Want to help me finish cleaning up?” he asked once Dominic was out of the kitchen and helping the girls set up their favorite movie.

“Sure.” I followed him to the fridge, where he took out a beer—Molson stock ale. What was wrong with him? I didn’t even drink alcohol if it wasn’t New Year’s Eve, and I still knew that stuff was gross.

He popped the cap and turned around to look at me. “So…”

“It just happened,” I said before he could start grilling me. Elbowing my way to the front of a conversation was an old defensive tactic of mine, one that had only gotten worse since I became a lawyer. “I didn’t recognize Dominic when I met him, and I didn’t know he was gay, either, but I feel like we made a connection yesterday. We’re not being weird in front of the girls or anything, and I’m not going to let it get weird in front of them, but while I’m here, I want to spend time with him. More than just here at the house. He invited me over to look at his place tonight”—I’d kind of invited myself, but whatever, details—“and I said I’d come, but it’s just casual. I won’t be spending the night, I won’t be keeping him from his responsibilities, and I won’t be doing anything to make him or you uncomfortable.”

“You mind letting me get a word in edgewise?” Hal asked mildly before sipping his beer.

Ugh. And I’d fallen prey to the oldest trick in the book—letting your opponent fill the silence when they couldn’t bear it. I needed to rein it in. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“I’m not planning on warning you off of Nicky.” Hal took another sip then crossed his arms, his expression contemplative. “You’re both adults, and God knows you don’t have a mean bone in your body, so I know you’re not gonna say anything to hurt him. I think you could use a guy like him in your life, honestly. You’ve been in New York how many years, and you never once introduced us to a boyfriend or partner? Nicky’s good people, way better than those sharks you hang out with on a regular basis.”

I frowned. “I feel like you’re jumping way ahead. It’s not like I’m looking for some grand romance here, just a guy to hang out with that I like and who likes me back.”

“I know, I know. And I can’t speak for Nicky, but I’m not sure if he’s ready for anything serious, either.” Hal looked down at his beer for a moment. “He didn’t have the easiest time of things in the army. He was out before he joined the service, plenty of people are now, but he never found anybody there, either. When he returned home, he was…closed off, for a while. Being around him was kind of like seeing him through a window.”

“Huh.” Dominic didn’t seem like that at all to me. “It looks like he’s gotten over it.”

“He really stepped up when Ariel left.” Hal took another drink. “Only good thing to come out of that shitshow, honestly.”

I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up, but since he’d broached the subject… “Where is she now?”

“I don’t know for sure. With her aunt in Jersey, maybe? Not too far. She still tries to call every now and then, but I told her if she wanted to talk, she could do it in person.”

“That’s kind of harsh on the girls, isn’t it?” I ventured. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Ariel had been in the wrong in wanting out of the marriage, and she’d done it in the most brutal way, but there was no good reason to punish her daughters for her mistakes. They missed their mother; that much was plain. Marnie had compensated by going full speed all the time, and Steph had responded by shutting down.

“It is, I know it is, but…” He sighed and ran his hand down his face. “You weren’t here in the aftermath, Max. You didn’t see them in the moment. The first few weeks were hell, especially after thinking their mama might be really hurt, might be dead. And she let them think that. She let them live with that, and then she calls up like everything’s fine and chats for all of two minutes before hanging up the phone. ‘Checking in,’ she said. Checking in and hanging up before her kids could be any more of a burden to her.”

There was the bitterness again, bitterness and anger and a huge helping of guilt, if the way he was pinching his mouth shut was any indication. “Fucking cruel is what it was,” he spat. “I can’t let it happen to them again. If they get used to not hearing her voice, then maybe the pain will start to fade. Maybe they’ll be able to move on. And if she wants to reestablish herself in their lives? Then she needs to make more of an effort than a once-weekly call and a few emails. My lawyer is still figuring out where to send the divorce papers to, and I—”

I took his beer out of his hand, put it on the counter behind him, and pulled him into a hug. Hal collapsed against my shoulder, just a little bit, enough to let me know that he really needed it. I held onto him tight, warmth flooding through my chest as I rubbed my hand over his back, and wondered when the last time he’d gotten a hug like this was. He was bigger than me, but I could carry his weight. For a little while, at least.

We were quiet for a few minutes, just standing their leaning on each other, before the sound of Marnie singing “Let It Go” permeated the whole first floor, maybe the entire block, and broke the mood. Hal straightened up and, not quite looking me in the eye, said, “I’m fuckin’ glad you’re here, Max.”

“I am, too.” I squeezed his shoulders with both my hands then gave him a little bit of space. “Thanks for not asking me to be your lawyer, by the way,” I said with a smile.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re a corporate lawyer. You’re useless to me.”

“I know. I’m not sad about that.” Hal seemed sad, though, about a lot of things. It was almost enough to make me wish I was a divorce lawyer, just so I could help him out more directly. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Hal shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Eventually.” Then he raised his voice so the others could hear. “I’ve got my girls. You two get out of here.”

Marnie looked up. “Where are you guys going?”

“We’re going to go work on my house for a while,” Dominic said as he stood up from the table. I followed suit and got our jackets out of the closet then grabbed the pack that held my tablet. When I gave Dominic his, our hands touched, and I was pleased to see a familiar flush along his neck again.

“Can I come?”

“Not this time,” Dominic said, ruffling Marnie’s curls before leaning down and kissing her cheek. He kissed Steph as well, and then the girls looked expectantly at me.

“Uh…”

“Come on, Max!” Marnie patted her cheek, and I obliged with a kiss for both girls while their father laughed at me from behind his hand. For all that Steph looked more like Ariel, Marnie had so many of her mother’s mannerisms it was unreal.

“See you girls later.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Hal called out as we headed for the door.

“Gonna be a boring evening, then,” I called back.

“Gu—not like that, you asshole. I’m talking about on the repairs.”

“Daddy! Language!”

I shut the door with a chuckle. “Time to make a break for it.”

“Don’t run,” Dominic cautioned me as we walked down the driveway toward his Jeep. “I don’t want to have to catch you again.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Dominic looked at me with a glint in his eye. “I mean, don’t leap into my arms or anything, but maybe you could fall onto my bed?” He immediately put a hand on his face. “Oh my god. I’m not smooth. I’m sorry.” He unlocked the doors and got inside, and I followed him.

“That was actually pretty smooth. Maybe we can start with you showing me around the house and putting me to work. There have to be some two-person jobs around the place, right?”

“A few,” he admitted, starting up the car and glancing into the road before he pulled out. “If nothing else, you can act as my backup against any unwanted guests in the walls.”

I snorted. “I can do that.”

…

We headed away from the center of town and took a turn down the road that ran closer to the train tracks. The tracks were defunct now, a remnant of the logging industry that nobody had bothered to remove. Kids liked to go down and smash bottles against them while high schoolers liked to go there to hangout and drink. At least they had when I lived here. It was the opposite side of town from where I’d grown up, in a historic two-story Colonial on an acre and a half of land. My father had had to sell it when my mom divorced him. I wasn’t sure who lived there now—hell, I wasn’t entirely sure where he lived around here anymore.

I blinked away the memories and said, “You get called out to scare people down there?”

He rolled his eyes. “At least once a week from a parent asking me to check and see if their kid is there and bring them home if I catch them. As if they don’t scatter the second I show up.”

I knew how it was. I’d been one of those kids more than once. “That’s part of the thrill of going to the tracks.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I just never thought I’d be the one doing the scaring, you know? I didn’t see myself ending up as a cop when I was in school.”

I sensed a new avenue of conversation opening up. “What did you think you’d do?”

“I don’t know for sure. I figured I might become a teacher. I like working with kids.” His expression was easy now, probably thinking about his nieces. “I’m the one they always send to the schools to do the ‘stranger danger’ and drug talks.”

“I could see you being a teacher.” Or at least, I could see shy, gentle Nicky being a teacher. Dominic was a bit rougher around the edges, but it wouldn’t be impossible to go back to school for it.

He shook his head. “Nah, I needed something I could make money in fast, and it doesn’t take as long to become a cop. Besides, with them, my military experience counts for something. It’s a good enough fit for me.” He glanced my way. “What about you? Did you always want to be a lawyer?”

“Basically.” I’d had this heart-to-heart with myself numerous times, and I was pretty secure in my choices at this point. “Mom is a lawyer, and she always seemed to enjoy it. She had a different kind of practice here in Edgewood, of course, mostly wills and property disputes and a little bit of family law when she had to, but she usually walked out the door in the morning whistling.”

At least, she had until my father shattered things irreparably and my mother had completely broken down, unable to continue her practice—unable to step foot out of the house, the shame was so severe. It was worse because my father had tried to act like nothing had happened, like it could all be fixed.

“The stuff I do in the city is different, but I like it well enough.” Practicing law didn’t get me whistling a happy tune every morning, but that didn’t make it drudgery. The office was lively with Marcus, and every client was a challenge that kept me learning and on my toes.

“Huh.” With that noncommittal answer, Dominic turned down Broward Street. “I’m at the end of the block here.” It was a slightly rundown row of houses, but I didn’t see anything I’d call out as particularly decrepit. When we stopped in front of a small but neat Victorian, I was kind of impressed. Sure, the paint was peeling and the driveway was cracked, but it didn’t look all that bad.

“I think you’ve exaggerated your problems with this place.”

Dominic chuckled as he turned off the engine. “Wait until you see inside of it.”

I followed him up to the door and onto the small porch, which had clearly been redone. “This was one of my first projects,” he said, stomping both his feet clean against the welcome mat before unlocking the door. “I almost fell through it when the realtor brought me around to look at the place. I knew I had to make it strong enough to hold some weight first and foremost.” He entered and flipped on a light, and I followed behind him. And…

Huh, yeah.

Okay.

This place was definitely a fixer-upper.

The front hall was small, and it had a newly laid hardwood floor which seemed increasingly out of place the farther into the house I looked. To the right was a room that might once have been used as a dining room but was currently a receptacle for tools, lumber, and sawdust. On the left was a long room that stretched adjacent down the length of the hall, with multiple doors entering into it—somebody else’s remodel, probably. And it had…no floor. Nothing but bare concrete foundation over most of it, actually.

A few of the walls were stripped all the way down to the exterior, with only the frames and siding keeping the outside from being inside. Well, that explains why it’s so freaking cold in here. Other walls had insulation, but no drywall in front of them. None of them were painted. There was a door on the right side of the hall that I figured led into a bathroom, and further down on the right, I assumed there had to be the kitchen. Right in front of me was a staircase leading up, looking rickety enough that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to risk it.

“Sorry about the mess.” Dominic took his hat off and smoothed down his hair, a tired look in his eyes. “I kind of forget how this place might look to someone else. I’ve done a lot of work on it, I swear, but there’s still a lot left, and I haven’t had the time to focus on it because Hal’s needed me with the girls. Not that I mind!” he emphasized at the end.

I wasn’t about to call him out. “Of course you don’t mind it. You’re one of their favorite people, anyone can see that, and they’d be able to tell if you resented them in some way.” The best way to get past the weirdness, I figured, was to forge ahead like nothing was wrong. “So, what can I help you do first? Insulate the front room so you don’t freeze to death this winter?”

Dominic looked at me, seriously at first, then with more of a sense of play. “You mean you don’t want to run screaming?”

“Where would I run? Back out into the snow? That seems counterproductive.” I shook my head. “I’d rather stay and help, thanks. But first, you’ve got to tell me—where do you sleep? Because it can’t be up front here.”

“Oh, no. Come this way.” He led me down the hall to the last door on the left, which opened into a little bedroom beside the kitchen. “I think it might have been a mud room or storage room originally, but this spot is the first thing I fixed up,” he said, shutting the door behind us and turning on the space heater in the corner. “It was something doable that I could single out, you know? And it was small enough that I could finish it fast.”

I glanced around. It was a pretty small room, for sure, but there was space for a double bed and a dresser, plus a little end-table covered with novels and a lamp. Two of the walls were cream-colored, with a gray accent wall at the back. The green bedspread and pillow gave the place color, and the light oak dresser and table made it feel warm. There was a picture of Hal, Dominic, their sister Christine, and the girls all together hanging on one wall, along with another of a group of soldiers in their BDUs, smiling at the camera. I couldn’t immediately tell which one was Dominic, but I finally recognized him at the end of the line. He was the only one not beaming.

“It’s not much, I know—”

“I think it’s great.” I didn’t want to hear a hint of shame come out of his mouth. I was the one who’d basically invited myself over—it was too late in the game to get prissy just because his bottom floor was a work-in-progress. Besides, this little room was totally fine. “It looks homey. Gives me an idea of what the place will look like once you’ve finished it.”

“Thanks.” He grinned, relaxed again, and he looked so damn handsome that I couldn’t resist reaching out and taking his hand. I tugged him in close to me, my touch light and unassuming, and smiled when he came right along.

“I would really love to kiss you right now,” I said, completely honest.

“Maybe you should, then,” he replied.

Yeah, maybe I should. I grinned and leaned in, Dominic’s lips parting in readiness, and we—

Something crashed from down the hallway. We froze, then Dominic groaned and said, “Oh man, not again,” pulled away and headed toward the living room. I followed him back down the cold hallway and to the front room and found him crouched down, staring into a corner that was filled with stacked floorboards and edging. “They’re back,” he said quietly. “Damn it.”

“Who’s back?” I asked, bending down next to him.

“The raccoons.”

“You have rats and raccoons?” I was on the verge of laughing at the weirdness of it, but I refrained when I saw Dominic’s embarrassed look.

“Yep. I evicted this family a week ago—believe me, it was not easy—and spent an entire night covering all the holes I could find that they might have crept in through.” He frowned. “I must have missed one.”

“I don’t see—oh.” No, wait, there was the glow of an eye. And another eye. And another… “How many are there?”

“Three, all juveniles.”

I snickered. “Are you going to arrest them, officer?”

“I’m going to serve them with an eviction notice,” he replied. “The problem is getting them to run outside instead of deeper into the house.”

I could see that. Nobody wanted one of these little guys to make it upstairs. “Okay, I’ll go open the front door and block off the hall. You uncover them and encourage them to run for the nearest exit.”

“Got it.”

Operation “Raccoon Eviction” was pretty successful, if I do say so myself. After Dominic shoved the boards covering them away, all three of the home invaders scattered. Two of them did cut for the stairs, but a few steps in that direction from me made them rethink it. As soon as one finally ran outside, the other two followed.

“Okay,” I said once Dominic had shut the front door, holding the freezing wind back once again. “Well, I think I know what we’re doing tonight.”

Dominic blushed. I don’t know where he got the heat for it—I was so cold I couldn’t even feel my hands. I’d have to get the gloves I borrowed from Hal on in a hurry. “Patching holes?”

“Patching holes.”

We spent two more hours out in the main rooms of the house, looking for crevices that were open to the outside and—sure enough—hanging drywall over the spots where he’d already laid insulation. By the time we finished, I was tired and Dominic was clearly exhausted.

“I should get going,” I said, oddly reluctant to leave even though I knew anything athletic was out of the cards for tonight. “Do you feel up to driving me back?”

“I…could,” Dominic said judiciously, glancing out the window by the front door, “but I think you better take a closer look outside right now.”

“Why?” It was dark—it had been dark when we arrived. I came over to stand beside him, and he flipped on the porchlight.

“Son of a—” The snow had somehow doubled from when we’d arrived, deep enough to risk getting buried up to my knees if I walked out there. “Wow. That was fast.”

“They did say it would get worse before it got better,” Dominic said then looked at me. “Do you want to spend the night? Just—just to sleep, I mean, we’ve been hauling crap around this house for the past two hours, and it’s dusty as hell, and—”

“That’s fine.” I didn’t need him to justify it to me. Actually, the thought of just sleeping next to him felt really…nice. “I’d love to stay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Dominic paused then reached out and took my hand. It was slightly awkward with our bulky gloves on, but when he squeezed, I squeezed right back.

“Thanks.”

I didn’t quite know what he was thanking me for, but if it put that look on his face, I’d take it.

Chapter Six

Dominic

I woke up to the familiar whir of my space heater and the unfamiliar slow breathing of a person sleeping deeply next to me. With my heart ready to jump out of my chest, I spun around too fast and almost fell out of bed. It took a few seconds to understand who was in my bed and to remember why.

It was Max. Of course it was Max. And I was okay. He’d spent the night because of the snow. We’d gone to bed and laid awkwardly next to each other for a while, but later, a sleeping Max had slid over and pressed his back against my side. It had been like a teenage fantasy come true, except with no boners or action because we were so tired.

I held back a groan and glanced at the clock. Barely seven—no wonder Max was still asleep. He didn’t look like he got the chance to sleep in much with his job. Part of me wanted to stay and watch him for a few minutes, but a bigger part urged me not to be a creeper and to see what the snow was like outside.

I eased out of bed and grabbed my coat off the floor then let myself out into the hall. Shit, it was cold out here. Better than it could have been, but I seriously should have gotten the insulation all done first thing instead of dicking around with the floor. I shuffled to the front room and looked out the window, only to be met with a monochrome of white. It wasn’t falling much anymore, but what had already fallen was deep, almost up to the door of my Jeep.

I could shovel out and chain up, but until the streets were plowed, it was going to be rough going, even with four-wheel drive. We might be stuck here today. I wondered how Max would take it, if he would stress about work again. I was somewhere between excited and nervous myself, but I didn’t have a huge presentation to prepare for, either.

I shuffled back to the kitchen and made coffee then assessed breakfast options. Hmm…I had eggs, I had butter, I had bread for toast…we’d survive. I poured two mugs of coffee, made one of them up the way I’d seen Max take it yesterday morning and kept the other black for me, then headed for the bedroom.

Max was just waking up as I entered, and the smell of the coffee seemed to help get him the rest of the way there. “Mmmmm?”

I sat down beside him. “Yeah, brought some for you.” I handed him the mug and had the pleasure of watching his head tilt back a little as he took a long swallow.

“That’s good,” he said once his mouth was free.

“Hal has turned me into a coffee snob.”

“Sounds like him.” He tilted his head as he looked at me in my heavy coat, and I tried not to let on how cute that was. “So I guess there hasn’t been a miraculous heat wave since last night, then.”

I laughed. “Not even close.”

He pursed his lips. “Is it that bad?”

“About two and a half to three feet.” I shrugged. “It’ll be okay once the streets are plowed, but they do the main ones first, and there are only two plow operators for the whole town.”

“Oh.”

I felt a little bad about laughing now, seeing him so crestfallen. “I’ve got some snow shovels. We can dig the Jeep out and make a path to the main road if we need to.” It would suck, because I was at the far side of the cul de sac, but we could do it.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, as long as it’s clear tomorrow, I should be okay. The highways will be even cleaner, so I’ll still be able to make it back to New York in time for my afternoon meeting. I need to spend a few hours on my presentation, though. I meant to work more yesterday, but time got away from me.” He sounded a little chagrined.

“That’s fine. I’ve got plenty to do working on the house.”

“Oh, I’m still going to help you with things here today,” Max said with a grin, scooting a little closer to me. “We’ve got hours and hours to spend together. You know what we should start with?”

Was he saying what I thought he was saying? A few choice images had heat creeping up my collar—Max smiling that wicked grin as he stripped his shirt off, Max pulling me in for a kiss with one hand as the other one reached down for the button of my jeans. “Um…what?”

He leaned in and whispered in a sexy as hell voice, “Putting up insulation.”

“Oh my god.” If he didn’t have a hot mug of coffee in his hands, I would have hit him with a pillow. Or tackled him back into bed and see if he was up to reenacting the erotic reel my brain had been playing since last night.

“Because there’s no good reason for you to have to put up with a freezing cold house right now, especially when you’ve got me to help.” He took another sip of coffee. “Right?”

He had a good point. “Breakfast first, though.”

“Definitely breakfast first.”

I called Hal to let him know we were snowed in, to which he replied with enough innuendo to make me blush and make Max laugh at my reaction, then made a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. It was nice, sharing the space with someone else, especially now that I was over my early morning shock. I was glad Max hadn’t noticed it—explaining my issues with surprises to people was about my least favorite thing to do, especially to guys I was interested in.

And I was very interested in Max.

…

After food was demolished, we got to work hanging insulation against the bare walls in the front room. It wasn’t my neatest work ever, but after a few hours, it began to feel considerably warmer in my house. Max’s work, I couldn’t help but notice, was also quite a bit neater than mine, even though I’d been working on this house every day for the past month and a half. Was he just naturally amazing at things? “If you decide you get tired of the rat race in New York, you could probably make it as a construction worker.”

“I’ve always enjoyed the work,” Max said as he measured a stud bay. He grabbed one of my utility knives and began to cut the batt of insulation to fit. “Not enough to make it a career, but I spent a lot of time at work sites with my dad when I was a kid, and that helped me pick up the basics.” He smiled, faint but real. “It was fun. I enjoyed spending time with him back then.”

That must have been before Maxfield Senior ran for mayor. He’d sold his company after he got elected, if I remembered right. And just a few years later, everything went to shit.

Max’s smile was gone. He looked lost in an unhappy memory, his hands moving more slowly than before. I opened my mouth to say…something, anything to lighten the mood. Max got there first.

“You might consider getting a little professional help when you redo the floorboards, if you don’t want everything set at a diagonal.”

“What?” I glanced down, then up at the piece of insulation I was stapling on…at a forty-five-degree angle. “Oops.” That got Max to laugh, and it was the best sound I’d heard all morning.

Was I maybe a little in over my head? Ugh, yes. I hadn’t let any thought of romance enter my head in so long, and now I had a backlog of years all catching up to me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, construction errors and all. I couldn’t help it—he kept moving all the time, twiddling his fingers or tapping his toes even when he was sitting back and considering his next step. It was irresistible.

But Max was leaving tomorrow, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Max looked over and saw me watching him—heat rushed up my neck and ears in an instant—but he didn’t seem to mind. He winked. “See something you like?”

“I think you know I do,” I replied.

“Yeah? Me, too.”

Oh damn, really? He must have read some of that in my expression, because he set the utility knife down and turned to face me. “Maybe we could take a break and—”

And then his phone began to ring.

“Shit.” Max pulled off his right glove and grabbed his phone out of his pocket. “Shit.” He answered the call. “Marcus, I was just about to—no, I saw that. Yeah. Yes. Yes, I know you feel strongly about those clauses, but any rearranging of section seven has to go through his lawyer first, and—no, she didn’t call me. Of course I would know. I’ve had my phone with me all morning.” Max pressed to his feet and began to pace around the room as he hashed out what sounded like more than a difference of opinion, but slightly less than an actual fight, with his boss. I did my best to focus on the wall in front of me and not eavesdrop, but it was hard to not only hear, but see the change that came over Max, from loose and playful to upright and rigid in a few minutes.

Finally, he ended the call with a sigh, and all that strange stiffness seemed to flow out of him until he was the man who’d been with me all morning, just a little more flustered. “I really need to start reviewing the contract changes for the meeting tomorrow,” he said then looked with disgust at the film of pink fluff that covered his clothes. “I also need to clean up.”

“Lucky for you, the shower works really well,” I assured him, “and I’ve got spare clothes you can use. I have a washer and dryer, too, so we can at least get your stuff clean by tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks.”

We headed back to my room together, and I got out a loose pair of sweats and a gray army hoodie and put them on the end of the bed. “You can just throw your dirty stuff out into the hall and I’ll get it in the washer.”

“So that’s a no on the strip tease, then.”

I knew my mouth had just dropped open like a cartoon character, but I couldn’t help it. Had a strip tease been on offer?

Max started chuckling. “No, I’m sorry, I’m kidding. I mean, I’d be willing if I wasn’t completely covered in fiberglass dust right now, but as it is…”

I wasn’t used to people I was attracted to being casually cute yet fully direct with their flirting game. Generally, my interactions with them hadn’t lasted long enough for them to joke with me, but for all that Max was clearly concerned about his meeting tomorrow, he still managed to rev me up and make me laugh at the same time. “Sound logic,” I said at last.

“I’m a practitioner of civil law. Deductive reasoning is my forte.” He winked and then shut the bathroom door.

I took a second just to breathe before heading back out front, alone.

Max would probably work on his presentation for hours, so once I got his clothes started in the washer, I buckled down on the insulation. I was going to get all of this up in my future living room today, and neither snow nor rain nor gorgeous high school crush distraction currently naked in my bathroom was going to stop me.

I worked steadily, resisting the urge to go back and check on Max, to ask if he was comfortable, if he needed anything. He was an adult. He’d let me know if he wasn’t.

I guessed he wouldn’t appreciate the interruption.

So I was surprised when Max was the first one to seek me out a few hours later. “Hey.”

I turned around to look at him, grimacing a little at the stiffness in my lower back. I was only in my mid-twenties. This was not okay.

He was standing at the edge of the room in my clothes, all a little too big on him, and holding a plate with a sandwich on it. “You ready to break for a late lunch? It’s not a snowman grilled cheese, but it’s edible.”

Max made me lunch? Without the girls being around? “Thanks,” I managed after a second. “That sounds great.”

“I made you a ham, mustard, and mayonnaise masterpiece, because that’s what I found in your fridge. And look!” He held the plate down a little lower, and I could see that while it wasn’t a snowman, it was a cutout of some kind with those pointy ears, maybe a cat or a—

“Is that a raccoon?”

“It’s commemorative!” Max glanced down at it. “What, too much? The extra pieces didn’t go to waste. I left them in the kitchen on the cutting board.”

Part of me wanted to laugh. Part of me wanted to get choked up, because nobody had ever gone to such weird, funny lengths for me before. Most of me just wanted to eat the sandwich, because now that I was aware it was mid-afternoon, my stomach also started rumbling at me. But I also wanted to wrap him up in my arms and kiss him senseless to satisfy another type of hunger.

My stomach growled loudly enough for Max to hear, if the sudden grin was anything to go by. I held out my hand. “It’s the most delicious raccoon I’ve ever seen. Gimme.”

…

Late lunch turned into an early dinner once it was clear that Max was done for now and didn’t mind something a little more elaborate—in this case, a second course of canned beef stew over egg noodles. Then it was my turn to shower, and I blessed my brand-new hot water heater the whole time. When I came out, Max was sitting against the headboard of my bed with his tablet in his hands but clearly not working on it.

“Hey…want to watch a movie?”

He could have asked me to watch the snow melt and I’d have said yes. “Sure, that sounds great.” I wasn’t a movie buff or anything, but I enjoyed superhero movies as much as everybody else did.

“Great, do you like classics? I’ll cue up Casablanca.”

Casablanca? Wasn’t that a really old movie? What was I getting myself into? “Okay.”

The set-up was pretty nice, at least. Max set his tablet up at the end of the bed, and we settled in beside each other to watch. He smelled like my bodywash, and he was so warm—I didn’t know how he kept so warm when my own fingers felt like ice. The movie started, and it was interesting enough to hold my attention, at least for a while.

I woke up slowly to the feeling of a warm hand rubbing circles against my shoulder. It felt so nice I almost didn’t want to wake up, until I remembered who it had to be. “Mmm, Max?”

“Hey.” His voice was quiet. “The movie’s over.”

“Oh.” Oh damn, that meant I had slept right through most of it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“That’s okay. You worked hard today. You clearly needed the nap.”

Maybe I had, but I was getting more awake by the second now. His hand slid down my arm as he leaned in. The heat from earlier sparked to life again in his gaze. I wanted to both pull him down to me and lunge up toward him all at once.

“Hey, Max? Do you maybe want to—”

Suddenly, it was my phone going off. Max and I groaned. How many times was life going to cock block us?

“Shit, where is it?” he asked.

“I’ve got it,” I muttered, rolling over from where I’d propped my head against Max’s hip—which was familiar of me, jeez—and over to my discarded jeans, where I’d left my phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, Dom!” I heard the familiar, cheerful voice of my psychologist from the VA. “I was just calling to let you know that we’re going to have to reschedule the appointment we had set for tomorrow, unless you want to meet up on Zoom. This storm is setting everything back a few days, I’m afraid.”

“Ah.” Wow, I’d completely forgotten that. “Rescheduling the appointment is fine. Can we make it the week after next, actually?” I wanted to be around to help Hal with the girls as much as possible in the lead-up to Christmas.

“That would be fine.” We got something new set up, then I said good-bye and ended the call.

Max was looking at me curiously. “That was my counselor,” I said, trying not to feel too awkward about it. “I see her once a month, for help with my PTSD. Maybe not this month, though.” I gestured in a “hey, what can you do” kind of way.

Max fingered the edge of the blanket. “Is that delay going to be okay for you?”

It kept catching me off guard every time he cared or showed concern for me. “It’ll be fine. I’m a lot better, honestly,” I said. “Although sometimes it still pops up out of nowhere to give me trouble. Like this morning.” Shit, I hadn’t meant to mention that.

“What happened this morning?”

I reluctantly recounted how disoriented I’d been on finding him in bed with me at first, and how nervous, until I realized who he was. “But it’s not usually a problem, I promise,” I said. “It’s just been a really long time since I’ve been so close to someone who isn’t Hal or the girls.”

Max nodded. “I get that. I’m surrounded by people all the time in New York, but it’s not like I invite any of those people into my home. I’d freak out a little too if I couldn’t remember the other person in my bed.” He smirked a little. “Be honest, did you think I was a raccoon at first? I mean, I’d understand, given how hospitable you are toward them.”

This time I did whack him with a pillow. While he was chuckling, I asked, “Do you have much time to go out with any of those people, even if it’s not an invitation to your place?” Because from the sound of things, he was so busy with his job he barely even had time to sleep.

Max just shrugged. “I’m so focused on my career right now I don’t even think about things like meeting people who aren’t coworkers or clients.” His lips twisted in a not entirely happy sort of smile. “This phase won’t last forever, though. Soon life will slow down a little, and then…who knows? Maybe I’ll have time for something more.” He sounded more hopeful than certain of that, but it wasn’t my place to point that out. “What about you?” he asked, and now it was my turn to be on the spot. I shifted nervously. “I know Edgewood isn’t a queer metropolis or anything, but you’re a catch. Why aren’t you dating anyone?”

He thought I was a catch? I shrugged, trying not to let on how little I wanted to talk about myself. He’d answered my question; it was only fair. “It’s better for people in the army when it comes to being out now, but it’s still not comfortable,” I said judiciously. “It was easier to hook up than try to figure out an actual relationship. It still is. I’ve been so busy ever since I moved back, with getting into the police force, then everything that happened with Ariel…” And hadn’t that been a kicker to my PTSD, thinking my sister-in-law had gone missing and searching frantically for three days non-stop until she finally called from fucking Jersey. “Casual is better for now…”

As if he could read the direction of my thoughts and mood, Max gripped my thigh and squeezed. How could we be so in sync after a little more than twenty-four hours of coming into each other’s lives? Or maybe I was reading too much into this.

“Anyways, sorry I fell asleep during the movie,” I said, chickening out and opting to change the subject entirely. “It’s not that I didn’t sleep well. I just work a lot of early shifts.”

He shook his head. “It’s totally fine. I’ve seen it half a dozen times already, and you looked like you needed the rest.” He reached down and moved the tablet off the bed then looked over at me with heat in his eyes. “You look a lot more awake now, though.”

I swallowed.

Max licked his lips. “Dominic?”

“Y-Yeah?” I said breathlessly.

“Tell me if I’m being too forward, okay?”

Chapter Seven

Max

“This isn’t the Victorian era, Max. I don’t think you can be too—”

Before another phone could ring or life found another way to block us, I cupped the back of his head with my free hand and drew our lips together in a kiss.

I’d expected it to be a slow kiss, but that thought flew out of my head as Dominic moaned suddenly and leaned into me, pressing me back until my shoulders dug into the wall above the headboard. He was eager, responsive, delicious—it was clear that he wanted me, and that was the best thing in the world to know when I wanted him back so much.

“I wasn’t—sure—” he said between kisses. “With all the interruptions. I wasn’t sure you wanted this, still wanted this—”

“I do,” I promised. “I do want it.” He ground his hips against mine, and—yeah, nice, okay, I needed to get my hand around him. I let go of his hand and slid my fingers beneath the edge of his sweats and gave a suggestive tug. “You want to lie down?” I kissed a trail from his mouth to his sharp, gorgeous cheekbone. “Or do you want to stay sitting? Just lean back and let me do all the work for a while?” I unzipped the top of his hoodie and traced down the curve of his neck, tasting the faintest bit of salt on his skin. “You can have whatever you want. Me underneath you, me on top of you—”

“Fuck.” He pulled my hand out of his sweats with a gasp. “Fuck, stop, or I’m going to come before we do anything.”

Before we did anything? What did he think this part was? I wondered how used Dominic was to foreplay. I hadn’t had a lot of lovers, but more than a few I’d had were sensualists, guys who enjoyed a long, drawn-out tease that eventually led to a mind-blowing orgasm. Maybe Dominic didn’t care for that, or maybe he hadn’t had time for it in the army.

It was time to find out.

“I think,” I said, pausing to kiss his mouth again, because I couldn’t handle seeing it there, red and slick, without tasting it, “that you should let me undress you and get you comfortable here in bed and give you a blowjob that’s going to make you crazy. I promise to drive you completely out of your mind, at least for a while.”

“Big claims,” Dominic said, his eyes locked on my mouth, his pupils wide and dark. “You sure you can do it?”

“It depends a little on how well you can follow orders,” I said, following a hunch, and—oh, yeah. Desire flowed between us like electricity, invisible but palpable, and my suggestion had just given it a boost. “Do you want to do what I tell you to, Dominic?” I asked, my blood thundering in my veins. “Do you want to be good for me for a while?”

“Y-yes.”

“Perfect, I want that, too.” God, did I want it. It was still a little cold in here to be stripping all the way down, though. I’d have to take my time. “Unzip your hoodie,” I told him. “Just unzip it. Don’t take it all the way off.” I let him fumble with the zipper while I pulled my own top off, because the space heater had been going for long enough that it was pretty comfortable. Removing an oversize sweatshirt wasn’t a tantalizing texture to my mind, but clearly it didn’t have to be silk to turn him on. I dropped the shirt on the floor then gave him a gentle push back toward the headboard.

“Sit.” He moved slowly, his eyes fixed on me with a look of pure, bright-eyed hunger. “Socks off, too.”

Dominic removed his socks then fit one hand questioningly under the edge of his sweatpants. Was that a hint that I should go faster? “Don’t touch yourself in any way that I don’t tell you to,” I said with a hint of firmness. “Every article of clothing you’re wearing right now is there on my timer.”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound chastened, more intrigued. I left my own sweatpants on then settled myself between his bent legs.

“I—are you—”

“Nope,” I told him. “Not yet.” I wanted to touch him bare, but I was going to get there slowly, bit by bit, until I had him on the edge and he could hold it there for a while. I set my hands on his knees and stroked up his thighs, long, firm strokes that let me appreciate the muscle he had underneath the fabric. I slid my hands under his ass and pulled him forward a little then nuzzled against the bulge in his crotch.

“Max.” He thrust up a little, and I pulled back.

“What?”

“Why, um…why aren’t you…” He waved a hand as if to say getting on with it.

“Because I want to go slow,” I said. “And because I want to blow your mind. And because you said you’d be good for me, so I’ll be clear: Dominic, I want you to sit there and let me play with you and not say anything except my name, got it? If I do something you don’t like, fine, tell me. Otherwise I want you to be quiet and enjoy.”

“I can do that, but…it doesn’t seem fair to you.”

“You’re letting me do what I want. How is that not fair to me?”

He seemed a little frustrated. “Because you aren’t getting the same attention, you’re not…”

“Wasn’t I hard just a second ago?”

“Yes…”

I took Dominic’s bare foot in my hands and pressed it gently to my groin. His breath hitched. “Does it feel like I’ve lost interest?”

“No,” he murmured.

“I’m not going to be doing all the work, and I definitely plan on coming, if that’s really bothering you,” I said with a little smirk. “But on my timetable, not yours.”

Dominic laughed. “Okay. I get it, I give in. Do with me as you will.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan. Now spread your legs farther apart, make some room for me.” He widened his knees with a little hiss. “Problem?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt, just…the sweats are tight.”

“I know.” I leaned in and kissed the fabric right over the head of his cock, where it was trapped in the right leg of his pants. “Fuck, I know, I can see almost everything without you even having to strip.” I stroked my hand over him, from the tip all the way down to the base, pressing with my palm so he really felt it. I pushed his legs a little farther apart then ran my thumb down the middle seam of the sweats until I got to the swell of his balls. He jumped then shivered. “Yeah, right there.” I traced what I could feel, rubbing it over and over again and watching his chest move shallowly, every breath a little gasp. “Look at you,” I marveled. “I love it. You’re being really good for me. Fuck.” I had to palm my own cock to keep it from staging a revolt.

“Max…” Dominic bit his lip.

“Yeah, I know you want more. I do, too. Lay back on the bed.” He went down, only to his elbows. “Smart-ass,” I said. “Fine, if you want to play it that way, then I expect you to hold the position for a while.” I leaned forward, putting steady pressure on his groin as I reached up to his chest and rubbed my thumb over his nipple.

“Max.”

Oh, looked like he liked that. Possibly it was a revelation for him—plenty of guys didn’t figure out they were into nipple play until they had a curious lover. “Yeah? Good.” I bent down over his chest and licked his nipple then bit it softly. Dominic groaned but managed to stay up on his elbows. “Good.” I teased one side, then the other, all the while pressing my stomach to his cock, giving it something to rub against—just barely. I bit a little harder, and Dominic hissed, bit his own lip, and tried to buck—not away, but into my mouth. Oh, fuck yes.

“Jesus, you’re perfect,” I breathed. I leaned back and pinched both sides, hard, and Dominic open-mouth moaned.

“Ow, fuck, ow…”

“Yeah, I know. It’s nice, huh?” I glanced down. “Or are you talking about your dick?”

“Both, shit, I don’t know.”

“Try to figure it out.” I let go of his nipples and leaned back, admiring the dusky redness of them before looking down at his crotch. His cock had swelled in his sweatpants, but it couldn’t go anywhere at the moment. It was probably a little painful. “I can do something about this.” I reached inside his sweats and adjusted his cock so that it was pointing up, the fat, slick head sliding free of his thin cotton underwear. He was smooth against my hand, and hot, and I gave in and stroked him a few times, loving the feel of his dick in my hand.

“Max…” His voice trailed off, like he didn’t quite know what to say next.

“Are you close?” I asked. He nodded slightly. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll go slow.” I leaned down and pressed my mouth to the base of his cock and exhaled slowly then inhaled his scent. God, how long had it been since I’d been this close to another guy, six months? I fucking missed it, and even then, sucking a guy off and being sucked didn’t hold a candle to teasing Dominic.

I scratched his stomach gently with the tips of my fingers, just beneath his belly button, as I mouthed him through the cloth, exhaling to let him feel the heat of my mouth. The tip of his dick was shiny, beading with a drop of pre-cum. I swiped it up with my thumb, slicking the pad as I rubbed around and around his slit. I was desperately hard in my pants, and Dominic’s forehead was sweaty as he watched, unable to look away.

That’s right, baby. Keep your eyes on me.

I pulled my hand to my mouth and sucked my thumb clean. He licked his lips, and—damn, I was going to enjoy his mouth if he offered it to me. I slid my hands under his ass again. “Hips up.” He obeyed, and I pulled his sweats and underwear down to just above his knees, so his dick was free but he still couldn’t move much. “Good.”

“Max, please…”

“I’m going to touch you now, don’t worry.” I wrapped one hand hard around the base of his dick and used the other one to pull his balls down and away. He groaned, but it didn’t sound like pain. “It takes the edge off, right?”

He nodded jerkily.

“Good. I’m going to suck your dick now. If I do something you don’t like”—I saw the immediate negative in his eyes, yet I persisted—“it’s possible, I swear, so if I do something you don’t like, tell me to stop and I will. Okay?”

“Okay, shit, anything you want, just—”

“I didn’t tell you to talk,” I interjected smoothly, pulling a little harder on his balls. “Just nod, Dominic.” He nodded. “Good.” I leaned over him, bent down, and took his cock into my mouth. He made a strangled sound, which was nice. I did like to be appreciated.

His smooth, slick head bumped the back of my throat, more than enough to make me choke if I wasn’t careful. Sometimes I liked that, but not the first time around, not before I knew what my partner enjoyed. I didn’t want to freak Dominic out by coughing and gagging if that was going to break the mood. I backed off a little, tasting him with my tongue, pressing into his slit and withdrawing, all the while holding him perfectly still with both hands.

The sounds he made were almost as delicious as he was, little gasps and bitten-off exclamations that made me feel like I was doing this right, like I was making it as good for him as I wanted it to be, as good as it was for me. This was what I liked best, when it came to sex—giving satisfaction, becoming a source of pure pleasure for my partner. Getting off was amazing, but it didn’t feel as good after the fact as looking at my lover and seeing them lie there blissed-out with a smile on their face.

I sucked harder, rolled the hand holding his balls a little, and ended up swallowing some more pre-cum a second later. I kept my grip tight on his base but loosened up on his balls, cradling them and feeling them tighten and retract, then pulling them down again just far enough that I could work them in my hand. I let them go after a few minutes and slid my hand a little farther back, just to see how he felt about that.

Dominic moaned and tried to spread his legs farther apart, so I guessed that could be a go at some point. I pulled off and asked, “You like that? Being touched there? Fingered? Tell me.”

He nodded frantically. “Yeah, I like that. You could fuck me, I want that, I’d love it…”

“I’d love to do it,” I said honestly, “but not right now. Right now, I’m going to get you off.” Any skin that was bare was sheened with sweat, his lips were so red from being bitten I was afraid he’d bite through one if I teased much longer, and his bare ass moved restlessly against the bedspread.

No more talking. I wrapped my lips around the head and worked the shaft with my hand, relaxing my tight grip in favor of something that moved, that would tantalize and also gratify. It was a rhythm designed to take Dominic to orgasm quickly, ramp him up and make him crest fast and hard. It worked—less than a minute later, he stiffened even more, and I pulled my head back just in time to watch his dick shoot all over his bare abs. He whined a little with each spurt of release, and by the time he was done coming, his arms were done holding him up. He fell fully onto the bed, panting heavily.

I stood up and pulled my sweatpants down and off then climbed over Dominic and hovered over his body as I gripped my dick with one hand. The room felt so warm now…or maybe that was just me. “Can I come on you?” I asked tightly, fisting my dick.

“Fuck yes,” he said hoarsely then reached up and wrapped his hand around mine.

I ground down into his lap, balanced over his groin like I was riding his cock, and we worked me to orgasm. My come joined his, and warm, sweet lassitude spread through my body as I finally relaxed. I laid down beside him on my back and gave myself a final squeeze before letting go completely.

“That was…”

I cracked an eye open and glanced his way. “Good?”

“Fucking amazing.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

Uh-oh. I just wanted to bask in the afterglow, not get slutshamed. “Do what?”

“Not let the other person do as much as you do.”

“Oh.” Well, that wasn’t as bad as I’d been expecting. “Not all the time, but I tend to like it that way when I’ve never been with someone before.”

Dominic was blushing—or maybe he was still flushed from orgasm, I couldn’t be sure—but he persisted, saying, “Next time, I want to go down on you.”

“Deal,” I said instantly. He relaxed a little at that, and I was pleased I’d made the right call. Shit, it wasn’t like I didn’t want a blowjob. I just wanted to go there first. Maybe that made me a bit of a control freak, but I was fine with owning that.

We laid there for another few minutes, soaking in the blast from the space heater, until Dominic finally looked down at his stomach. “Ugh,” he said then pulled his shirt the rest of the way off and used it to wipe himself clean. He threw it into the basket in the corner. “So.” He looked at me. “Want to try again with a different movie? I promise I won’t fall asleep.”

I laughed. Well, five minutes of basking was better than nothing. “Sure, why not?” I said between chuckles. “I’ve got more than just classics, too. We can watch something from this century even, if you want.”

“The new Batman?”

“Sure, but which one is the new one?” I couldn’t keep track of all the modern iterations of Batman. I’d divided them into two groups—eyeshadow and no eyeshadow, and I still lost track after that.

“Whichever one you find first. Want some hot cocoa?”

“That sounds amazing, thank you.” I settled in to see what my streaming service had to offer.

“Hey, Max?”

Something in Dominic’s voice compelled me to make eye contact with him. “Yeah?”

“I had a great time today.”

And now it was almost over. A few movies and another night in bed together, and then I’d be on the road to New York and he’d be staying here, working and helping Hal with the girls and evicting rodents from his house. It felt kind of surreal to think about being anywhere else, actually, we’d gotten along so well. “Me, too.”

He leaned in and kissed me, softer now, sweeter, yet still with an edge of hunger that I loved to feel. “I’m glad,” he said when it finally ended. “Thanks.”

I gave him a gentle peck. “My pleasure,” I said, and I meant it a hundred percent. “Absolutely my pleasure.”

Chapter Eight

Dominic

I dropped Max off at Hal’s Monday morning while it was still dark out. I parked with a soft crunch of snow beneath the tires then pulled the emergency brake. “So…”

Max put a hand on my cheek and turned me to look at him. “Hey.” He leaned in and kissed me, his breath scented with the hazelnut creamer I kept on hand back home. “I had a great time.”

My nerves instantly settled. The awkward morning-after good-bye I’d been dreading was now something sweet and tender I could treasure. “Me, too.” We kissed again, and then he finally pulled back and opened the door, a pensive look on his face. “Drive safe,” I added as he stepped out of the Jeep.

“You, too.” His lips turned up in a half smile. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Short list, from what Hal tells me.”

“Your brother lives to defame me,” Max said, his smile becoming a grin. “Right, okay, I’m going.” He pulled away a little then said, “Fuck it,” and leaned back in for another kiss. It was short, but something about it was hotter than all the others. Maybe it was the fact that he found it just as hard to say good-bye, that he wanted just one more taste of me, because I sure as hell wanted the same.

My blush started up. Time to make a graceful exit.

“Bye, Max.”

“Bye, Dominic.” He shut the door and headed into the house, and after I made sure he got in okay, I pulled away from the curb and drove to the station in a daze.

Just the thought of Max made something powerful twist in my chest, and it disconcerted me. I couldn’t remember becoming infatuated this fast with anyone else. Hal would say I had a crush, like it was a bad thing, like we were in high school again and I was only now discovering what feelings like this meant.

But this felt like more.

I’d admired Max when he’d been just Hal’s friend, but I’d known better than to let it go too far. A few daydreams—maybe a few wet dreams, too—had been the whole of it. I didn’t let myself feel a crush, didn’t let myself hope for more, until I got away from Edgewood and into the army. That was a mistake. There was too much unfamiliarity there, too many people coping with a new environment, new rules, a new way of life.

I’d still come close with a few guys—met them in the bathroom more than once, gone to a bar and fucked around in the alley, even gotten a hotel room with a few of them. The first man to fuck me had been two years older than me, and he’d bent me over a bathroom sink and hadn’t bothered to stretch me—he didn’t like that sort of stuff, he said. I’d come prepared, fortunately, and had used my own hand to get ready before our hookup, but it was still…disappointing.

I’d seen a life of this stretching out in front of me, furtive meetings and one-night stands, culminating in an endless repetition of “later, man,” when I knew later would never come.

Last night wasn’t like that.

It wasn’t like any of that. Not even close.

…

Getting to the station was done on autopilot. I parked, walked inside, said hello to the desk sergeant, and sat down at my desk, still feeling fuzzy. I didn’t notice Lauren was speaking to me until her hand was right in front of my face, waving in a slow, nonconfrontational manner.

I startled and glanced up at her. “Sorry, what? Did you say something? What did I miss?”

“I was asking how your weekend was,” she said gently. “Nicky, are you feeling all right? Is there something I can help you with?”

Lauren had a lot of experience dealing with zone-outs—her husband was a veteran, too, only he’d come out of his stint overseas with a missing leg and an addiction to painkillers. Lauren had worked with therapists on how best to help her husband, and how to help herself while she did it, and it had given her a certain sensitivity when it came to other people’s mental health.

I wasn’t zoning out for a bad reason, though. “No, I’m good,” I said with a smile. “Sorry I made you worry, but really, I’m fine.”

“Huh.” She relaxed a little bit, sitting down on the edge of my desk. Her hair was pulled back into two tight braids on either side of her head. Fine lines fanned out around her eyes and the edges of her lips, and she smelled a little bit like milk—maybe her toddler had spilled on her this morning. She looked at me, sharp and assessing, and I wondered if her kids ever got away with anything.

“Oh my God.” Her eyes widened. “Did you sleep with someone last night?” She leaned in closer and whispered, “Was it Maxfield? Oh my god, was it? Is that his shirt? It looks a little tight.”

Oh… I looked down at my chest. Was it his shirt? Our clean clothes had all been mixed together in the laundry basket that morning. I’d looked in my closet and found exactly one clean shirt, which I’d given to Max, and then I’d pulled the first, best-smelling dark T-shirt I’d found out of the basket and put it on. Turned out it was Max’s, his cologne managing to linger even through a wash cycle. “Why do you think I slept with anyone?”

“Because your hair is rumpled like someone’s been running their fingers through it, you haven’t reached for the coffee yet even though it’s usually the first place you go as soon as you walk in, and you’ve been distracted from the moment I saw you. I thought it meant you were having an issue, maybe, but you’re not! You’re distracted because there’s someone on your mind, and that kind of smile usually comes when your someone is very personal, and the only new personal person it could be is Max! And you’re wearing his shirt.” Lauren folded her arms triumphantly.

“You should be a detective,” I snarked, but inside I was pretty pleased I hadn’t had to come out with the news on my own.

“It is Max, though, isn’t it? It is.” She smiled with satisfaction. “I knew it. God, I was three years ahead of him in school, and even I could tell he was going to be gorgeous someday. Is he still gorgeous?”

I mean, yeah, he really was, but… “Don’t we have work we should be doing?”

“We don’t go on patrol for another half an hour, you know that. Talk to me! Let me live vicariously through you. My life is nothing except hockey games and school plays and diaper changes lately.” The smile faded from her face. “I mean, actually, you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Nicky. I’m just…interested, I guess.”

Seeing as she was the one who had to put up with me all day, and I was kind of dying to tell someone what was going on, I acquiesced. “He’s still gorgeous,” I said. “And we did spend some time together, but it was nothing serious.” It couldn’t be serious. He was leaving today, after all. “He’s heading back to New York City this morning.”

“He’s not even staying through Christmas?” She frowned. “I’m kind of surprised. He and Hal were always attached at the hip when Max lived here, and now would be a good time for Hal to have a little more support, what with…” Lauren shrugged. Everyone knew about Ariel leaving at this point. “Still, not my business. I’m glad that you two had fun together, though. I figure he needed someone to have fun with, while he was back in town.”

She tugged absently on the end of her black tie, looking down at her hands. “I was a rookie when the accident happened. My partner and I were the first officers on the scene. It was awful…we haven’t had a wreck that bad since, here. Even then, I knew it was the beginning of the end for both those families. Everly’s left town, and Max’s…well…”

“Collapsed,” I said. “Max came to stay with us for a while. Through graduation.” I’d barely seen him, but I remembered it.

“His mom didn’t wait long to file divorce papers. I don’t blame her.” She snorted. “I remember how belligerent Maxfield Senior was when we brought him in that night. He was shouting, telling us he was going to get us all fired, sue us all, make us pay ‘because I’m the mayor, goddammit!’ I’m amazed he still lives in town, honestly. God knows he never shows his face in the diner. Dinah would have his head on a plate.”

“It’s been ten years.” To me, that felt like an incredible amount of time—I was only twenty-four, and that was a huge chunk of my life. “Do you think people will ever forgive him? I mean, he wouldn’t stay if he was completely miserable, would he?”

Lauren’s smile was a little tight. “You’d be surprised the amount of misery people are willing to put up with, for all sorts of reasons. Come on.” She stood up and went over to her desk, where her hat laid on top of a short stack of paperwork. “Let’s head out.”

It was still twenty minutes before our patrol, but I nodded and got up from my desk. “I’m ready.”

…

That morning we handled, in order: one loose dog who got clipped by a car, who we stayed with while we waited for his owner to pick up; one breakdown on the highway that just required a tire change—I carried a spare jack in my car at this point, because I’d changed more tires since becoming a cop than I would have if I’d been a mechanic; and we stopped a house fire from becoming a domestic once the firemen were out of the house and informed Jill McClellan, who worked at the gas station, that her stovetop had caught on fire because her husband had left a pan untended on it.

Never a dull day in small town life.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as we finally settled back into the car and pulled it out to take a look. “No texting and driving,” Lauren prodded me jokingly, but I was too absorbed in my text to bother responding.

It was from Max. Travel plans fell through. Hal stuck around so I could do my meeting remotely. Now the ladies and I are getting lunch at Dinah’s. We’d love to see you if you’re free.

Wait, what? He hadn’t gone back to the city after all? My breath caught, stomach swooping like the rollercoaster I was on just plummeted down a drop.

“Uh, do you mind if we stop by Dinah’s for a few minutes?” I hoped I sounded more casual than I felt. “Max and the girls are having lunch there.”

Lauren frowned. “I thought he was leaving this morning.”

“He was supposed to, but apparently that plan didn’t happen.” My fingertips were tingling. I forcibly relaxed my grip on my phone.

“That can happen in blizzards.” She shrugged. “Sure, let’s do it. I could use a fresh cup of coffee.”

“And a fresh pot of gossip,” I ribbed her as we pulled away from the McClellan’s smoke-damaged—but not destroyed, thankfully—house and toward downtown.

“I hardly gossip at all!”

I coughed. “Bullshit.”

“Ha-ha.”

I got to Dinah’s maybe a little faster than I should have, but not enough that Lauren gave me shit for it. I didn’t recognize any of the cars parked there. Come to think of it, how the hell had Max gotten here anyway?

Wait—the station wagon, that was Phee’s.

And there in the diner’s window, the little hand waving in our direction—yeah, that was Marnie.

We headed into the diner, and the girls were on us in a second. “Uncle Nicky, you came! Hi, Lauren! How’s Benjamin?” Benjamin was Lauren’s older son, a classmate of Marnie’s. Steph extended her arms to me, and I picked her up then made for the table where Max was sitting with Phee, half-eaten slices of shepherd’s pie and piles of disposable napkins spread out in front of them.

Max waved me over as soon as he saw us. I sat at the end of the booth seat, as far in as I could go with Steph in my arms.

“Hi,” I said, feeling weirdly shy. I’d just seen him a few hours ago—why was it strange to see him now? Maybe it was because he wasn’t in my bed. “You’re still here.”

Max sighed but put on a smile. “Yeah, it turns out rentals are a lot harder to come by in this weather than I thought they’d be.” He nodded toward Phee. “Mrs. Jackson was kind enough to offer to be our ride in exchange for lunch.”

He looked past me to Lauren, who was standing with Marnie hanging off her arm, telling her about her break so far. Max visibly steeled himself when Lauren turned her attention to him. Was he expecting Lauren to dislike him?

“Hang on a second, honey,” Lauren said to Marnie and held her hand out to Max. “Lauren Shriner. I’m Nicky’s partner.”

He shook her hand. “Lauren…Shriner? Not DeLuca?”

She laughed. “Not since before you and Hal graduated!”

“Belated congratulations, then.”

“Thank you.” Lauren looked at Max slowly, speculatively, and I found myself almost holding my breath. I wanted her to like him. Not really for my benefit, because what did it matter if Lauren approved or didn’t approve of the guy I had slept with once? But for his benefit. I wanted him to feel welcome here, to feel like Edgewood could be a good place for him to visit and stay in if he wanted, not just a tragic memory. “How long will you be here?”

Max glanced at me. “Given that the wait for a rental at any town within a hundred miles is a week and my own car won’t be done until Wednesday, it looks like I’m staying through Christmas.”

Marnie cheered, and even Steph grinned. I tried to tamp down on the butterflies making themselves known in my stomach, but it was hard when what I wanted to do was cheer like my oldest niece.

“You should come with Hal and the girls to the holiday play the church is putting on,” Lauren said then winked. “No inflatable camels this year, thanks to some lobbying from the high school’s theater teacher. My oldest is going to be the head wisewoman.”

“I wanted to be Mary,” Marnie piped in, “but Mrs. Krakowski said I’m still too small to hold Baby Jesus properly. She asked Steph to be a candle in the big menorah, but Steph didn’t want to be in the play.”

In my arms, Steph curled a little closer. I put a hand on the back of her head and tucked her under my chin.

Max looked confused. I could commiserate. “What kind of holiday play is this, exactly?”

“Mrs. Krakowski—she’s the theater and music teacher at the elementary school—is calling it a festive fusion,” Lauren said without batting an eye. “There are bits and pieces of a lot of holiday traditions in there.”

Max smiled. “It sounds fascinating. I can’t wait to see it. And please.” He indicated the seat next to Phee. “Join us.”

“Yes!” Marnie backed his play like a champ, squeezing in beside Phee and looking hopefully up at Lauren. “Do you want some shepherd pie? Phee says it’s not actually made of shepherds, it’s made of beef, so it’s okay to eat.”

Lauren, bless her, understood all of that, including the parts spoken around a bite of lunch, and sat with us. Dinah brought over two cups of coffee without being asked, as well as a heap of half and half containers in a plastic bowl. She and Phee started chatting, so I turned my attention to Max.

“Hey. What about your meeting?”

“I desperately rescheduled it and did it via Zoom wearing one of Hal’s dress shirts.” He shook his head. “Thank god my client couldn’t see that I was wearing jeans with it. And my assistant was there in person to hand over documents and make sure everything went smoothly in New York, so…could have gone better, but it could have gone a lot worse.”

His frown lightened a little as he looked at me. “Actually, the client was really understanding about the storm keeping me grounded. He’s got family up this way, too, so he knows how bad the snow can be. It was a bonding moment. I’ll make it up to him when we have our final meeting in person next week.”

It was sweet he considered Hal and the girls to be his family. Maybe there would be room in that definition someday for me, too. “And it’s really okay for you to stay through Christmas? Your boss won’t mind?”

“Technically, he can’t say anything about it, since it turns out I’ve got so many vacation days they’re practically generating interest. In reality?” Max shrugged. “Sure, Marcus is pissed, and he let me know it, but it’s not like I did this on purpose, so apart from general grumpiness, there’s nothing he can do. I’m actually glad it worked out this way.”

I tried not to let on how fascinating I found that statement. “Really?”

“Yeah. It’s nice to have more time to spend with the girls.” He picked up his mug of coffee and took a sip, still looking at me. “And their uncle,” he added once he set the cup down.

Be still my goddamn heart.

Marnie spoke up then. “And now we can play ninja princesses today! I got all the costume stuff out, but Daddy said we couldn’t use it until Max was done with work, and then we needed lunch.”

“Sounds amazing,” I said.

Max nodded. “Ninja princess Max. I think it has a real ring to it.”

Steph giggled and shook her head against my chest.

Max grinned and played along. “What, you don’t think I have what it takes to be a ninja princess?” She shook her head again. “Is it my hair? Do I need to grow it out? I do, don’t I? All the princesses I know have long hair. Elsa, Anna, Belle, um…” His smile faltered for a second, and I knew he was thinking of Ariel their mom and not the mermaid princess. “Cinderella,” he recovered gamely. “The one with the arrows…”

“Merida,” I said.

“What? No, I’m talking about Mulan. Who’s Merida?”

“You haven’t seen Brave?” I shook my head. “This is a terrible oversight. We’ll have to watch it tonight.”

“It’s really good!” Marnie shouted from across the table, spraying crumbs.

“Swallow before speaking,” I reminded her. Lauren handed her one of the napkins.

“Will you be—” Whatever she was going to say cut off as our radios sprang to life, dispatch calling in a noise disturbance.

Lauren slid out of the booth. “It was nice to see you again.”

Max nodded to her. “You too, Lauren.”

I gave Steph a final squeeze before encouraging her to sit down on the cracked green vinyl next to Max. I straightened my jacket as I stood up. “I guess I’ll see you all tonight.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Max replied.

Phee hid her smile behind a napkin.

“Bye, Uncle Nicky!” Marnie called out, thankfully still young enough to be immune to subtext.

Lauren didn’t say anything as we got back onto the road.

I drove for five full minutes before finally giving in. “So?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand me, at least. “So.” She glanced my way slyly. “I guess I can see why you haven’t dated at all before this, if he’s an indicator of your taste.”

“Right, because Edgewood has such a teeming population of available guys,” I said, secretly relieved she seemed to like him.

“More than it looks like at first blush. I can’t think of a single one that quite got Maxfield’s blend of looks, smarts, and presence, though.” She sighed. “He’s definitely like his dad that way.”

“Yeah.” That was true, but… “Not in all ways, though.”

“No,” Lauren agreed. “Not in all ways. I’m glad he’s sticking around a bit longer.”

I couldn’t quite stop the thrill that started in my chest and expanded up into a grin. “Me, too.”

…

The rest of the shift crawled by in a series of minor complaints around town and the growing threat of frostbite, and I was more than ready to clock out and head to Hal’s when five p.m. rolled around. I texted him to let him know I was coming, only to get back, Finally. Bring a gallon of milk.

A second later, I got, Toilet paper, too. And tissues.

I rolled my eyes. Anything else?

Gruyere.

Gruyere? Since when did Hal make anything with that kind of semi-fancy cheese? Why?

Max needs it for special mac and cheese. Bitch to him.

Mm, special mac and cheese. I could buy gruyere for that.

As always, it felt like eyes followed me around the grocery store. There was very little one could do unnoticed in a small town, but the gazes held an intensity today that made me wary. It had to be because of Max. Even when I’d just come back from the army, I hadn’t merited this level of curiosity.

I hurried to the cheese display. They actually had pre-packaged gruyere there, go figure. Maybe it was a holiday thing. I grabbed a pound of it then avoided people as best I could on my way to the checkout, choosing the self-checkout line near the door so none of the cashiers could start up a conversation I didn’t have the energy for.

Six months ago, I’d have given myself shit about that—I was supposed to be making an effort to become an active part of my community again, after all—but tonight I didn’t give a damn. I was hungry, and more than that, I felt like I’d shared Max enough for one day.

He’s not yours, I reminded myself as I drove to Hal’s. He came for Hal and the girls. He hadn’t even intended to stay past this morning. It was a sobering reminder, and by the time I parked and got the groceries out, I wanted to make my excuses and head back home early tonight. I could get some more work done on my house, which—I couldn’t believe I’d taken him there. It was a wreck. Not that he’d seemed to mind all that much, but…

Whatever. I needed to stop focusing on the negative, as my counselor would say. At the very least, I needed to get the groceries into the house. I got out of my warm Jeep and walked up the frosty sidewalk to Hal’s front door. I reached for the handle, but it opened before I could grab it.

Max grabbed my wrist and reeled me inside, relieving me of one of the bags while he did. “You have perfect timing,” he said, sincere and pleased. “The mac and cheese can go into the oven as soon as we grate the gruyere and stir it into the mix.”

I looked past Max to where Hal was working on a coloring book with the girls. He glanced at me. “You read what I wrote.”

“You’re a philistine, and your opinions definitely don’t count when it comes to my cooking,” Max snapped before I could reply. “This is going to be fu…fudging delicious, I’m telling you.” He led me to the kitchen and glanced in the bag. “Oops—no cheese in here, just paper products.”

“Tissues!” Marnie looked up, and—yeah, she was in definite need of a wipe. “I’ll take them! What color boxes did you get, Uncle Nicky?”

“Um…regular boxes?”

“Noooo!” She howled in despair. “You have to at least get the ones with the flowers on them! There are even ones with princesses—”

“How many empty boxes of princess tissues do you need?” Hal asked her. “Stop whining at your uncle and grab the box.”

Five minutes later, noses were clean, the mac and cheese was in the oven, and we were all sitting down to watch Brave together on the couch. There wasn’t quite enough room for three grown men and two little girls, though, so Max grabbed a cushion and sat on the floor in front of me.

The bustle, the briskness, and the warmth of his body leaning against my shins made me wonder what I’d been so worried about. Max might not have come here for me, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t make something of it. We already had; we were…hopefully, we’d continue to. He hadn’t come for me, but I was going to enjoy the hell out of his presence anyway.

The mac and cheese was delicious, the rest of the movie was accompanied by milk and some of yesterday’s cookies, and then it was bedtime for the girls. I’d been resting one of my hands in Max’s hair for most of the evening, and from the small smile on his face, he didn’t seem to mind it. Hal took one look at us and said, “See you in the morning then, Max?”

“Yeah,” Max replied, sitting up and stretching languorously as he turned back to look at me. “If that’s okay with you.”

Was it okay…if he came home with me again…so we could…

“I don’t have to.” He spoke quietly, looking far from offended. “I get needing your space. I’d like to come over again at some point, though.” He grinned a little crookedly. “You might need backup if the raccoons seek revenge. And there’s still half your front room to insulate, after all.”

“Come with me,” I said before he could possibly mistake my surprise for unwillingness again. “I’d love it if you’d come with me.”

“Okay, great.” He got up and headed for the stairs. “I’ll bring some clothes with me this time, though, so you don’t have to wear my dirties.”

Oh right, I had his shirt on. “I liked it.”

His eyes darkened a little. “I like seeing it.”

“Get! A! Room!” Hal shouted from upstairs over the sound of the shower running.

“Mind! Your own! Business!” Max shouted back, and Steph, in the process of running down the hall wearing nothing but her birthday suit, giggled.

…

The drive was nothing, a blur of streetlamps and snow and little conversation. I was hard the whole way home, and I was pretty sure Max was, too, if the way he kept shifting in his seat was any indication. As soon as we got to my place and were inside—and whoa, it was actually a little warmer; the work we’d done yesterday was proving useful—I was in his arms and backed up against the door. Max kissed me like he might never get another chance.

I wanted to tell him that he would, that we could any time, but I was too busy kissing him back, already desperate for more. God, I wanted to go down on him this time; I wanted to get a chance to taste him. I ached for it. I ached for something else, too, something I wasn’t sure he liked to do, but…

“Fuck me tonight,” I mumbled against his lips.

Max pulled back, but only with his head. The rest of his body ground against mine, pinning me hard, letting me feel our lengths pressed together. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Yeah. After I get my mouth on you.”

“You have the best ideas,” he said fervently then turned and pulled me back toward the bedroom.

It was easier to begin this time around, easier to get the room warm and get ourselves naked, easier for me to reach out and grab lube and condoms with an air of expectation instead of suggestion. Spreading Max out on my bed was almost enough to make me doubt reality. Was he really here, being mine? I got to have all this? His hands encouraged me down, soft against my head, and I took him into my mouth and nearly missed his groan, I was so caught up in the taste of him. It was so good, so fucking good. I took him in as far as I could, to the base of his cock, and swallowed. Fuck.

“Fuck.” Max echoed my thought with a moan, his hands still on my head but not holding, just touching my hair, sliding down to my shoulders and back up. “God, that feels so good.”

The words were like a shot of whiskey in my belly. I felt warm with them, a little drunk on his appreciation. I worked him, licking and sucking and loving every second of it, until Max finally had to ask me to stop. “I don’t want to come until I’m inside you.”

My ass clenched and my cock pulsed at the thought of him fucking me, breath hot against the back of my neck as he filled me up. “Let’s do that now.” I slid up onto the bed next to him and grabbed the lube, tipped it out onto my fingers, and began to stretch myself as fast as I could stand.

Max watched me for a second then asked, “Would you like it if I help?”

My jaw dropped. “You want to?”

“Yeah,” he said easily. “Some people don’t like having other people touch them like that, but I love doing it.” He grinned. “I can be much more precise with my fingers, for starters.”

“Um…okay. Sure.” It definitely wouldn’t hurt, as long as he didn’t go shoving in too many at once, and even if it did, I could take it as long as he enjoyed it. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” His voice was practically a purr as he settled onto his knees behind me. I heard him open the bottle and slick up his fingers, and I tensed in anticipation of the first push.

I got a gentle, teasing stroke instead. “I like to go slow,” Max said, rubbing the pad of one of his fingers around my rim, not making a move to press, just circling, circling. “It’s a kink you’re just gonna have to tolerate if we’re going to do this.”

“I think I can handle that,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. It felt good, better than I thought it would. I was hypersensitive to his touch and hyperaware of every shift he made, outside or in, or whether he switched fingers. When he stroked his thumb firmly down my perineum to my aching balls, I grunted and clenched my fingers in the bedspread.

“Yeah?” I wasn’t sure what question he was asking, but a second later, he was grabbing my sack like he had last night, rolling it in his hand as his finger slid firmly into my ass.

“Fuuu—ugh,” I groaned, completely inarticulate, but what the fuck was I supposed to say when I was being played like a damn piano? His finger felt so good—there was no burn to the entry at all, none of the stinging that usually accompanied the act. I didn’t mind the sting, yet this felt good enough it should have been illegal.

After a few more seconds of gentle movement, he added a second finger, and the top of my head threatened to come off. I grabbed the base of my dick, not sure whether I wanted to tighten my grip and slow things down or start stroking and speed them up.

“Wait,” Max said soothingly, still fucking me with his fingers. “Just wait, you’ll love it.”

“I already do,” I whispered, and it came out a little broken. I’d barely moved—how could I feel this out of breath?

“I know, but give me a second.” He pressed down with his fingers and rubbed and—

I didn’t know what sound I made this time, but it had to be a good one, because he chuckled. “Yeah, I know, I like that, too.”

Liked it? He liked having his nerves fire pure pleasure up his spine? I didn’t like it. I was afraid I’d become addicted to it if he kept going. “Now,” I begged, arching my back and pushing into him, so close to falling apart that I could taste it. “Now, please, I need you.”

“I need you back,” he said, and that felt almost as good to me as his hand. He let go of me, but he was quick with the condom, and before I could take more than five slow breaths in an effort to calm myself, his cock was at my hole, pressing just enough to tease me. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, and then…oh my god, it was still slow, so slow, only now the stretch kept going and I could finally feel a bit of sting, enough to make my body really, potently aware that I was getting fucked. It felt so good I couldn’t speak, I could barely breathe, I just wanted more.

“Easy, Dominic,” Max said, stroking his hand down my flank. His touch grounded me, made me feel like I was more than a live wire. “I’ve got you. God…” I glanced over my shoulder and our gazes connected. His eyes were dark and glassy, mouth open and red. He reached down and touched where we connected, traced his finger around me like he had before, only now he wasn’t teasing—now I was so full of him I ached, and I loved it. “You look fucking incredible.”

I was just able to get out, “Show me,” before he started moving, and oh damn…he did show me. Apparently, we were done with slow, because he ground against me hard enough I almost fell over then pulled away and thrust back inside before I could take a full breath. I braced myself on my arms and focused on staying with him, on making sure this wasn’t only about me, that I didn’t just get what I needed and come, but he wasn’t making it easy.

If I touched myself, it would all be over. I was so hard I was actually leaking pre-cum onto the bed, a shining puddle of it collecting beneath my dick. I wanted to touch myself so badly, one or two good strokes and I’d be gone, lost in what might end up one of the best orgasms of my life, but I couldn’t. No, no, not yet, I chanted at my body.

All of a sudden Max’s strong arms wrapped around my midsection. He pulled me up so that my hands were off the bed and tilted me until my back rested against his chest. My mouth opened and closed like a fish as his cock pressed even deeper inside of me. “You’re so goddamn good for me,” he murmured against my ear. “You feel fucking amazing, and I want you to come around me.” I might have started to shake my head—I could barely tell at that point, and Max just said, “Yeah, yeah, I do, baby, I do. Come for me. Do it right now.” And without moving his dick, he reached down and jerked me off, hard and fast.

I saw stars.

I thought I nearly blacked out.

It was so strange, coming like this. Impossibly good, and so, so strange—held close, vulnerable, letting myself rely on him to hold me up because there was no way I was going to be capable of it on my own. My whole body went as boneless as a butterfly, with one notable exception, and I tilted my head back against Max’s shoulder, closed my eyes, and moaned through the aftershocks. Jesus. Who knew orgasms came with aftershocks?

Max tensed against my back, his exhale harsh as he clutched me tight and came a few seconds later, but I was beyond responding to it other than twisting my head and pressing my nose into his cheek as I breathed. We took a little bit longer to catch our breaths, and then he leaned forward, lowering both of us back to the bed before pulling out and getting rid of the condom. I hardly had a chance to miss him before he was beside me again, one arm around my waist, his lips pressed gently to mine. I kissed back, as best I was able to.

“Hey, Dominic?”

I forced my eyes open. “Mmyeah?”

“I don’t think I’m up to working on the house tonight.” He kissed me again. “Maybe in the morning.”

It hadn’t been a fluke—he wanted to stay the night again.

I smiled. “Sounds good.”

Chapter Nine

Max

I could honestly say that I hadn’t seen this coming, not in a million years. I hadn’t had any intention of coming back to Edgewood for anything other than supporting Hal and the girls. I’d figured it would be a lightning-fast trip, where I made my presence felt and made the girls happy then got out of town again.

I hadn’t figured on Dominic Bell. I hadn’t figured on having some of the best sex of my life with my best friend’s younger brother, a man I’d basically watched grow up. It might have squicked me if I thought about it too much. But Dominic was a consenting adult now, and he was into it—damn was he into it—and his presence had taken my trip from a comfort to myself and Hal into a genuine, expansive pleasure.

Everything seemed better—even work felt like less of a pervasive weight across my shoulders.

I was happy, I realized on the second morning Dominic dropped me back at his brother’s house, his hair still wet from the shower and his lips still a little swollen from the blowjob in said shower half an hour ago. I’d fingered him again when I returned the favor, and he almost fell down when he came as a result. Thinking about it was enough to have warmth flood my body, from my chest straight down to my cock.

I genuinely couldn’t remember the last time I had felt like this. I thought about it as I walked into the still-dark house, lips still tingling from a good-bye kiss.

After hanging my coat at the door and setting my bag of clothes down by the stairs, I made a beeline for the coffeemaker. Happy was such a rare feeling. I thought I was happy in the city, but compared to this? I shook my head. There was no comparison—I could practically float through the air.

What kind of person didn’t recognize how being really happy felt? Fuck. Was my life in the city that depressing?

I liked being a lawyer. The pace of work at the offices of Staller, Weisz and Coast was frenetic, especially when I was still a junior trying to rise through the ranks. I honestly didn’t remember the last time I’d gone to a play on Broadway or out to a restaurant while I wasn’t also wooing a client or…anything, really, other than the gym and work. I liked the work, overwhelming as it could be sometimes, but…

When was the last time I’d gone out in New York City, just for fun?

“Earth to Max.”

Hal’s voice broke my reverie. I’d been standing at the coffee machine with a cup of steaming French roast in my hand, completely lost in thought. “Sorry, what?”

He motioned to the mostly full pot. “Just trying to get in for a cup of my own. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t.” I moved out of the way and watched Hal pour coffee into a cappuccino mug. Ariel had given the machine to Hal last year—he’d always wanted a cappuccino maker. Great coffee was the one luxury he allowed himself.

“No? You looked pretty distracted.”

“I wasn’t really…distracted. Just thinking.” I smiled. “About how much I’m enjoying my visit.” And my time with Dominic.

“Well, the girls love having you here, but I get the feeling that’s not really what you’re talking about.” He held up a hand before I could protest. “I’m not bothered by it, Max. God knows Nicky could use another friend, and I haven’t been much of one to him lately. I think you’re good for him.”

I frowned. “Dominic worships you. He always has.”

Hal shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. But it’s not like life has been easy on him either lately, and I haven’t had the bandwidth to do much talking to him about leaving the army and starting up a whole new career.”

“He seems fine,” I said after a second. “Really. His work partner likes him, that’s obvious, and he’s got the house to work on. His counselor seems pretty on top of things, too.”

Hal glanced at me. “He talked to you about her?”

“Just that he had a regular appointment with her, to help him manage his PTSD.”

“Wow.”

Wow what? I was about to ask for clarification, but then Hal chuckled wryly. “God, that fuckin’ house. I told him not to buy it. It was such a wreck. Way worse than what you’re seeing now. He was determined to have his own place, though. Funny, growing up, this house had seemed packed all the time. Now it practically echoes.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The girls do a pretty good job of filling it.”

“Jesus, you’re telling me.” Hal smiled a bit before taking a sip of his coffee.

I knew that things weren’t okay with Hal. He was putting on a pretty good front for the girls, but in these quiet moments with me, I could see the sadness inside of him, and the anger, and the fear.

I couldn’t magic Hal’s worries away—all I could do was my best to alleviate them while I was here. I also made a mental note to call more often when I got back to New York. The thought didn’t do much to comfort me. New York City felt so far away right now, so distant from Hal’s warm, coffee-scented kitchen and the girls giggling only a staircase away, and Dominic’s company and laughter and kisses and…

An idea teased at the edge of my brain. I knew better than to chase after it, especially with the tiny patter of footsteps transforming into a thundering charge as they got to the stairs. “Speaking of filling the house,” I murmured, and Hal smiled again as the girls rounded the corner to the kitchen.

“Hi, Max!” Marnie said as soon as she saw me. “Did you have another fun sleepover with Uncle Nicky?”

“I sure did,” I replied and fully ignored Hal’s huff of laughter.

Steph wandered sleepily over to her dad, and Hal picked her up effortlessly in one arm, setting her against his hip and kissing her forehead before taking another sip of coffee.

If he wasn’t the best father I knew, I would eat my goddamn shoes. Hal might worry, but I didn’t, not about his relationship with his daughters at least.

“Did you guys stay up late?” Marnie asked as she opened the fridge. She tried to grab the milk, but it was a new gallon and too heavy for her to hold.

I stepped in before she dropped it on the floor. “We did stay up a little late.” I supported her hold on the milk and carrying it over to the counter with her. Then I got a plastic cup out, poured it half full, and handed it to her.

“Did you watch one of your movies?”

I had watched something way, waaay better than even the best movie, but that was definitely not something I wanted to share with anyone present. Although Hal was hiding a smile behind his coffee cup, so he knew what was up.

I cleared my throat. “Not last night. Mostly we just talked.” I got another cup out and poured a little milk in then found a sippy lid for it, snapped it on, and handed it over to Steph. She took it with a little smile and started guzzling it down immediately.

Marnie looked puzzled. “Why did you just talk?” she asked. “That sounds sort of boring.”

“I just wanted to get to know your uncle Nicky a little better, that’s all.”

“You could have done that over here. Next time you guys should have your sleepover in your room.”

“Well, we also worked on his house some,” I said. “We have to be there for that.”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Hal murmured.

As soon as his girls weren’t looking, I was going to smack him upside the head. “So,” I began in an effort to change the subject, “what’s on the agenda for today?”

“I’ve got work,” Hal said then added unexpectedly, “but one of my guys is picking me up, so you’ll have the truck to take the girls around in if you want to go somewhere.”

“Yes!” Marnie crowed. “We can go to the mall and see Santa!”

“If Max wants to,” Hal said.

Marnie and Steph both looked at me with big, hopeful eyes.

I was sunk, utterly sunk. So, even though I wasn’t sure about going out and interacting with more townspeople and leaving myself open to questions and gossip, I said, “Sure, we can do that.”

“Yay!” Marnie cheered, and even Steph made a sound of happiness. Unfortunately, Marnie’s cheer was accompanied by shooting her hands into the air, which sent the dregs of her milk all over the floor and her nightdress. She looked down at herself. “Oops.”

“Yeah, oops.” Hal put down his empty coffee cup and switched Steph to his other hip. “Come on, you little menace, let’s get you cleaned up and into your clothes before I have to go. Can you—” He glanced my way and mimicked wiping something, and I nodded. “Great.”

“I’m a my-nuss! A minus!” Marnie said then frowned at her dad. “No, I wanna be a plus.”

“Pluses are very careful with their cups, honey. Do you think you can do that next time?” Hal asked as he guided his eldest toward the stairs.

“Yeah, I think I can.”

“Perfect, that’s my little plus.”

Then Steph said, “Daddy, I wanna be a plus, too.”

Hal, to his credit, barely stumbled. He gave her a squeeze, though, hard enough that she squeaked, and said, “Baby, you already are a plus.”

They headed upstairs, and I stared at the milky floor and wondered when life had turned so upside down that I was actually considering staying in Edgewood.

Wait, what? What? No, I wasn’t!

Yes, my brain helpfully reminded me. You are.

Fine, yes. The idea of living closer to Hal and the girls held great appeal at the moment. Hal was my best friend, a huge part of my past and hopefully a huge part of my future, and he and the girls undoubtedly needed all the support they could get right now. But was I considering the idea because of them or because of recent developments involving a gorgeous man and orgasms?

It was way too soon to be thinking of something more permanent with Dominic. Good grief, we hadn’t really known each other a whole week—we’d had some amazing sex together, sure, but sex didn’t constitute a relationship. At least, not one that I could commit to. I’d be returning to the city after Christmas. Unless we tried long distance or Dominic moved to the city—the first which held no appeal, and the later which was a big no because of his PTSD—I didn’t think either of us should attempt labeling this as anything serious.

Upending my life because of intense chemistry and a couple of nights of great sex with Dominic didn’t make sense, even if my chest tightened at that statement.

…

After Hal left, I got a call from the mechanic with news that my car wouldn’t be ready today due to a part not arriving. Good thing I’d already planned on staying until Christmas Day.

Once the girls finished their breakfast—oatmeal with dried cranberries and honey, a habit they got from their mom—and we headed out for a walk. Marnie was careful to point out all the things her dog could sniff if she got a dog, and that she’d really love a dog, and did I think that Santa would bring her a dog?

I told her that I didn’t think Santa specialized in animals. “I mean, how would he get them all on the sleigh? How would he keep the dogs from biting the cats and the cats from eating the birds and the snakes from eating everything? Sounds a little too complicated to me.”

“It might happen,” Marnie insisted, her hair curled tight to her head around the edges of her hat. “If there’s a chance he’ll bring it, I should ask, shouldn’t I?”

A dog hadn’t been an option before Ariel left. She was allergic to them. Was this the definition of a silver lining or something a little sadder than that? I didn’t know.

I turned the girls back toward the house. “Come on. Let’s go to the grocery store, then we’ll head to the mall and visit Santa.” I’d check the mall’s schedule before we left, though—it might be the day before Christmas Eve, but I didn’t want to get there and find out that Santa’s visiting hours were over.

I got all the ingredients to make shepherd’s pie at the store and was hey there’d and well, hello’d so much it was like I couldn’t turn a corner without a new person I vaguely recognized bumping into us. Stranger still, they were all…friendly. I hadn’t expected that. By the time I left Edgewood a decade ago, I’d felt like the only people around who hadn’t painted me as guilty by association were Hal and his family, Dinah, and a few of my mom’s friends. Some of that perception was undoubtedly worsened by teenage angst, but it couldn’t all have been. People had been wary of me. Some of them had been downright accusatory. And now? Smiles, handshakes, and gentle questions.

The worst was when I met my old math teacher, Mr. Fiddler, down the dairy aisle. Ours was a small high school, and he’d been one of two math teachers for the entire school body. He’d been Everly’s teacher, too, and friends with her parents. After she was killed in the car accident with my father, I was convinced that Mr. Fiddler wanted nothing to do with me. He and I didn’t make eye contact the rest of the semester.

Seeing him face-to-face again was literally shocking, as though I’d gotten a static charge on the tip of my nose.

He blinked at me without speaking for a moment. “Well. Maxfield.” He pushed his glasses up his long, stork-like nose and stared at me. “Oh. This is such a…surprise.”

“Hi, Mr. Fiddler,” I said, feeling as awkward as he looked.

“You, ah…” He looked at the girls, who were staring at the goodies behind the glass doors and paying absolutely no attention to us. “You have kids now?”

“Oh, no. They’re Hal’s.”

“Right, right, the older Mr. Bell. All A’s, very good.”

Was that how he remembered us, by our grades? Honestly, I’d rather be in his head as “B’s and C’s, rather disappointing” than “the son of that bastard of an ex-mayor.”

I wondered how he’d categorized Dominic.

“Well. Ah,” he went on. “You’re here for, um, the holidays?”

“Yep,” I replied. God, I was a lawyer. I was supposed to be better than this at words.

“Max, we need chocolate chip ice cream,” Marnie informed me, not caring one bit about the weird tension in the air.

“We still have so many cookies, we do not need chocolate chip ice cream on top of that,” I told her, grateful for the distraction.

Two bright faces beamed up at me winsomely. “We could make ice cream cookie sandwiches!” Marnie said.

“Aw, nice try, but no.” I ruffled her hair. “You’ll have to make do with cookies.” I looked over at Mr. Fiddler, who seemed fascinated by the interplay. “Sorry, we’ve got to be going.”

“Ah, right. Well. Good.” He cleared his throat. “Nice to, uh, see you again. Hopefully not for the last, mmm, time.”

“Um…thank you,” I said, all retrograde awkwardness coupled with an odd sense of relief, and took off for the register. Whew. That had been uncomfortable but…not as bad as it could have been. Not by a long shot.

Edgewood would always remember the past, but maybe not everyone was still hung up on it.

My optimism promptly smashed to bits when I turned the cart toward the only register with a cashier manning it and saw another—barely—familiar face. My entire body locked up. I couldn’t push the cart. I couldn’t even move.

It was my dad.

His back was to me, but I could see him in profile as he argued with the person behind the register, one hand resting protectively on the case of cheap beer he’d plunked on the belt. His thick hair was hidden by a worn black cap, and his face sported a lot more lines than I remembered, but it was definitely him.

“—the hell do you need to see my ID for? Do I look underage to you? Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yes, Mr. Robertson, I do,” the girl behind the checkout said calmly. Apparently, she was used to belligerent customers—or maybe my dad made a habit of this. “But checking IDs for anyone buying alcohol is store policy.”

“It’s the dumbest policy I’ve ever heard of,” my father scoffed.

A manager headed for the checkout stand, an annoyed look on her face. Was she about to kick my dad out? Was she going to have him escorted out by the cops?

“Max?” Marnie tugged on my sleeve. “Shouldn’t we get in line?”

I almost gasped as her question broke the weird paralysis that had taken me over. “L-Let’s use the self-checkout today, okay?”

“Cool! I want to help scan!”

We turned away from the unfolding drama, and by the time Marnie and Steph had helped me scan and pack up everything we’d bought, my dad was gone. He hadn’t seen me at all.

I think I was relieved by that. Probably. Mostly. Seeing him in person again was hard enough, but seeing him like that, drunk and angry and downright mean, made me want to cringe in secondhand embarrassment and an almost unbearable sense of sadness. I couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t think about him right now. Who he was now, what he was, had nothing to do with me. Seeing my father was over and done with, but I still had a full day planned with the girls.

Good. I needed activity to keep my mind off what had just happened.

We went home for lunch—peanut butter and jelly, at Steph’s request, and I was inclined to give her almost anything she actually asked for—then it was off to the mall downtown.

The mall was one of the newer constructs in Edgewood, having been built when I was in high school. It was the last big deal for the town that my father had brokered as the mayor, and from the way cars were packed in the parking lot, I could only assume it had been good for the town’s economy. There were a few big flagship department stores on either end of it, a sports store, a big-box computer store, a bunch of places for kids, and in the middle of it all was a food court with a domed glass ceiling. That, or so the advertisements said, was where we’d find Santa.

There was a huge tree on the right side of the food court, next to windows that looked out on the playground attached to the mall. The tree was festooned in tinsel, red and silver and gold garlands that wrapped the tree up so thoroughly it was almost impossible to see the greenery underneath. In front of it was a big, familiar chair on a low dais, partially covered with a piece of white felt.

I knew that chair—I’d played on it when I was a little boy. It was the chair from the mayor’s office, a heavy wooden antique that was uncomfortable as hell after so many years of people squishing down its cushion, but beautifully carved. I’d seen my father sitting there in it so many times, not the quarrelsome beer-guzzling drunk from the grocery store, but the respectable man he’d once been, putting a smile on for everyone and wearing a Santa hat to the office every day the week of Christmas. It was almost dizzying to see some other man sitting in that chair instead.

Sitting in it was a man in a traditional Santa suit—fluffy beard and hair, red hat, bulging pillow belly—and standing by his side was…a beaver wearing an elf cap and an apron?

Oh my god. Was this Edwina the Blissful Beaver that Dominic had told me about? I couldn’t have asked for a better distraction and bit my lip to keep from laughing as I took the costume in. It was a…well, a beaver, big and brown, with a flat tail that dragged on the ground and huge eyes surrounded by enormous eyelashes. It had a pointed green cap stuck on its head, and now that I looked closely, I could see the white felt collar around its neck in the shape of a snowflake, and the green points that had been tied onto the tops of its feet in an imitation of curly elf slippers.

“Ooh!” Marnie shouted happily. “Edwina is here!” She started to dart forward, but I reeled her back into place in line.

“We have to wait our turn,” I reminded her. “Santa wouldn’t want us to cut in line, would he?”

“No,” she sighed. “And neither would Edwina. She came and talked to our class right before the holiday break, and she said it’s very important to be polite to people, especially our family, especially during the holidays.”

I nodded. “She’s a very smart beaver.”

“I think so, too.” I managed to maneuver my phone so that I could get a picture of the girls standing together with Elf Edwina in the background and sent it to Dominic, along with a few crying-with-laughter emojis.

Edwina was working the crowd, keeping kids entertained and parents busy—not like they needed the help—by walking the line and handing each child a neon Post-it note in the shape of a snowflake and a crayon. “Don’t forget to write a list to Santa!” she said cheerily as she handed the supplies out. “You wouldn’t want to forget anything once you get up there to talk to him.”

“Hi! Hi, Edwina!” Marnie said as soon as the cartoon-like beaver got to us. “Hi! I’m Marnie. Do you remember me? You talked to my class at school!”

“Marnie Bell!” Edwina exclaimed, putting her paws on her jiggly hips. “I do remember you! And this is your sister Stephanie, right?”

“Steph,” Marnie corrected, but she was still beaming.

“And…” The beaver looked at me. Or, at least, the person who was inside the beaver looked at me—I could see there was a piece of mesh in the middle of Edwina’s smiling, buck-toothed mouth that let the wearer look straight ahead. It made the costume’s eyes slant toward the ceiling, but I don’t think anyone else noticed. “Oh my goodness, Maxfield? Maxfield Robertson?”

I recognized that voice. I hadn’t known her well before I left, but Mary Clawson had been a vocal presence at town hall meetings, most of which my father had made me attend to “get a feel for politics.” Mostly, it had made me loathe politics and all the weird, passive-aggressive ways they played out, but some people had been consistently nice, and Mrs. Clawson was one of them. She had feelings on the subject of niceness, and they weren’t always obvious ones. She’d also led the charge when it came to a recall election against my father.

“Hi, Edwina,” I said, sticking to her character even though a big part of me wanted to reach out and shake her hand…paw. “It’s nice to meet you. You can call me Max.”

“Max…yes, of course.” She pulled herself together quickly. “How lovely to meet you! Welcome to Edgewood! We’re so happy you’re here.” She handed each of the girls a crayon and a note then paused. “I…gracious. It really is very good to see you, Max,” she said more quietly. “I wasn’t sure we ever would again.”

My throat got a little thick. “Neither was I.” It was nice, in a way, to know that a few people at least had noted my absence as a negative over the years, instead of being glad to get rid of me.

“Truly, it’s…and to come and be with Hal and his family during their troubles, that’s a good thing, dear. We should—oh, yes, honey,” she broke off, turning to the little boy who was tugging insistently on her tail. “I’m coming with supplies for you, too. Don’t you worry.” She put aside Mary Clawson and got back to being Edwina. “Have fun with Santa, girls! Happy holidays, Max!” She kept walking down the line, and we obediently trudged a few feet closer to the tree.

Marnie stuck her Post-it to the floor and got onto her hands and knees, crayon at the ready. “I’m going to write my list down!”

“Go for it.” I turned to Steph, who was staring at her own blank note with a little frown on her face. “Can I write something down for you?” I asked, squatting down to be on her level. She nodded. “What do you want me to write?”

Steph bit her lower lip for a moment then said, “Write ‘Mommy.’”

Uh-oh. “You want Santa to bring your…mommy for Christmas?”

She nodded again.

“I don’t think Santa can put people in his sleigh, Steph. Is there something else you’d like?”

Tears began to well up in her eyes, and her chin trembled. “I want Mommy,” she whispered in a broken little voice, and—no.

“Okay, I’ll write it down,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could manage and wrote the word out in all-capital hot pink letters: MOMMY. Boy, Santa was going to love that. Hell, Hal was going to love that when I told him about it. He’d probably shut down and not talk about it, actually—that was his default when it came to Ariel. He didn’t want to take her calls, didn’t want to even mention her name to the girls…and I got it, I did. Hell, I was still conflicted by the very thought of talking to my dad after a decade. She’d done a number on him and the kids, especially Steph, but it was almost Christmas. If he couldn’t ease up and let his kids talk to their mother on Christmas, then when would he?

I’d ask, I decided. I’d ask Hal tonight about setting up a call with Ariel on Christmas Day for the girls. I’d tell him how Steph had asked for her specifically. A call, even with video, wasn’t the same as seeing her in person, but it was better than completely disappointing his daughter on Christmas, right? I knew both he and Dominic were still incredibly pissed at her for how she’d left, but I could argue that the holidays should be considered a very special occasion.

Ten minutes later, it was our turn to see Santa. The girls went up together, and Marnie took the lead on chatting about a dog, although she also mentioned wanting a Princess Starlight dollhouse and a jeweled butterfly tiara. Steph didn’t do more than give her note to Santa and hold her sister’s hand, but they both were pretty cheerful after they got down from his lap. Santa, meanwhile, gave me the most serious expression I’d ever seen on Saint Nick’s face and motioned me over to him.

“Did you see this?” he asked me in a low voice, pointing at Steph’s note.

“Yeah, I wrote it.”

“Are you going to do something about it?” He looked slightly hunted. “Her mother isn’t dead, is she? I’ve had two kids already today asking me to bring back dead pets. I’m freaking Santa, not a necromancer!”

I almost cracked an inappropriate smile at that. “No, she’s not dead,” I assured him. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Good. Cute kids, man, just…Jesus, that’s too heavy for me, you know?”

Did I ever. But I was resolved to do something about it.

While Marnie took Steph to the restroom, I searched for Ariel’s number in my phone. We hadn’t communicated in months, since before she disappeared on her family. I tapped out a quick message and sent it before I could second-guess myself any harder. It wasn’t much, just letting her know that if she wanted to talk to the girls on Christmas, she could call my phone and I’d pick up. I’d have to get Hal’s permission first, so I hoped she understood that.

I wasn’t expecting a quick reply, but less than a minute later, I got, Oh my god, thank you, when? I swallowed hard and sent back a time I hoped would work then put my phone away as the girls came back into sight.

…

It started to snow just as we got back home. Marnie wanted to go out back and start on another snowman—she had to add a dog to the family, apparently—but I convinced them it was better to wait for it to pile up a little more before we started trying to roll it into balls. Instead, we worked on some coloring books together before I went to get started on shepherd’s pie.

I made a lot of it, one big casserole dish for us and a smaller one for Mrs. Jackson, as a thank-you for her gift of lasagna a few nights back. I poured in the filling and coated it with a thick layer of creamy mashed potatoes then put both pans in the oven to bake a bit longer while I cleaned the rest of the kitchen up. Being back here was a stark reminder of how much I enjoyed cooking and how little of it I did in my own place.

Often, I took work home with me and ended up ordering takeout or cooking something simple. But I’d never noticed before how isolated living like that left me. I felt it here, though. Whenever I locked myself in the guest room to hash out some work, the girls’ laugher or Hal singing along with them during movie time would filter through from downstairs. At Dominic’s, I’d listen to his off-key humming as he worked on the house. I kept wanting to join them, spend more time with them, but I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to make partner.

I didn’t hear the front door open over the sound of the water pouring from the faucet, but I did hear Marnie and Steph calling out, “Uncle Nicky!”

My heart beat a little faster.

I wasn’t used to reacting this way to another person. I went on dates, sure, and I liked sex, but this anticipatory “lub-dub” leaping of my heart before I even saw the person I was interested in, before I even heard their voice or felt their hand on mine? Not the usual for me, not at all. When his hand did touch me, falling lightly on my shoulder before stroking a path down my arm, my heart kicked it up even more.

“Hey,” Dominic said, leaning close and kissing the base of my neck. It was a tentative sort of kiss, like he wasn’t sure if he’d be welcomed or shrugged off. I turned off the water, dried my hands, then faced him fully.

“Hi.” I took his snow-cold hand in both my warm ones and tugged him a little more. As soon as he was in range, I kissed him. He melted against me, like I’d suddenly given him permission to show me how much he liked what we were doing and how much he wanted it. I moved one hand to his waist and pulled him in closer, until our thighs brushed. We kissed again, slow and soft, and I started to get hard in my jeans.

“Uncle Nicky, are we—oooh!”

Aaand Marnie had found us. I grinned, but Dominic jumped back like he’d been burned. He didn’t let go of my hand, though, which…I definitely felt like I was getting mixed signals here. I looked over at Marnie. “What’s up, buttercup?”

“Are you guys kissing?” she demanded with both hands on her cheeks. Steph joined her a moment later, her eyes wide and interested.

“Well, we were,” I said. “Not right now, obviously.”

“Are you going to kiss again?”

“Not right now,” I repeated.

“Do you like each other?”

I waited for Dominic to pick up the reins on this one, and after a few seconds of him staring between me and his nieces, he did. “Uh, yeah. We do, Marnie.”

She looked between us. “Even though you’re both boys?”

“Yeah, we…both of us like boys. For kissing.”

“Not girls?”

Dominic shook his head. His hand in mine was trembling. “No, not girls. Not for me, at least. Just boys.”

“Oh.” Marnie thought about it for a second then nodded. “Okay, cool.”

“Cool?” Dominic seemed to deflate a little. “Really?”

“Yeah!”

“You don’t have any…questions for me or anything?”

Marnie shook her head. “My friend Sydney at school has two mommies, and when we talked about Antarctica, Mrs. Paulson said her son was a scientist down there and she wished he would find a nice boy and settle down instead of being a scientist down there, because he never comes home. Uncle Nicky, will you watch Max and Ruby with us now?”

“Absolutely,” he said. I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back before following the girls into the living room. I shut the dishwasher, turned it on, and reflected for a moment on the fact that this was the first time I’d ever been part of someone’s coming out. Not that Dominic wasn’t already out to his family, but maybe seeing him in a relationship—for a given value of relationship—was novel to the girls. Either his preferences had been solely academic before, or it hadn’t come up with them.

I was glad he’d taken the leap. Particularly, I was glad he’d taken the leap for us. It shouldn’t have made me feel as effervescently happy as it did, but it was a big step for him, and I’d been the catalyst for it. I was happy for him. Being out was a big deal for me. I’d never ask a guy to come out, but I wouldn’t go into the closet to be with someone.

Not that I was thinking about the future. At all.

Especially not here, where my deadbeat dad caused ruckuses in grocery stores just to be an asshole. Where people still spoke of the tragedy he inflicted on the town, and my name was linked by association.

Nope, not happening.

…

Hal came home half an hour later, and as he went into the kitchen to get a beer to go with dinner, I followed him. The whole house smelled delicious, savory and warm, and I figured now was as good a time as any to talk to him about Ariel. He cracked open a bottle and took a drink, set it down on the counter, then offered me a seltzer. As soon as I took it, he grabbed his beer again, tilted his head back, and drank half of it down like it was water.

Uh-oh. “What’s up?” I asked quietly.

“I’ve fucking lost my mind,” he replied, looking grim.

Oh man, this sounded serious. I set my drink on the counter and met his eyes. “What is it? Did something happen at work?”

“Yeah, you could say that. Nothing bad, just—” Hal took a deep breath, held it, then released it with a bunch of words. “I got the girls a dog.”

He…oh. Oh. “Wow,” I managed after a second. “That’s a big step. I mean, I know Marnie’s been cheerleading for one for a while, but I didn’t think you were actually going to give in.”

“I didn’t mean to.” He sounded panicked. “I had absolutely zero plans to get a freaking dog for Christmas, but one of my guys almost ran into this mutt on the road this morning, and when he went to check it out, it turned out to be a puppy—probably not more than six months, the vet said.”

Hal put his broad hand over his eyes. “She’s seriously goddamn cute, Max. Seriously. I had to spend all day with the damn thing, and by the end of it, I had nowhere to put her but here, and I know the girls would love her and I already paid for her shots, for shit’s sake.”

This was serious. “Where are you keeping her?”

“In the truck.”

I blinked. “What?”

“She’s in the truck. Right now. She fell asleep on the ride here, and I parked in the garage so she’ll be warm and…fuck.” He drained the rest of his beer. “And I don’t know where to keep her until Christmas morning. Should I just give her to the girls early?” He shook his head. “No, I can’t do that. This is supposed to be the ‘Santa’ present, right? Marnie was saying something about that. Santa doesn’t come early. Shit.”

It would be funny if Hal wasn’t actually panicking over this. “Maybe…maybe Dominic could take her for the overnights?” I winced as soon as I said it—it wasn’t my place to volunteer Dominic for anything, much less something as big as taking care of a dog, especially when I knew he had to work during the day. Hal latched onto my answer like Kate Winslet hanging onto a floating door.

“Yeah! I’ll ask him—this is a no-brainer. Nicky loves dogs. You mind asking him in here and distracting the girls for a few minutes?”

“Sure.” I headed back into the living room and motioned to Dominic, who raised one eyebrow. “Hal wants to talk to you for a sec.”

“O…kay.” He got up and joined Hal.

I settled in next to the girls for the finale of Max and Ruby—a weird fifties-ish cartoon where all little girl bunnies loved dolls and tea parties and all little boy bunnies loved mud pies and robots.

Ten minutes later, we were all sitting down to eat. Hal was more relaxed, at least, joking with the girls and asking a lot of questions about their day. Dominic was a little more subdued than he had been, though. It wasn’t especially obvious, not when Hal was taking the lead on keeping Marnie and Steph occupied, but it was noticeable to me.

After dinner, once we’d finished ice cream and the girls were headed to bed, we went out to retrieve the puppy from the truck and head to Max’s place.

Part of me had been expecting the worst—chewed seats, pee everywhere, a howling, whirling dervish of a dog. Instead, I got a white, fluffy little thing no bigger than a bowling ball—no wonder the guy had almost hit her; she must have been almost impossible to see against the white of the snow. She was sitting up and wagging her tail, not barking. There was a crate full of supplies for her in the back of the truck, which I pulled out while Dominic handled the puppy.

Once he had his hands on her, he seemed reluctant to let her go.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said quietly and handed over the keys. He held the dog in his lap all the way back to his house then clipped a leash on her new collar and walked her around in front until she did her business. Once we were both inside, he brought her straight back to the bedroom with us.

“I don’t want to risk her getting into the construction supplies,” he said apologetically. I didn’t care about having the dog in the room with us, but I was concerned about why he was kind of shutting down.

He sat down on the bed with the puppy, and I sat down beside him. I didn’t say anything, just scratched behind the little girl’s ears, and after a moment, he started to talk. “My unit in Iraq had a dog,” he said. “We actually had two in the time I was over there. The first one got an infection in one of his paws, the whole leg ended up needing to be amputated. He got sent home to live with his handler’s family. The second one…”

His hands stopped petting the puppy, went completely limp. The little dog looked up at him curiously.

“The second one was a bomb sniffer. She did a good job, a real good job, but in the end…” His eyes looked a little glassy. “The IED was buried pretty deep. She didn’t detect it. She couldn’t set it off on her own. It took people to do that.”

I could read between the lines well enough to figure out that things hadn’t gone well for the dog or the people. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, or tried to. “It’s all right. I talked with a lot of people about it, before I got out. It’s kind of nice to not talk about it so much anymore, although it comes up pretty often in group at the VA.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t miss being back there. I don’t miss the danger or the heat or most of my unit. I was never a very outgoing guy. I do miss the dogs…I could never keep one on my own, though, not with my hours.”

“Well.” My brain scanned at lightspeed for something to say. “It’s nice that we’ve got this one for tonight, then.”

That terrible line actually got a chuckle. “Yeah, I guess it is. We’ll have it tomorrow night, too. Hal can take her with him in the morning when I go to work, but he won’t make it through Christmas Eve with the puppy around. He’d give in and get her out of the garage and give her to the girls before they even went to bed.”

“You’re probably right.” Hal, at his heart, was a big sap when it came to dogs. It looked like Dominic was, too. I’d be lucky if I could convince him to leave the puppy in the crate tonight.

As sweet as the puppy was, tonight was for cuddling, and I wanted Dominic all to myself.

Chapter Ten

Dominic

Waking up to Max the next morning felt wonderful, dangerous, and strange all at the same time. It was wonderful because, honestly, who wouldn’t want to wake up to someone like Max lying next to them? He was good in bed—not just in-in bed, but as a person to sleep next to. He didn’t snore, he didn’t kick, and he wasn’t an octopus. In fact, I was surprised to find that I was the one who’d stealthed up to him during the night, cuddling against his back and waking up to find my forehead pressed between his shoulder blades.

I’d never had the chance to learn that I was a stealth cuddler before, since nobody had ever stayed long enough to actually sleep, but I liked the warmth of being next to Max and the sound of his soft, steady breathing. I liked it so much my heart skipped a beat. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to ignore the part of me that was clamoring about how dangerous all this tenderness was and how I shouldn’t give in.

This was all going to come to an end, after all.

Today was Christmas Eve—one more day of this and Max would head back to New York City, where I didn’t have the time, money, or inclination to go myself. All the crowds, the noise, the dirt…I hadn’t been a city boy before my time in the military, and now I really could not handle city life. I’d visit if it was the only way I got to see Max, but that begged the question of whether or not he’d even want to see me after he left. If I was just a fling, then it was better that I stay out of the way and not hope for more.

The strangest thing of all was that I was letting myself feel these things, letting myself have fear and doubt and affection and happiness from someone who wasn’t family. I’d done such a good job of compartmentalizing over the years, ever since I first realized that I was a lot different from Hal. I was shy, I liked to be alone, and I was gay. Going into the army had been a split-second decision for me, and in the end, it was one I was vaguely glad I’d done but knew I wouldn’t do again if I could go back. I’d shoved the army and everything that had happened overseas into a box, like I did with a lot of things, and left it there.

That’s what I should do with how I felt about Max.

That’s where it should end.

Instead, I laid there against his back and listened to his breathing slowly deepen, the shift of his body against the bed and the faint rumble of his stomach. He woke up and arched back into me with a little groan then laughed when he rubbed up against my erection. “Good morning to you, too,” he purred, and oh my god.

I let myself rub against his ass, keeping it light. It was still early, but I had to get him back to Hal’s, had to get to work, had to…uh-oh. “Where’s the puppy?” I jerked my head off the pillow to look for her.

“Relax,” Max said, “I let her out an hour ago in the backyard, got her some food and water, and now she’s in her crate chewing on one of her new toys. She’s fine.”

Oh. I settled back in against Max and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him in closer. He reached a hand back to my hip and held me still long enough to slot my dick firmly between his cheeks. I moaned and turned my face into his neck.

“I don’t know if we have time for anything,” I said, yet my body was sure as hell on board for trying.

“It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate,” Max offered. “We can stay like this, or I can roll over and blow you, or you can fuck me.”

I shivered against his back, and it had nothing to do with being cold.

His chuckle sounded slightly evil. “Yeah, I might have been awake a little longer than I let on earlier. It’s nice that you left some lube in the bathroom. I could prep myself without having to rummage around in your drawer.”

“You’re…” Joking, kidding, fucking with me. But Max took my hand, slid it into his shorts and down the crease of his ass, then he guided my finger inside. Yeah, he was ready.

“Mmm, fuck,” he murmured. “Fuck, yes.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you want that? I’d love it, but like I said, we can do something else. Or nothing at all, if you’re not in the mood.”

If I wasn’t in the mood…I didn’t even know morning sex was a mood you could actually be in before this, but I was all the fuck about it. It wasn’t easy to scramble for a condom and lube while leaving my finger inside of him, but I managed it. I stripped off my clothes and pulled his boxers further down, spread him on one finger, then on two.

“Are you really ready?” I asked, and I knew I sounded like I’d just drunk a shot of whiskey.

“Yes,” he said, rolling a little more onto his front and lifting his top leg so that I could get my hips close enough to slide inside of him.

Oh god, he was so tight, oh, damn. Helpless sounds came from the back of my throat as I thrust into him until I couldn’t go any further.

“That’s it,” Max said, and he sounded a little punchy himself. “Goddamn, it’s been…way too long. Fuck me, Dominic.”

Damn, I loved the way he said my name. I loved the feel of his body around my dick, the sound of his breathing, the heat trapped and rising between us as I did as he asked. I fucked him, but this didn’t feel like any fuck I’d ever had before. Fucks were fast, something I did in a bathroom so late at night it was nearly morning, or in the back of a car, or maybe if I was lucky in a hotel room. They didn’t happen in my ramshackle house, in my comfortable bed, with a man I’d crushed on for years and had somehow inexplicably gotten together with.

How could this be a fuck, when a fuck had never felt this good before?

Max had his hand fisted around his cock, and every time I drove into him, he rubbed his thumb over the head of it, which was so slick I could hear the wetness of skin against skin. I wanted to go harder, longer, wanted to make it good for him, but it was already too good for me. “Max, mmm, Max, I’m gonna—”

“Yeah, do it,” he said, jerking his hips back and clenching down, and that was it for me.

I was done and gone. I came, and it felt so unbearably good that I had to bite my lip to hold in something I knew I’d regret popping out.

It took a minute of recovery for me to realize that Max was very patient and also very hard. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry—” I pulled out, but he immediately rolled over and pushed me down flat on my back.

“It’s fine, it’s—I’m so close,” he panted, straddling my hips. “Can I—”

“Yes, do it,” I said, and then he was sinking down on me again, angling himself so my dick hit just the right spot, even though it wasn’t as hard now as it had been a minute ago. I watched him work his cock then reached up and tugged on his balls—he did it to me, so I assumed he liked it—and a few seconds later, he came, fist clutching the head of his cock as he shook through his orgasm.

“Holy shit,” he said, finally opening his eyes and looking down at me with something between smugness and wonder on his face. “Tell me that wasn’t a great idea.”

“It was a great idea,” I said, completely honest. “But now we really have to clean up, or I’m going to be late to work. And we still need to sneak the puppy back to Hal so he can take her for the day while you watch the girls.”

“Good point.”

We raced through a shower, let the puppy out one last time—and damn, this dog was an angel, way too composed for her youthful age—and hightailed.

Hal was waiting in the driveway for us.

“Cutting it close,” he muttered as he took the crate out of the back of the Jeep. “How’s the baby?”

“The baby?” I asked, lifting one eyebrow mostly because I knew it bothered him that he couldn’t do it. “Is this dog for the girls or for you?”

“It’s a family dog, obviously,” Hal said a bit defensively. “It’s for all of us, and I figure I’m gonna be doing most of the walks and feeding and grooming and all that for a while, so I’d better damn well like the thing, right? Hey, baby,” he crooned into the front of the crate, where the dog was happily licking at his fingers. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Who’s my baby, huh? Who’s my sweet baby?”

“You’re such a sap,” Max said with a smile on his face. “Were you this ridiculous when your daughters were little? I don’t remember this level of small talk when you came to visit and Steph was still nursing.”

“He was worse,” I said. “He wore Marnie around in a sling for, like, three months straight. Ariel had to pry her out of there with a crowbar just to feed her.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“I came home on leave and I got to hold her all of, like, twice,” I told Max.

“He lightened up by the time Steph came around, right?”

“You try juggling two kids instead of one and see how much uninterrupted snuggling you have time for,” Hal retorted, but he was grinning, too. “You feed her?”

“Yes, and watered her and let her out to do her business, and everything you could ever need for her is in that bag, which you know because you gave it to us last night,” Max told him. “Now get your ass to work before the girls get curious and come outside.”

Hal nodded, transferred everything into his truck, and drove off, leaving me and Max alone on the snowy driveway.

“So…will we see you at the festive fusion play tonight?” Max asked, taking a step closer to me. “I know the girls don’t have parts in it, but they’ll have more fun if you’re there.”

“I’ll try,” I said, completely sincerely. “Lauren is taking off an hour early to get her family there, which makes sense since one of her kids is actually in the play, so I volunteered to make the time up for her. I should get there before the end. Send pictures in the meantime, okay?”

“I’ll do that.” Max stepped in close enough that the frost of his breath poured over my face, obscuring me to everything except the warmth of his presence. “Have a good day, okay? Be safe.”

“I will. You, too.”

He smiled. “I won’t even get my car back until the day after Christmas, so as long as there’s no risk of me trying to maneuver my BMW around these streets, I think I’ll be okay.” He leaned in, tilted his head just so, and—

I kissed him before he could close the distance. I wanted to, wanted it badly enough I almost screamed with it. This morning had been…incredible, amazing, like everything I wanted and nothing I’d thought I could have. Max was too good for me, but a big part of me—a growing part of me—wanted to keep him regardless. It made me think all sorts of crazy thoughts, and stealing his kiss before he could give it to me was the least of it.

Max put a hand on the back of my neck to hold me still—God, I loved that—and took control, sliding our tongues together like a dance or sex. I was going to be thinking of sex all day, at this rate. “You’ve got to go,” he said, a little breathless when he finally pulled back. “I know you’ve got to go, but I wish you could stay.”

Fuck. “Me, too.” I stepped back and turned toward my car before I could do something dumb like call in sick and make Lauren cover for me, which would probably end with her committing justifiable homicide.

…

I ended up being only a little late to work, which Lauren did give me some grief over, but not nearly as much as I’d expected. “You’re happy,” she said with a shrug when I asked her why as we headed out on patrol. “It’s nice to see you that way. I’m not going to haze you over it, that’s for damn sure.”

There was a reason I liked Lauren the best.

It was a fairly slow day, all things considered—the worst thing we had to deal with all morning was two shoppers getting into a fistfight outside Build-A-Bear after one of them allegedly swiped the last, highly collectible Superman bear out of the other’s hands. We were also called to the scene of an elderly woman who slipped on the ice outside her daughter’s home and fell on the sidewalk, breaking a hip. We were closer than the ambulance, so we stayed with her and made her comfortable while her daughter fussed up a storm.

“Isn’t it the city’s job to clear these sidewalks?” she almost shouted at us. “I should sue!”

“Actually, ma’am, the sidewalk in front of every person’s home is their own responsibility, legally speaking,” Lauren said, handling it like the pro she was—and because I was currently holding a hot cup of ginger-chamomile tea for Evelyn, who looked fairly comfortable with two pillows under her head and a blanket. “Technically, if anyone is liable for damages here, it’s you.”

“I…what…my own mother isn’t going to sue me,” the woman blustered. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Darlene, nobody’s getting sued here,” Evelyn informed her daughter. “Now stop having fits and get back in there to check the ham. I might not get to eat it, but I’ll be damned if any ham I bake is going to burn because I tried to catch the pavement with my butt.”

I stifled a grin. Not a day went by without running into some Edgewood drama or neighborhood silliness, but it kept things lively, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

We kept busy until about three, when all of a sudden the calls dried up and we were left twiddling our thumbs in the station. “You should head out,” I told Lauren when I caught her looking at her phone for the second time in under a minute. “I’ve got this.”

“Are you sure? I said I’d stay until four and I meant it.”

“You’ve got to go get the head wisewoman ready for her stage debut. It’s fine.”

“Thank you,” she said as she stood, her voice full of gratitude, probably more than I’d earned, to be honest. “Jimmy can handle almost all of the preparations, but little things like the buttons on the back of her costume are still a bit beyond his motor control, and God forbid Pippa ask one of her siblings to help her out. That would be like starting World War Three.”

“Go on. Maybe I’ll see you at the play tonight.”

She nodded. “I hope so.” After a second’s hesitation, she walked over and hugged me. It was a good hug, warm and tight, and I breathed out and held her back, quiet and thankful. “Have a merry Christmas, Nicky.”

“Have a merry Christmas, Lauren.” I patted her shoulders as we released each other. “Tell Jimmy hi for me.”

“I will.” She winked. “Tell Maxfield hi for me, too.”

“I won’t, because I don’t want to get beat,” I replied. She laughed and walked out, and I pulled out my phone to see if there were any new messages. Nothing. Maybe I was getting spoiled, thinking that Max had nothing better to do than send me cute texts. He was watching the girls, of course he had a zillion things to do, and if they were going to eat an early dinner and get to the play on time then he was probably—

My phone buzzed with an incoming message from Max. Perfect timing. I opened it instantly—hell, I already had the message app open—and read, I didn’t know picking out dresses for a play was such an involved process.

I snorted a laugh and leaned back in my chair. It’s that show they watch. The older bunny is a diva about her clothes, so Marnie likes to be a diva, too.

She says there has to be a matching tiara. And gloves. Elbow-length gloves. Does she have gloves like that?

Her mom does. I paused before I sent it, wondering whether it was worth the hassle he might get for reminding the girls about Ariel right now, but finally pressed send and followed it up with, I think there’s a box of stuff like that in Hal’s closet, by the rest of Ariel’s shoes.

I didn’t get a reply for almost five minutes, and by the time it came in, I was practically pacing the floors. It was a picture this time, of Marnie and Steph grinning into the camera while holding up their gloved fingers. Marnie’s were blue, Steph’s were pink, both were obviously too big, and clearly neither girl cared. Marnie had her Frozen tiara and her Elsa dress on, and Steph was in a rainbow-colored tutu. Beautiful, I sent, and I meant every syllable of it.

Thanks for the advice, Uncle Nicky ;)

Aw, a winking smiley face. Shit, when had I become the sort of person to appreciate a freaking winky face? Another text came in while I pondered the fact that I might, just might, be head-over-heels for Max. We’re about to have dinner. I’ll let you know when we head to the church. Hope we see you there.

I hope so, too, I sent back. Miss you, I added before I could second-guess myself.

I got an emoji blowing a heart back at me, which I took as a good sign.

Four o’clock crawled by. Five o’clock was punctuated by Hal getting home—apparently, he’d received permission to leave the puppy at Phee’s house until tomorrow morning, which was lucky. It meant I could take Max home and not have to worry about waking the dog if we got busy. Which…fuck, that would be nice. Everything was nice with Max so far, but the sex we’d had this morning was revelatory for me.

I had never been like that with another person, felt so powerful and open and soft all at once. I’d never been welcomed like that, either. It might be possible, just possible, that Max liked me almost as much as I liked him. I wasn’t the type of guy to believe in happily-ever-afters, not after the way my parents’ relationship imploded and my brother’s wife dropped everything and ran, yet with Max, I wanted to be that guy.

Five thirty came and went, and everyone at Hal’s was getting ready to head to the church. It was a little early for them to be leaving, but it had started snowing again about an hour ago, and Hal liked to drive like an old lady when the roads were slick. I stared anxiously at the clock—half an hour. I could be at the church from here in fifteen minutes; the play would have just started. I could sidle in and grab a seat next to Max and watch the festive fusion unfold, and we could try to make sense of it together. It was going to be perfect. Five forty-five. Five fifty.

The next shift showed up—Amos and David were nice guys, especially because they could have pulled rank and shoved their shift off onto me for Christmas, but they hadn’t. Amos brushed some snow off the shoulders of his jacket as he nodded to me. “Getting cold out there,” he said cheerfully.

“Looks it,” I said. Five fifty-five. Almost—

“Heads up, guys!” our desk sergeant called out. “Highway patrol is asking for backup for a head-on collision on State Route 10. Injuries were reported and paramedics are on the way, but they need help managing the traffic and handling witnesses.”

David sighed. “Sounds like all hands on deck. So much for a quiet Christmas Eve.” He glanced at me. “I hate to do this, Nicky, but—”

“No problem,” I said immediately, swallowing my bitterness—I had a job to do, and hell if I was going to bitch about it just because it was inconvenient. “I’ll follow you guys out.” I pulled out my phone for a quick text to Max and Hal: Big car accident. I might not make the play.

I got two messages a minute later. Hal’s was a picture of the stage, complete with living menorah, and the caption, You’re only missing out if you planned to watch this stoned, and a simple two words from Max: Be safe. Yeah, I’d do my best.

…

The spot we drove out to was only a quarter mile or so from where Max had gone off the road. There were cars piled up in each direction, most of them as far onto the shoulder as they could get with the snow there. I eked out a path in my Jeep and headed straight for the flashing lights of the ambulances. I had some medic training from my time in the army, and I didn’t know how many injured there were yet.

Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it looked—from the chatter I could make out, everyone was alive, if not uninjured. I couldn’t make it out very well, actually—there were a lot of lights and sounds and people, horns honking and engines revving irritably. Stepping into that maelstrom was like getting hit in the face by a memory sucker punch. I had to shut my eyes and do a breathing exercise for a few seconds to ground myself in reality.

It’s cold here, not hot. There are no dead bodies here, just a few people who got injured. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re still breathing, you’re not hurt, hold it together. You can do this. You can do this.

My counselor had talked a lot about the beneficial effects of positive self-talk, and I’d kind of laughed it off in session, but right now it was the only thing keeping me from bolting.

Amos’s hand found my shoulder and squeezed gently, bringing me back to the present. I started to apologize, but he just shook his head. “It’s all right, Nicky, there’s no rush. Looks like a mess, but mostly we just need to make enough room to get the ambulances out then get these cars moving again. No serious injuries, thank goodness. David’s handling interviews and a tow truck is coming, so you and me need to see about getting traffic unstuck. I think we have space for a single lane through here. You take southbound, I’ll take northbound, and we’ll communicate via radio so we don’t cause any more accidents.”

“Yes.” I could do that. Directing traffic was one of the least sexy jobs that came with being a cop, but it was one of the most regular ones. “Let me grab my cones and we’ll set it up.”

“Good man.” He clapped me on the shoulder again then headed for his car. I turned back to my Jeep to dig out my traffic cones.

This was my first major accident since taking the job. While I knew my reaction could have been a lot worse, I couldn’t help wishing it had been a lot better. Noise, lights, horns, people…if I couldn’t handle it here, I’d never handle it somewhere else.

Like New York City.

I shook my head and pulled the cones out. I had a job to focus on. Impossible dreams could wait.

Chapter Eleven

Max

The Christmas play turned out to be a complete hit. It seemed everyone in town came out as support, and the kids had fun acting out the nativity scene, even without live animals. Hal asked me why I was laughing so hard when the scene opened on Mary and Joseph in the manger, and I shared the blow-up doll conversation with him. He actually had to step out of the nave for a minute to get a handle on his laughter. I stayed behind, taking in the small-town holiday spirit, wanting to bottle it up and save it for when I returned to the city.

The after-play party was held in the church’s biggest meeting room. It was absolutely packed with people, and kids were running around everywhere, some still in their costumes and cheerfully spilling fruit punch and chocolate cookie crumbs on them as they raided the snack table. I was hanging out near the door with Hal and wondering whether Dominic was going to make it or not before the party ended. He’d texted about an accident—hopefully, it wasn’t a bad one.

Someone’s phone went off a few feet away. No, make that two people’s phones. No, three. What was going on?

“Uh-oh, sounds like a group text.” Hal raised a wry eyebrow before taking a sip of the bright red punch that Marnie had pressed on him. “Cue the Edgewood gossip network.”

Tension crawled up my shoulders as I remembered the incessant chatter that had followed my mom and me right after the accident. Instead of offering support, the town had turned on us based on loose tongues and speculations.

“Oh my god.” The woman closest to me whose phone had gone off rolled her eyes at her friend. “You’ll never guess who almost got arrested outside Mary’s fabric store again.”

“No, really?” The woman next to her shook her head. “I thought she had a restraining order against that old fool.”

“They called the cops, but apparently Mary didn’t have them arrest him,” the first lady said with a sigh. “She’s too soft-hearted when it comes to Robertson. If I were the mayor, I would have dug up some sort of zoning issue and kicked that man out of his trailer years ago. He shouldn’t even be allowed to live in this town anymore, much less get to rant like a drunk on a bender outside Mary’s own store.”

My mouth went dry. They were talking about my father, who I’d seen buy the case of beer that was probably fueling his delusions right now.

Whispers like this had been too much to bear ten years ago. I was practically crawling out of my skin listening to them now.

Hal, who had the ears of a bat, also picked up on the conversation nearby and set his punch cup down on the nearest table. “Well, I’m done with this party, and dinner’s waiting at home. I’ll go get the girls.” He left before I could tell him not to bother, that it was all right, and I was so grateful for that.

I was even more grateful when Dominic walked in the church doors a moment later. He stopped just inside the entrance, snow slowly melting on his shoulders as he looked around blankly. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a room packed with holiday revelers. I walked over and stopped just beside him. “Hey.”

That seemed to jolt him out of his fugue. “Hi.” He gave me a weak half smile. “I guess I missed the play.”

“Eh, there weren’t even any blow-up dolls,” I said, trying for funny but knowing I missed the mark when Dominic frowned at me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m…It’s fine.”

Dominic took my hand, uncaring of the sudden upswell of murmurs around us—or maybe he didn’t even hear them right now. “Max. What’s wrong?”

I moved in a little closer, chafing his icy hand with both of mine. “Seems like my dad almost got arrested tonight while making a scene outside Mayor Clawson’s store.”

“Oh, the drunk and disorderly.” Dominic nodded. “I heard that come in over the radio while I was driving here. That was your dad?”

“According to a group text here at the party, yeah.” I shrugged, trying to brush it off even as the whispers got louder. It was hard to keep calm with the weight of half a dozen sets of eyes burning holes into my self-confidence. I tried harder. “But never mind that. Did the accident turn out okay?”

Dominic pulled me closer, his gaze clear and intense. “Max, no matter what anybody here is saying about your dad, none of it reflects on you, okay? You have nothing to do with his troubles. Fuck the people who think otherwise.”

I don’t know why it made a difference when he said it when I’d been saying that to myself for years, but hearing it from Dominic, especially right now, took some of the burden away.

I pressed a quick kiss to his lips and pulled back with a sigh then ran a hand through my hair, relaxing it and myself. “How do you feel about—”

Crash!

The immense plastic Christmas tree in the corner, the one that had weathered countless seasons and dozens of pounds of decorations, had somehow been knocked over and was now lying in a heap on the floor. A blond boy stood amid the wreckage, looking like the living incarnation of “oops.”

“It was an accident!” he hollered.

“Benjamin George Shriner, get over here right now!” shouted Lauren, who I barely recognized out of her uniform.

I turned back to Dominic to make a joke but changed gears as soon as I saw the pained look on his face and how fast his eyes were moving beneath his closed eyelids. I’d taken the time to read up on PTSD symptoms after we talked about his experiences, and this wasn’t good. “Breathe, Dominic. You’re okay.”

His hand tightened around mine.

“I’m here. You’re okay,” I said, hoping to ground him in the present. “I’m going to grab the Jeep keys from your pocket, okay? Then we’re out of here.”

Dominic nodded. Once I had the keys, I pulled my phone out and texted Hal to let him know what was going on. “Come on, let’s head home.” But not to his home. It was Christmas Eve, and he was supposed to be over tomorrow morning anyway. He could stay at Hal’s with me tonight.

In under five minutes, we were in his Jeep and on our way back to Hal’s.

“Are you okay?” I asked as we turned onto the main road.

Dominic, at least able to open his eyes now, looked over at me and smiled, but there was no spark in it. “I’m tired,” he admitted. “It took a long time to get everything from the accident tonight cleaned up, and the scene was so loud and chaotic it had me on the verge of a panic attack, and I’m just…I’m really tired.”

“You should sleep, then.”

“It’s too early to sleep.”

“Not if you need it,” I said firmly. “Do you need it?”

Dominic paused then said, “Maybe, yeah. I wouldn’t be good company tonight anyway.”

“Like any of us care more about you being witty than looking after yourself. Do you need food?”

“Nah.” Dominic shook his head. “The Highway Patrol guys shared their soup. I’m good.”

I got us to Hal’s and inside as fast as possible, leaving the door unlocked and turning the lights on for the others when they got back. Dominic headed for the stairs, walking slowly, like his joints ached. I followed him to the guest room then sat him down on the edge of the bed, knelt down, and started to unlace his boots.

After a second of watching, Dominic blinked and ran a hand down his face. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.” I finished with his boots, picked them up, and set them just inside the bathroom door, where the snow would melt onto the tiles instead of the hardwood floor. When I turned back, he was unbuttoning his shirt. His hands moved slowly, but he eventually got fully undressed. Without another word, he turned toward the bed.

“No, c’mon. You’re freezing. You need a shower.” I took his hand and eased him toward the bathroom.

“Will you stay with me?”

The answer was so clear in my mind that my breath caught. Always. I couldn’t even process it, and it was too intense to say aloud. So I smiled and said instead, “You never have to persuade me to have a shower with you, Dominic.”

I turned the water on and let the bathroom start steaming up as we finished undressing then led the way into the spacious shower stall. It was easily twice the size of Dominic’s, and we could have had a lot of fun in here under different circumstances, but tonight was for warming up and washing away the strain and stress of the day.

By the time I was done cleaning his hair, Dominic was out on his feet, swaying under the hot water so badly I worried I might have to carry him back to bed. “C’mon, almost done.” Forget drying off, forget brushing teeth—everything else could wait. I helped him out of the shower and back into the bedroom, where he fell onto the bed and burrowed under the covers until just his head was sticking out of the blanket.

“Rest well,” I murmured, giving in to temptation and kissing his lips then his forehead before standing up. He was asleep before I was done dressing.

…

Christmas Eve’s dinner was a muted affair of leftovers from our splurging earlier in the week, and most of the good stuff was claimed by the time I got back downstairs. I made myself a turkey sandwich and spent a half hour picking at it while reassuring the girls that their uncle Nicky was okay.

“For real?” Hal asked quietly at one point when the girls were distracted.

Dominic hadn’t been all right back at the church, but by the time he went to sleep, I was pretty sure he was just tired, not reliving a nightmare. “Yeah. He’s just resting.”

The girls didn’t want to go to bed—they were excited from the tips of their fingers to the ends of their toes—but Hal made the perennial parent argument that the sooner they fell asleep, the sooner it would be Christmas morning.

It worked, amazingly, and the girls got ready quietly enough, although after they were in bed, there was still quite a lot of giggling.

Hal listened to it with a half smile on his face, both of us sitting on the couch in the living room, close to the bottom of the stairs. “Steph’s really started to open up more lately.”

I nodded. “She’s talked to me a few times now.”

He clapped me on the shoulder before I gathered my courage. “She likes you. Stick around long enough, she’ll be calling you Uncle Max.”

Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d never thought I’d be anyone’s uncle, but with the girls here, with Dominic here, it was…tempting to try. But that was wanting too much. “I doubt it. Besides, I do have a job to get back to after this vacation, you know.”

Hal leaned back and looked at me skeptically. “Funny, you never say things like ‘I have a life to go back to’ or ‘I have friends to go back to.’ Every time New York comes up, it’s all about your job.”

“I like my job,” I protested, but it sounded weak to my ears. “And shut up, I have friends in New York.”

“You have guys you compete with at the office. Guys you go up against in court. Guys you beat down playing squash or whatever the fuck fancy shit you lawyers do at the gym.” Hal tilted his head. “How many of them actually qualify as friends?”

Definitely some of…well, at least two of…maybe one of them? Shit. “Fine, I have acquaintances in New York, but that’ll change once I move up the ladder and get a little more time to myself.”

“Really? Is it that way with your boss? Has his time freed up the higher up the ladder he goes?”

“Marcus is a named partner. It’s his firm,” I exclaimed, and when Hal glanced at the stairs, I lowered my voice. “My situation is different.”

“Is it, though?” Hal asked, as gentle and ruthless as only my best friend could be. “Or are you gonna be in the same spot as him a few years from now, only without the wife and kids helping you keep up an appearance of normalcy?”

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hug him. I picked the middle road. “Fuck you.”

“I’m not bringing any of this up to hurt you,” he said, and he was so damn earnest it was hard to hold onto my anger with him. “I’m just sayin’, I think you should consider all your options.”

“Options like what?”

“Coming back to Edgewood.”

I sighed. “Hal…I don’t think—”

“What happened tonight with your dad had nothing to do with you. Yeah, people will always talk shit, but forget them. You’re nothing like the guy. That’s obvious as soon as someone meets you. And we’d love to have you here.” He nodded toward the upstairs. “The girls adore you, more every day. You’re my best friend, not to mention I’d kill for you to stick around through basketball season. Nicky is terrible about setting his brackets. And Nicky…” Hal looked a little uncomfortable now, but he forged ahead. “You gotta see what you meant to him.”

My chest ached at the thought of meaning more to Dominic, but I shook my head again. “We haven’t known each other long enough for me to mean much to him.”

Hal made a pfft noise. “You’re kidding yourself now. Just think about it, okay? There’s a place here for you, whether you ever take us up on it or not. There’s always gonna be a place for you.”

Jesus Christ. I did not deserve Hal, not in any way, shape, or form. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, now get out of my sight.” I got off the couch and headed for the stairs. “And Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you, man.”

I didn’t need to be thanked for anything. I didn’t press the point, though, just nodded and headed upstairs. I was quiet entering the guest room, but Dominic was out so hard he didn’t even stir while I got ready for bed. Sliding in next to him, I rolled onto my side and stared at the back of his head. It would be so easy to lean forward and kiss him there. The urge to wrap my arm around his waist was almost overwhelming, and not even because I wanted him to wake up and fool around, just because I wanted to hold him. What would it be like to do this every night?

My throat tightened.

Was Hal right? Was there really a place for me here in Edgewood? Everything I’d worked toward for the last three rigorous years was in New York, but was that really going to be enough to satisfy me?

I didn’t know anymore.

…

The next morning, I wasn’t sure at first what woke me. Part of me had been braced for yelling and whooping from the girls, shouting about Christmas Day. Instead, I got a warm embrace and a gentle kiss to the back of my neck.

I sighed happily. “G’morning.”

“Good morning.” Dominic kissed me again, right on the knob at the top of my spine. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” I rolled over so I could see him. He looked…still tired. “How d’you feel?”

“Better.” It was a whole sentence of sentiment in a single word. Not perfect, but better. Getting there. “And you?”

I was more embarrassed that I’d let gossip about my dad get me so upset yesterday than anything else. “Same.”

“Good.” He smiled at me, and I couldn’t resist kissing that smile.

We were a mess, but at least we were together.

At least for one more day.

“Christmas!” Marnie shouted from the landing. “It’s Christmas! Come on, Steph!”

The girls rumbled down the stairs like a thunderstorm, breaking the peaceful quiet of the morning. I whined and pressed my face down against Dominic’s collarbone. “Oh my god. Where do they get the energy?”

Dominic kissed the top of my head. “That was nothing. Just wait a second…”

“DADDY! UNCLE NICKY! MAX!”

Yep, he was right. “Ugh.”

Dominic chuckled and tightened his grip around me. With all that happened yesterday, I was glad he was able to laugh, even if it was at my expense. “Didn’t you ever get excited on Christmas morning?”

“Not really. It’s not like I had anyone else to get excited with, you know?” I was an only child, and my parents had resolutely forbidden me from waking them before eight. “I always knew exactly what my folks had gotten me, too—it was just a waiting game in the end, not really a big surprise.”

“Hmm.” I wasn’t sure what that hmm meant, but Dominic was up and out of bed before I could ask. He opened the door and shouted, “We’re coming!” then shut it again and turned his smiling face on me. “I’ve bought us about…three minutes,” he said. “Long enough to use the bathroom and brush our teeth.”

I groaned. “Not long enough.”

“Hal will have coffee waiting, at least.”

There was that. Plus, we still had to retrieve the puppy from Phee’s, where we’d left her before the play while Hal distracted the girls. So the sooner we got down there, the better.

“Okay.” I heaved myself out of bed. “I’m up.”

Dominic kissed me, morning breath and all, then ran for the bathroom. “Dibs!”

“Ha-ha, what are we, five?” I called after him, but honestly, I liked the chaos of it. Screaming kids, holiday cheer, and best of all, a kiss from Dominic…yeah, part of me really wanted to get used to this.

We were downstairs about ten minutes later, after another rousing round of call and response. Hal, who looked about two drowsy minutes away from completely passed out, nevertheless had hot cups of coffee waiting for us on the counter, as well as toasted bagels and cream cheese ready to spread. “Merry Christmas,” he got out then winced as Dominic went and hugged him hard enough to take his breath away. “Jesus,” he wheezed in his brother’s embrace, “what’s gotten into you?”

When Dominic pulled back, he was beaming. “I’m just happy for the holiday.”

“I…do not want to know why you’re feeling so much better today.” Hal pointed a finger at me. “For the record, I blame Max.”

I grinned. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss the salutatory effects of the Christmas spirit.”

Hal made a raspberry sound, and Dominic laughed.

“Max?” Marnie took my hand, pulling my attention a few feet downward. “Are you ready to open presents now?”

I looked down at her, mystified. “Um…yes?”

“Great!” She pushed a squishy gift into my hands. “This is for you! Come on, we want to watch you open it!” She darted back into the living room.

I stared at the gift then at Hal. “Um.”

He managed a smile behind his coffee mug. “I told the girls that we couldn’t open presents until you were ready. They’re very invested.”

I frowned. “When did you have time to shop?”

“It’s called Amazon, Max. Besides, did you honestly think I wasn’t going to get you anything for Christmas even if you were still in New York?”

Honestly, I hadn’t thought of presents at all. Being here was my gift this year, and it was more than I really had a right to ask. “Thank you.”

“Max!”

“Let’s go put the girls out of their misery,” Hal said, clapping me on the shoulder as he headed for the living room couch.

I’d never quite experienced a Christmas morning like this, the kind with adults sitting around drinking coffee and watching the kids tear through wrapping paper, revealing whatever was inside with squeals of joy. It was all a bit of a blur for me—maybe because I was still tired, or maybe because my eyes were a little wet, I didn’t know—but there was a tea set involved, and several stuffed animals, and at least one Frozen figurine that both the girls were very pleased with. Then Dominic disappeared, and a few minutes later, he came through the front door with the puppy wrapped up in his jacket, and from there on out, it was complete pandemonium.

I opened my own gifts while the girls were distracted. I got a nice pair of boots from Hal, the kind that had enough tread to propel me straight up a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm if I needed them to. The girls gave me homemade ornaments fashioned out of popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners that made me wish I had a tree to hang them on.

I even got a gift from Dominic. It was a pretty big box, and when I finally got it open, I laughed.

“Do you like it?” Dominic had moved over to sit beside me.

“A roadside emergency kit?” There were reflective triangles, a new set of jumper cables, a multitool, a reflective vest, and even a rain poncho. There was more, but I’d have to dig into it later. “It’s a really good idea,” I admitted. “I was kind of unprepared for that last accident.” I nodded to the card he had in his hand. “By comparison, my present for you feels kind of lame.”

He smirked as he held up the gift card I’d grabbed for him at the hardware store. “Any help with supplies for the house is always welcome. You didn’t have to do this, though.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything, either, but you did.”

“It’s different.”

“How?” I asked—pressed, maybe, but I wanted to know. “How is it any different?”

“Because…” Dominic swallowed. “Because of how I feel about you.”

My breath caught in my chest, and I froze. Was it possible that…Dominic felt the same things for me that I felt for him? “How do you feel?” I murmured.

He bit his lower lip, making me want to pull it out of his teeth and—God, kiss it, kiss him, right here in front of the girls and Hal. He finally opened his mouth and—

My phone rang.

“Shit,” I said, reaching for my pocket. If this was the office, I wasn’t going to bother answering it, they could go and—

Ariel Bell.

Fuck.

Oh, fuck.

I could feel the blood rushing down my face, leaving me dizzy as I stared at her name. I’d forgotten she was calling. I’d forgotten to tell Hal.

“Who is it?” Dominic asked.

I stared from the phone to him then to the girls. They were looking at me now, too, the newly named Baby sandwiched between them on the floor with her tongue lolling out.

Five rings. Six.

She’d go to voicemail soon.

I couldn’t let that happen, not after I’d promised.

I picked up. “Hey,” I said hoarsely.

“Hi,” Ariel said, tentative. “Merry Christmas, Max.”

“Right, um, Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“So.” She paused for a moment. “Is this time still okay? Are the girls there? Did you—did you clear this with Hal?”

“Yeah, they’re here, but I, uh, I kind of forgot to mention this to—”

Steph bolted to her feet and ran across the carpet to me, throwing herself against my side. “Is it Mommy?” she demanded. “Is it my mommy?”

I saw Hal stiffen out of the corner of my eye.

I screwed up. I totally screwed up.

“Yeah, it is,” I said, because I was shit at lying, and what the hell, the jig was already up. Marnie joined us a second later, her dark eyes wide and hopeful. “Do you girls want to talk to her?”

Even as they both shrieked, “Yes!” Hal got up from the carpet and stalked off to the kitchen. A moment later, the back door slammed. I handed the phone to Marnie, who immediately clutched it to her ear then got up to follow him.

Dominic caught my arm before I went more than ten feet. “What the hell?” he whispered, all the tenderness gone from his expression. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

Well, I hadn’t known that I was going to handle it this badly, but… “Yes.” I held up my hands in placation. “I meant to talk to Hal about it and make sure it was okay, but with everything else going on, I completely forgot about it.”

Dominic pulled me around the corner into the kitchen. “You forgot about setting up a call on Christmas Day with the woman who abandoned her husband and children? You fucking forgot?”

“You think I wanted this? For you and Hal to get pissed at me? Shocker—it isn’t.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m sorry. I really was going to tell Hal, but I got caught up with you and—”

“No, don’t you make me your excuse,” Dominic snapped and then took a step back. That he wanted distance from me hurt more than his words. “You weren’t here when she left, okay? You weren’t here for any of it. You didn’t see any of it. You didn’t have to watch my brother try to hold his kids’ lives together while his own was falling apart. He and Ariel had been together for over a decade, and she just left him. No warning, no clue, nothing.”

“I know, and that’s awful, but when we were standing in line for Santa, Steph had me write down that all she wanted this year was her mommy. And that couldn’t happen, there’s no way, I know that, but at least she and Marnie could talk to her.”

Dominic’s expression was entirely closed off.

But I forged ahead. “They miss their mother, and it sucks that she hasn’t done anything to really deserve being missed, but that’s not the girls’ fault. They shouldn’t have to suffer because Ariel made bad decisions.”

“God, you still don’t get it.” Dominic exhaled harshly and stepped back further. “They’re going to suffer more now. Can’t you see that? Because you took it upon yourself to open a door that Hal went through a lot of time and effort to shut. He was getting them over her. He had conditions for her to meet first, conditions that were put there to protect the girls, and you blew right through them so they could have this heartwarming Christmas phone call with her. The girls are going to hope for a change now, but there’s no change coming, Max.”

I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t.

“I hated my father for what he did,” I said as levelly as I could manage. “I hated that he destroyed a family, and I hated that he destroyed himself and our family along with it. I hated that, but even after my mother and I left, I still would have appreciated hearing from him. A call, a note, anything. Instead, I had nightmares over what might happen to him without us.”

Those had stopped long ago, when I realized that he was never going to reach out and take responsibility, but Ariel wasn’t my father. She was trying.

“This call with Ariel isn’t a panacea, Dominic, and maybe it’ll give the girls some ideas, but they wanted to talk to her. Isn’t there some wiggle room in the rules when it comes to making them happy with this?”

Dominic shook his head. “Maybe there could have been if you’d bothered to talk to Hal first.” The coldness in his voice carried a finality to it that I couldn’t evade.

“Dom—”

“I think you should leave for a while.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and handed them to me. “You can take my Jeep, I don’t care, but go. Hal needs some space right now.” He sighed, and now I could see emotion in his eyes again, and it was nothing but regret. “I need some space, too.”

Oh fuck.

“I’ll…” Where was open on Christmas Day? I’d have to drive to a bigger city to find a hotel that would take me…and shit, I needed to pack up. How could I pack without letting the girls know what was the matter? “Can you—distract them, um, while I go and…”

“What—no!” Now Dominic looked horrified again, in a different way. “Jesus, no, you don’t have to leave leave, just—a few hours is all. Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair, pulling at it distractedly. “Max, it’s not like that.”

“Sure.” He was trying to be nice to me about it, and I appreciated the effort, but it was too late to take it back. They needed space because I’d irrevocably fucked up Christmas Day. “Just a few hours.”

I turned before he could waste any more time trying to apologize for something that was my fault.

…

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Not setting up the call—I didn’t regret that, not really. Maybe I should have, but what I really regretted was forgetting to talk to Hal about it. I’d blindsided him with this, and that was damaging. I didn’t want to set him up for future trouble with the girls, but reaching out to their mother was important to them. And it was Christmas. If they couldn’t get a free pass for conversation today, when could they?

I hadn’t spoken to my father since leaving Edgewood. Thought about it? Yes, many times. Especially during the first years, but less and less as I grew up. Seeing him again, though, it made me wonder. What would I say to him now?

But no, that was a dumb idea. Wasn’t it?

Would it be so bad to reach out to him? It was clear he wasn’t coping well in the aftermath of his bad decisions—instead, they were compounding, making him into a mockery of who he once was. But I still remembered the good times, the times when my father had been Dad and not Mayor Robertson who drove under the influence and got someone killed.

Maybe…maybe he’d like to see me.

Maybe it would help bring us both a little joy on Christmas.

I wasn’t as familiar with the part of town Dinah had let slip Dad lived in now, so it took a few wrong turns for me to find the place. It was a trailer park, a pretty nice one right on the edge of the forest. A lot of the homes were decorated for the holiday, and there were lights sparkling in the trees even though it was almost noon. His place was in the second loop, close to the back. There were no decorations here, and the shrubs out in front were so threadbare that the snow didn’t have enough to cling to.

I parked the Jeep behind a twenty-year-old Dodge truck covered in pockmarks from hail damage, turned off the engine, and tried to breathe. Inhale, exhale, everything was okay. I could do this. I just had to walk right up there, knock on the door, and see what happened.

I got out of the car, walked up the creaking steps to the front door, and after a long pause, knocked on the screen. No immediate response, but I could hear the television playing inside. It sounded like he was watching It’s A Wonderful Life. I smiled to myself—that had been a Christmas tradition in my house, one of the few times I could reliably count on both my parents to sit down and watch a movie with me. I knocked again. And again.

“Coming! God dammit, I’m coming already.” Steps plodded in my direction, and a moment later, the door opened up. The man standing in front of me made my breath stall. Jesus Christ…up close, it was like he’d aged thirty years, not ten.

My father’s full head of salt-blond hair had thinned so much there wasn’t even enough of it to comb over the top of his scalp. He’d gained a tire around his middle, but his face was oddly gaunt, skin hanging beneath his jawline and eyes like tiny bruised flags. He was wearing a stained white undershirt and a pair of old jogging shorts that were too small for him now, and he had a bottle of beer dangling from its neck in one hand. He reeked of alcohol, though, more than a single beer could provide.

He blearily looked me up and down with a frown on his face then said, “Who the hell are you?”

In all my worst ideas of how a meeting with my dad might go, I’d never pictured him not knowing who I was. Shouting at me, sure. Asking me for money, possibly. Guilt-tripping me as hard as he could, which had been par for the course before—absolutely. But in no universe did I think he’d be so far gone when I came face to face with him that he wouldn’t recognize me.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t find my voice, and after a second, my father snorted and said, “Look, whatever yer sellin’, I don’t…don’ fuckin’ want any, got it? S’fuckin’ Christmas. Can’t a man get a break from you vultures?” Then he stepped back and shut the door in my face.

I didn’t knock again.

Stumbling down the steps, I made it back to the Jeep and stared out the windshield for a few long minutes, wrapping my head around what had just happened. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have, maybe, but the shock of it left me numb.

I wanted to call Dominic, to ask him to tell me something good; nonsense would be fine—just to hear his voice, something warm enough to break me out of the icy shroud wrapped around my whole body. But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have the right to seek his comfort after what had happened earlier.

Well, shit. This unplanned holiday vacation had turned out to be a complete and utter disaster. I should’ve just gone back to the city, but now I had to wait. It was way too early for me to head back to Hal’s and slink up to my room. They needed time, and now I did, too.

So I drove to the nearest trailhead. I wasn’t really dressed for a long walk, but I definitely had the boots for it. I needed to clear my head, and the park was the perfect place to do it. I hoped it would be as empty as I felt, because trying to genuinely wish someone a Merry Christmas right now? Might just break me.

Chapter Twelve

Dominic

“It’s getting dark.”

“I know.” There was no way I could not know that at this point, I was staring out the window so often.

“And Max still isn’t back,” Hal went on, inexorably, hammering out his observations like a damn battering ram.

“I know.” As if I didn’t feel Max’s absence with every square inch of my skin.

“This is not okay, Nicky.”

“Fucking hell!” I stopped pacing and spun around to face my brother, glad that the girls were over at Phee’s house right now, letting Baby play with her ancient chihuahua. “I know that, Hal! You think the fact that he’s out there somewhere is making me happy? Because it’s not!” My hands clenched into fists, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “I told him we needed a little space for a while, that’s all. I didn’t tell him to drive off for hours on end.”

Hal closed his eyes and rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand, a sure sign he was getting a headache. When the migraines came, they hit him hard, and I was caught between wanting to make him go lie down and yelling at him for making this whole thing out to be my fault. Which it wasn’t, even if it didn’t feel that way right now. “I was trying to look out for you,” I said, deliberately keeping my voice soft.

“I appreciate that,” Hal said, and I could tell it wasn’t just a line from the sound of his voice, “but I was already looking out for myself. That’s why I went outside, to get the worst of it out where the girls couldn’t see it, and so I didn’t give in and start shouting at Max.”

And instead, I shouted at him. Fuck.

It was my turn to rub a hand over my face. “Even if he meant to ask you beforehand, I was so pissed at him for working with Ariel to set this up,” I said. “He couldn’t know how things were before, though.”

“No,” Hal agreed. “All he saw were my little girls hurting and a way that he thought he could make it better. And he and Ariel have been friends ever since I started dating her. I’m not surprised he wanted to give her the benefit of a doubt.” He sighed. “I could have done that better myself.”

“Hal, no—”

“She’s been fighting depression for years, Nicky.” Hal crossed his arms, gripping his biceps hard enough the skin blanched. “She’d get treatment for a while, take pills for a while, maybe get better for a while, but these things aren’t simple. Right? You know that better than me.”

“Yeah. I know that.” I had my own treatment plan from the Veteran’s Administration for my PTSD, and I was required to keep at it in order to keep my job with the force. Hell, I’d relied on it just last night to help get me home. There had been no one to follow up on Ariel except herself…and Hal. And he hadn’t, or at least figured he hadn’t done enough of it. “She still didn’t have to leave.”

“She made a mistake,” Hal said tiredly. “One that I’m not sure I can ever forgive her for, but she made my girls happy today, and I reckon that means I’ve gotta work with her limits. For now, at least. I talked to her at the end of the call, and she said she’d try.” He shrugged. “It’s the most civil conversation we’ve had in two months, so I’m taking it as a win. And now,” he pointed toward the darkening sky, “we need to get Max back home.”

“We can’t call him.” He’d left his phone here, and it had been buzzing with messages for the past few hours, until I finally turned it off. I didn’t have a spare phone in the Jeep…

I snapped my fingers. “LoJack.” I got out my phone and pulled up the number for the precinct. “I’ve got LoJack. I’ll have the desk sergeant look him up.”

Hal visibly relaxed. “Great idea. I don’t want to have to explain to the girls why Max isn’t home in time for dinner.”

I didn’t, either. Guilt pooled in my gut, taking away my appetite and replacing it with pulsing anxiety. I needed to find Max. I needed to explain, to tell him I was sorry for how I’d acted earlier.

“Martie?” I said as soon as she picked up. “I need a favor, and I will owe you big-time for this. I need you to access the LoJack on my car and tell me where it is.”

There was a long pause. “Did you get drunk and drive it into a field or something?” she asked. “Or has it been stolen?”

“Neither. It’s with a friend, but he’s been out a long time, and I want to make sure that—”

“Oh, wait, is this about Max?” She laughed. “Why didn’t you say so, Nicky? Yeah, let me look you up. Hang on a minute.”

A few minutes later, I had a location: Barton Park Trailhead. What the hell was he doing at a trailhead this late in the afternoon? “He’s not hiking, right? He wouldn’t go hiking in the snow, in the park with moose and bear and cougars, at night, right?”

“Let’s hope not,” Hal said, which wasn’t as reassuring as I was looking for. “Look, I’m gonna see if Phee can watch the girls a little longer. I’ll come with you and—”

“That’s just going to make them nervous,” I pointed out. “I’ll go. If I can’t find him in half an hour, I’ll call you and we can get a search team mobilized.”

I was dead serious about that, too. If something had happened to Max, if he’d gone off into the woods and fallen down and broken a leg or something, if he was lying there in the snow right now, freezing to death…

“I’m going.”

It took fifteen minutes to drive to the trailhead—nothing really took more than fifteen minutes to drive to in any single direction in Edgewood. There was only one car there, a very familiar Jeep with nobody inside of it.

I got out of the truck, turned on my flashlight, and immediately started calling. “Max,” I shouted, heading for the trail. There was a single fresh set of footprints in the snow.

“Max!”

I used the flashlight to follow his path, calling his name and getting no response. My heart was racing, and I struggled to keep my breath under control. How far had he gone? Why wasn’t he answering? Did he not hear me or could he not respond?

“Max!” I roared.

“D-Dominic?”

I looked up from the ground, where I’d been focusing all my attention on footprints.

Max was standing a few yards away on top of a boulder at the edge of a clearing. His clothes were covered in snow, like he’d been there a while, not moving.

My heart leaped, and I bit my tongue for a long moment to keep myself from begging him to come down or, worse, shouting at him for scaring the shit out of me.

“Max,” I said raggedly once I had control of myself, more or less. “Are you okay?”

He looked like he was frowning under his hat. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s wrong?” He got down off the boulder and walked over to me.

“What’s…Max, you’ve been gone all day.” I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and grabbed his arm, needing the contact. “I didn’t mean for you to leave like that,” I said, absolutely sincere. “I really didn’t. I was just upset, and I thought Hal was out back having a crisis, and I panicked, but I shouldn’t have made you feel like you needed to go.” I shivered, and I didn’t think it was from the cold. “You only did what you thought was right.”

“But it wasn’t right,” Max said, unduly gently. “It was presumptuous of me. I’m not a family member, and I wasn’t here for the worst of it, and—”

“Don’t say that—you are family,” I said, my whole chest aching like I’d just been kicked. “You are, and you deserve to be with us. We want you there, all of us, whether we’re arguing or not. The second you stepped out the door, I felt like—like I might—”

The words tangled on my tongue.

“Max,” I said softly, squeezing his arm. Please don’t walk away from me. “Please.”

Max’s nose and cheeks were bright red from too long out in the cold. His lips were chapped, his eyes were a little puffy, and his hair was probably as flat as a pancake under that hat of his. He was still the best thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tell him that, hold him close and spill my soul out to him, tell him that I knew I’d made a mistake but I could learn from it, that I’d rather he never left again, not like this morning, not at all.

“Max,” I repeated, and when he licked his lips, I was filled with the urge to kiss him.

“Dominic, I—”

Suddenly, my phone began to ring. It was Hal. “Shit,” I muttered, pulling the phone out of my jacket pocket and taking the call. “Hey.”

“Did you fuckin’ find him or not?” Hal demanded. “I can’t call the cavalry until I know, and I’ve got three of my guys on hold ready to head out if he’s still missing.”

“I found him,” I said, looking up at Max, who hadn’t moved an inch yet still felt as though he’d pulled back somehow. Damn it. “We’re heading home.”

“Good. Tell him not to drive like a fucking maniac.”

I ended the call. “Hal says to drive safe.”

“Yeah, sure he does.” Max smiled, but it didn’t really reach his eyes. He chafed his upper arms with his hands. “Wow, it’s cold. I didn’t notice before…”

I put the phone in my pocket and turned my flashlight down the hill. “We better get back. Oh, here. It was pinging a lot earlier.” I pulled his phone out of my pocket and handed it over.

He turned it on and took a quick glance at his messages, biting his lip—something from work, then? Something good, something bad? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t have the guts to ask a question so personal yet, not after how I’d behaved.

It took less than a minute to reach the trailhead—not nearly long enough for me to figure out how to get Max and me back to where we’d almost been, but also too long. Max was shivering hard now, and I handed him the keys to Hal’s truck, which was warm inside. “I’ll follow you home.”

Max smiled kind of wistfully. “Okay, Dominic.”

This time, my name falling from his lips had no warmth behind it.

…

At home, the girls were waiting for us, and they jumped on Max as soon as he walked in the door. Hal hung back a bit, watching with a worried expression. “Where have you been?” Marnie demanded. “We’ve been waiting for you all day.”

“I’m sorry,” Max said, ducking his chin as he looked at them and smiling abashedly. “I lost track of time while I was out.”

“You didn’t even get to play with Baby! Look, we taught her a trick.”

To my surprise, it was Steph who said, “Sit, Baby!” The little dog sat down so rapidly that I figured it was a command she already knew, but the girls were in raptures at how good they were at teaching her.

Max smiled at them and gave the dog a pat. “That’s really good,” he congratulated them. “You guys will have her rolling over and playing dead in no time.”

Marnie wrinkled her nose. “Why would you want a dog to play dead? That’s just sad.”

“Yeah,” Max agreed. “Maybe it is.” He took his cold-weather gear off and sat down on the couch in the living room. “Want to play one of your new games?”

It looked like our apology would have to wait. Max had outmaneuvered us by bringing the girls into it. There was no way they didn’t want to play the old-school board games their dad had bought them, and so it was Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land until bedtime. Max excused himself as well, letting us know he’d be right back down.

I stared at Hal. “What’s going on with him?”

“Avoidance,” Hal said with a sigh. “Max is a pro at it. You’d barely have known his father was such a shit, the way Max acted when he stayed with us before he left for college.”

Fuck. “I told him I was sorry.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing, that was when you called.”

Hal made a face. “Maybe—”

“Daddy! You need to brush my hair!”

“Go.” I waved him on. “Go be a dad. I’ll…I don’t know, make some coffee or something.”

“Tea,” Hal suggested. “Or at least decaf. Otherwise, I’m not gonna sleep a wink all night, and I need to after today.”

“Sure thing.” I went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of decaf on autopilot, my hand working smoothly although my mind was completely occupied elsewhere. I listened to the thumps and bumps upstairs, the girls talking in their high-pitched voices and Hal’s soothing bass-baritone.

I listened for Max, too, and heard a low murmuring meaning he was probably on the phone. Who was he talking to? What was he thinking about? I didn’t want him to think that we didn’t care. My apology had sucked, so I’d just have to try again.

Max and Hal came down at the same time ten minutes later, Hal finished with his bedtime stories and Max clearly fresh from the shower. “Ooh, coffee,” he said brightly as soon as he saw my cup. “I’ll be right back.”

Hal followed him into the kitchen. I heard a brief murmur, then Max was back, sitting in the recliner to the other side of the Christmas tree. It stung because I’d expected him to sit on the couch with me. Hal was right. Max was distancing himself. Shit.

Max sipped his coffee and, as soon as Hal sat down beside me, said, “So I’m going to leave tomorrow morning.”

My heart stopped for a moment, freezing in my chest as Hal made an unhappy sound in the back of his throat. “You said you were staying through Sunday.”

“I know, but I got a text that my car is finally done.” Max looked down at his hands for a moment. “I also got a call from Marcus. Our newest client has some more work he’s thinking of bringing our way, and Marcus wants me to evaluate it as soon as possible, so…”

“Surely that can wait one extra day,” Hal insisted, leaning forward and taking the reins of the conversation. I let him because my hands were trembling, and my mouth was dry enough that I didn’t think I could speak. “Is this because of this morning? Max, it was a miscommunication, that’s all. You don’t have to go.”

“It could have been bad for the girls.” His voice was hard, but I knew it was directed more at himself than at us. “I didn’t stop to think about what kind of expectations it could set up. I put you in a bad position, and I didn’t even remember to tell you about it until it was already happening.”

“It was an accident,” Hal pointed out. “And maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that you didn’t tell me about it, because I’m not sure I would have let it happen otherwise, and Steph’s been talking more today than she has for the past month.”

“Still.” Max looked down at his coffee then over at me. “I should have put you first. I forgot to do that. I’m just…” He sighed. “I think I need to go home for my own sake, honestly. I need to get back a sense of normality at work, and the only way to do that is to actually work. I brought this client in, and I need to do well by them if I’m going to make partner.”

Oh fuck. Max wanted to leave for good. He actually wanted to leave, and it wasn’t just because of the girls. He wanted to go back to the city. I’d been working up the nerve to ask him to stay through New Year’s. Clearly, that was shot, and the chance for anything more was…well, it had always been impossible. Max was going back to his fancy life in New York City, and a week here with us—a week with me—wasn’t enough to change his mind. Especially not when, the first second something went wrong, I did the same thing everyone else in town had done years ago and turned my back on him.

I had ruined his Christmas.

I had ruined everybody’s Christmas.

Some of my dismay must have shown, because Max’s eyes softened. “It’s okay.”

It was the furthest from okay we could get, but I couldn’t form the words to argue that now. My heart felt like it was splitting in two.

“Everything’s okay between us,” he said. “I promise.”

“Okay,” I said hoarsely after a minute. God, that was a shitty way for us to be, this lukewarm state, but it was no better than what I deserved. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Have you eaten anything since breakfast?” Hal asked, doing his best to interject a semblance of normalcy back into the conversation. “We’ve got Christmas dinner waiting for you.”

Max smiled. “Is it the kind you microwave first?”

“It’s a honey-glazed ham that I baked in my own oven, jackass,” Hal said. “And brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole, and chocolate cake that the girls wanted because we haven’t eaten enough sugar yet this holiday season.”

“Sounds delicious.”

Max ate dinner, and Hal and I picked at a little more. We tried to get a conversation going, but my words kept failing me. How was I so good at talking when I was at work and so bad at talking when I was with someone I cared about? After we all finished and Hal started up the dishwasher, Max made sounds about heading up to bed.

I finally found my voice. “Do you have a ride to the mechanic’s tomorrow?”

“I was going to ask Hal,” Max said, but he sounded ready to be convinced otherwise.

“Let me do it.”

Max looked at me for a long moment then nodded. “Okay. Maybe you should spend the night here, then. I want to get a kind of early start, and I know you have work tomorrow.”

A faint sense of relief washed over my icy core, thawing it a little. “I’d love to stay.” I didn’t even care if we did anything. I just wanted to be with him for as long as I could. This…whatever it was we were doing together, our interlude, our moment—it was almost over. After this, he would go back to New York, back to being Hal’s friend, back to someone who barely knew me and didn’t want much to do with me.

If this was all I had left, I’d take it.

We went upstairs together, and Max headed straight for the bathroom, his left hand rubbing his right arm. “I think I’ll take another shower,” he said quietly. “I still feel kind of cold.”

“Sure, go for it.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. But when I opened them again, Max was looking at me.

He held out a hand. “Do you want to join me?”

Relief, desire, and a strange undercurrent of desperation flowed through me like a river bursting through a dam. I wanted to savor every second of tonight. “Yes. Please.”

I had my clothes off before he did, and I was grateful when we finally stepped into the shower. I tried to give him space, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me in close. His fingers were ice cold.

The water was hot, though, filling the air with steam and turning Max’s legs to jelly. Or maybe that was me five minutes in, kneeling between his feet and sucking him off like my life depended on it. I was grateful for the fall of water over my face—it made it hard to single out the warmth of Max’s cock, or his specific taste, or anything else that might make remembering this harder to handle. There was just water, and heat, and Max pulsing between my lips, groaning hoarsely as I slid a soap-slicked finger inside of him and asking for more as I worked my mouth over the head of his cock. I used my free hand to grip the base and jerked him off, fucking and stroking him and doing my best to make it as good as possible. I wanted to give him a good memory to end things on. I needed to do that.

When Max began to come, I pulled back far enough to watch, working him through it and finally, as the tremors from his orgasm slowed down, looking up at his face. I’d expected his eyes to be closed, or maybe glazed, unfocused, staring off into the distance—but he was looking right at me. I leaned back, carefully disengaging, not knowing what he saw in my face and not caring right now.

“God,” Max whispered then held out a hand. “Come here.” I stood, wincing a little at the soreness in my knees, then leaned into Max with a gasp as he wrapped his hand around my dick. His fingers were slippery with soap, his grip tight, and it took me less than a minute to come against his hip, fucking up into his grasp while I buried my face against his shoulder. I kissed him there, all I dared to do even though I’d just had part of my body inside of him.

Max sighed and kissed my cheek. “Let’s get out of here before it cools off, okay?”

I wanted more time.

I needed more time with Max.

But I didn’t know how to ask, so I nodded and got out of the shower.

…

My alarm woke us both up at six the next morning. I had my top arm wrapped around Max’s waist, and the bottom one was in a position that would have put it to sleep if we’d laid there much longer. I wished it had. Max shifted in my grasp then lifted my hand off his stomach. Instead of pushing it off, though, he brought it to his lips and kissed it.

“Hey,” he said sleepily.

A burst of sudden longing made my chest ache. “Hey.”

I kissed the back of his shoulder and closed my eyes, reveling in the contact and the warmth for another moment, before I steeled myself and scooted away. I grabbed my clothes off the floor and pulled them on hurriedly, facing away from Max.

“I’ll make coffee,” I said and headed out of the bedroom before Max could ask me to leave. I couldn’t handle it if he did.

Downstairs, I checked my phone as I spooned grounds and poured water—one text from Lauren, an emoji with a grumpy face, which was typical for her on the first morning back to work after a break. The other one was from—Ariel.

I stared at her name hesitantly.

Ariel and I hadn’t cared much for each other for a long time—we’d been rivals for Hal’s attention ever since they started dating. It was only once Marnie came along that we found a way to be allies and eventually friends. Listening to the girls chat to her yesterday, and feeling calmer about everything now, I had to admit to myself that I missed her. She’d been good to Hal and her girls, and even to me when I’d returned from the military a little lost.

I took a deep breath and opened the message.

Merry Christmas, Nicky. Marnie and Steph talked so much about you. I’m grateful every day that you’re there for them. I’m sorry.

Yesterday, I would have sneered at her apology. This morning, I was fatigued by it. I put the phone aside and turned my attention to making eggs.

By the time Max came downstairs, Hal was stirring and at least one of the girls was awake. That was good—he shouldn’t leave without saying good-bye. It made things less intimate between us, but that was how it should be at this point. I’d had my last night with him. This was how things would be from here on out.

Max stopped at the entrance to the kitchen and watched me for a moment before he came in. “Hi.”

“Hey.” I handed him a plate. “Eggs over easy, toast on the side.”

“Dominic’s Diner is open for business,” he said as he took the plate, and there was a little clever glint in his eye that I loved seeing.

This was okay. We could do friendly.

It might break me to pieces, but I could do this.

“Nah, Dinah would kill me.” I dished myself out a spoonful of scrambled eggs then covered the frying pan so the rest of it wouldn’t get cold. “Maybe I’ll moonlight there, though. Get a part-time job as a short order cook.”

“Then when would you have time to finish your house?”

I shrugged and sat down at the dining room table. Honestly, my house was the last thing in my mind. What did I have there, after all? A bunch of unfinished work in the middle of a heaping pile of emptiness. Huzzah.

Max looked like he wanted to say more, but then Hal was there, ruffling his hair like Max was one of his kids—or like he was me—before getting his own coffee and food. They gently bickered then stopped once the girls showed up. Max explained that he had to go home a little early, and they were both terribly disappointed.

“When will you be back?” Marnie asked. “Will you come back for our birthdays?” The girls were only one week apart in May, oddly enough, and always celebrated together.

“I definitely will,” Max promised her.

Steph crawled up onto his knee. “I’ll miss you,” she said, and Max’s face did a little thing where it crumpled partially before he recovered it. It looked like saying good-bye to them hurt.

Good. I didn’t mean it in a petty way—or fuck it, maybe I did, maybe petty was perfectly on brand for me—but it should be hard for him to go. I might not be his family, but Hal and the girls were. It ought to hurt to leave them.

I wished that it hurt to leave me, too.

Max got up and put his plate and fork in the dishwasher then glanced at me. “We should go.” I nodded but didn’t trust myself to speak. “I’ll go get my stuff.”

“We’ll help you!” Marnie and Steph jumped to the floor and ran for the stairs.

Ten minutes and one spilled suitcase later, Max and I were on our way to get his car. I wanted to speak—to say something, to say anything—but I just didn’t know what to say. There was a distance between us now that I couldn’t breach. I had done more than my fair share to put it there, so I couldn’t complain about it, either.

Even when I casually drove under the speed limit, we got to the mechanic’s too soon.

I pulled in, and Max got out of the car, and after a second of internal debate, I got out with him. He grabbed his bag out of the backseat then turned to me and said, “Thanks for the ride, Dominic.”

“It was nothing.” It was the absolute least I could do. “Drive safe.”

Max’s mouth quirked up on one side. “I’ll do my best.” He looked hesitant, like he wanted to say something else—an apology, maybe?

I couldn’t handle another apology from him. I leaned in, slowly, and when he didn’t pull back, I kissed his cheek, right at the edge of his lips.

I wanted more, I wanted so much more, but it wasn’t my place to take it.

“I’ll miss you.”

Max gave a little nod, his mouth open, eyes wide.

I turned and got back into my car.

I couldn’t watch him leave.

Instead, I drove to work, hoping against hope that it would help me forget about Max, just for an hour or two.

I’d never be able to forget about him for longer than that.

I’d never be able to forget him. Period.

Chapter Thirteen

Max

“It’s about time you got out of there.”

Marcus greeted me like that when I walked into his office early on Monday, after spending all of Sunday afternoon rewriting contracts, emailing back and forth with Jessie, and settling into my apartment. The last part was the hardest—it was just me again, no playful dog or laughing kids or Hal or Dominic anymore. It seemed unreasonable that I should miss them, miss him, so damn much after only a week.

Or maybe it was just that I missed falling asleep next to someone and waking up to find them curled up against me like they couldn’t stay away, my heart skipping a beat at the feeling of being needed like that.

“There’s more than enough to keep you busy for the next few weeks thanks to your unexpected vacation,” Marcus went on, pushing a cup of coffee at me along with a roughed-out to-do list—another to-do list, on top of the one I’d already made. “If you work your ass off, though, you might be able to finish reeling in this client before the New Year, but if you don’t, that’s going to factor into your end-of-year bonus.” He winked at me. “I’ve got it on good authority that if you do land this whale before then, your bonus might just include a corner office.”

I smiled. It felt decidedly forced, like my mouth just didn’t want to bend that way anymore. Shit, I needed to get it together. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? This was my big opportunity, my shot at the next level in the firm. I should be insanely happy right now. Instead, all I could think about was how little I cared about a corner office.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“I’ll get to work right away.” Enough work would knock me out of my funk. Enough time focusing on something other than Edgewood and Dominic—and everyone I was missing there—and I’d be back on an even keel.

Sure I would.

Instead of being able to power through my mood, though, work just ended up feeling hellish. I was in the office sixteen hours a day putting out fires, schmoozing the client, and getting paperwork queued up to go through the second the courts were open for business again. I worked so much that the only thing I should have had the space to think about when I was awake was, well, work.

My thoughts were constantly on Dominic. It was impossible not to think of Hal and the girls, too, with all the pictures he was sending along of them playing with Baby—no doubt the jerk was doing it on purpose—but it didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t painful in the same way. Hal and I had been through arguments, fights, cold spells, and worse before, and we’d always come through the other side stronger than ever. I didn’t have to fret about Hal.

Dominic, though? I was doing nothing but fret about Dominic.

It was hard to believe how often he was on my mind, breaking into thoughts that should have been firmly centered on the deal Marcus promised would make my career. Dominic was the first person I thought about in the morning, and I felt a shock of disappointment every time I woke up and didn’t see him lying there with me. It was harder than ever to fall asleep at night even though I was exhausted, because I kept remembering him beside me, looking at me from under those long eyelashes and reaching for me before we fell asleep—or, better yet, before we didn’t fall asleep.

We had a compatibility I’d never felt with another person, and I missed the ease of it. It had been so…wonderfully easy. Being with him was a balm for all my self-doubts, somehow, because he’d liked being with me as much as I’d liked being with him. His presence had made every moment seem a little brighter.

And then the going got a little bit hard, and I left.

I shook my head. Way to go, Max.

It was seven o’ clock on New Year’s Eve, and after kicking my own ass this entire week, I’d finally gotten the final changes to the client contract approved and signed. Hands had been shaken, champagne had been consumed—not by me—and Marcus had sent the client off with the smile he only gave to people who were worth hundreds of millions of dollars while I went to close up my office. Next up was the company New Year’s party at an exclusive bar downtown, with more drinking and schmoozing and futures being built.

I had to be there, of course. This year, it was my future with the firm being built, and I had to celebrate that. I should want to celebrate that.

Instead of excitement, though, all I felt at the prospect of an evening out with all the partners and their spouses, carousing and bullshitting and cutting deals, was…fatigue.

“All right, what the hell is the matter with you?”

I jumped.

Marcus was leaning against the doorjamb with a frown on his face. He was already wearing his coat, and I realized that I’d been doing a lot of nothing at my desk for the past fifteen minutes while he waited for me. “Sorry, let me just—”

“No, you stay there.” He came in and shut the door behind him then pulled out the comfortable chair across from me and sat, folding his hands across his stomach. His posture was blasé, but his expression was intense. “Are you sick?”

Was I what? “No, I’m not. Why are—”

“Is there some problem going on that I don’t know about, then? Were you injured worse than you’re letting on in that car accident? Have you developed some sort of addiction? Did you make a bad deal with the mob?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course not.”

“Then I don’t get what’s off with you.” Marcus leaned forward. “Max, you delivered a huge client to the firm wrapped up in a goddamn bow. You’re looking at a promotion, a raise, a whole new level of responsibility here. You ought to be jumping for glee, and instead you’ve been moping around all week like you had to put your dog down.”

I frowned. “I haven’t been moping. I got the work done, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t working hard, but it’s clear you weren’t enjoying it.” His expression softened. “What’s going on, Max? Talk to me. Let me help you figure it out.”

I stared at Marcus for a long moment. This man was my mentor, my guide, my cheerleader and ass-kicker ever since I got to the firm. He’d pushed me harder and farther than I thought I could go, and I had the feeling that no matter what I said next, I was going to end up disappointing him.

Especially because I knew, deep in my heart, exactly why I wasn’t happy. And it was time to own up to it.

I couldn’t help how Marcus would feel about what I was going to say. All I could do was be honest with him, for my own sake. “I don’t think I can stay with the firm.”

Saying it out loud was like pulling a knife out of my chest. It left a wound, but I could also breathe freely again for the first time in days. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t want to stay here anymore, no matter how much I’d once loved it. A week had been enough to change the compass of my heart, and now it pointed firmly toward Edgewood, my found family, and most of all, Dominic.

“Okay. So what changed?”

I was a little surprised that Marcus wasn’t shouting at me. Instead, his voice was soft, almost gentle. “You’ve never missed Edgewood before, as far as I know,” he continued. “What happened during your visit to change your mind?”

“I didn’t think there was anything there that I couldn’t get here, before.” It was true—Hal and his family would come and visit me here, so that had never been an issue. No one and nothing else in Edgewood was necessary to my happiness. At least I’d thought so before Dominic. Before he showed me the warmth of family, the inevitable silliness of small-town drama, and the undeniable chemistry that sparked between us. “But now there is.”

“You met someone?”

“Met him again, really.” How could I explain Dominic to Marcus? How could I explain how hard he worked, or his incredible perseverance and strength, or how I felt when he looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered? “And he’s…New York City would never be possible for him, but…”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Old friend or not, that’s pretty serious talk after only spending a week with the guy.”

“He feels serious for me.” God, I was doing a shit job of explaining. “Look, I know it seems impossible, but being with him has…changed my priorities.” I shrugged helplessly. “I love this work, I do. I love being a lawyer, and I love working with you. You’ve done so much for me since I started here, and I can’t believe I’m even considering throwing all that away, but—it’s not enough anymore.”

“Max.” Marcus held up a hand. “Are you trying to apologize to me for falling in love? Because that’s goddamn ridiculous. I know you, son—you wouldn’t bring someone up like this if you weren’t really invested.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I loved Dominic.

Loved him.

But I had no clue if my feelings were reciprocated in the same way. Was I about to throw everything I’d built here in New York away on a bad guess? Even if Dominic wasn’t on the same page as me… “Edgewood is where my family is.”

The long beat of silence had me sweating.

“Then maybe it’s the place for you.”

I opened my eyes and stared at Marcus. “What?”

He shook his head. “I know I’m not exactly practicing what I preach on this front, Max, but honestly, family should always come first. I don’t know what I’d do without Clara and the boys. I’m a shitty husband and father sometimes thanks to this job, but I try to be there for them when they need me.”

He gestured around. “Am I proud of what I’ve built here? Hell yes, I am. I’m proud of what you’ve done here, too, and I think you could do a lot more. But I’ll be proud of you whether you stay or go, Max, because I know that wherever you are, you’ll always do good work. Being happy, though? That’s not a given in life for anyone, but you deserve to be happy.”

It meant more than I could say for Marcus—more of a father figure to me now than my own father ever could be—to tell me he had that kind of faith in me. Not just in my work, but in my decisions. It made the next part a little easier. “Then I think I need to go.”

Not just for Dominic, as hugely as he factored into my decision. I needed to go back to Edgewood for Hal and the girls, too. But mostly for Dominic.

What if I just made him uncomfortable, though? What if my coming back was a huge imposition? Moving to Edgewood felt like the right thing to do, in my heart at least, but I didn’t want to make the wrong call again, to screw things up without meaning to.

I needed to talk to Dominic, and I had to do it face to face. Over the phone wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t plead my case well enough like that, not when the result was something that could change the entire arc of my life.

“Tell you what,” Marcus said, getting up from the chair. “Why don’t you take an actual vacation for a week and go get your questions answered? I’ll hold off the other partners until you make a final decision.”

That was more generous than I’d ever hoped for. I rushed to my feet. “Are you sure?”

“It beats watching you have some kind of nervous breakdown before the age of thirty.”

That was more like the mentor I knew.

“I have to…”

I had to get back to my apartment, I had to pack, and I had to get on the road. If I hurried, I could make it back to Edgewood before midnight, and then…

“You’ve got to go.” Marcus jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “So get out of here already.”

I went.

Chapter Fourteen

Dominic

A full week had gone by since Max left, but it felt like ten times that. I walked around like a zombie, able to play at being a real person, but not quite animated enough to pull it off. I was grateful things were quiet on the job front, or I would’ve been fired for inattention or some sort of reckless endangerment. I got all of nothing done at my house—I should have finished the drywall; it was the last thing I needed to do in the living room before I could put baseboards up and start texturizing and painting—but I couldn’t even look at my tools without remembering Max. Everything seemed impossible—too big, too hard, too hopeless.

I was 100 percent moping.

Hopefully, Hal wasn’t aware of it—he’d gone back to work after Christmas Day with a vengeance, and I spent every spare second I had looking after the girls, who were still on their holiday break. They’d spent most of this past week with Phee, who helped them teach Baby enough basic tricks that the girls were convinced she was a genius dog. I couldn’t say they were wrong, either. With them, she was barky and jumpy and cheerful, but with me, when we had a few moments alone, she settled in against my side on the couch or at my feet and set her head on my knee. It was almost like being back overseas, in the quiet moments in the evening when we were all in the tents together and the dogs, freed from their work personas, flopped down on the nearest person and begged for pets. Those nights were some of my happiest memories—some of my only happy memories—from my time in the army.

If I couldn’t have Max—and I knew I couldn’t—then a compassionate dog was obviously the next best thing.

The hardest place to be was patrolling with Lauren. Her eagle eyes and perceptive mind didn’t miss a thing. It was part of what made her such a good cop and an undaunted mom. She could see an SUV run a red light or a kid sneak a candy bar before dinner from a mile off, and there was no way to hide from her when we were separated by nothing but a gear shift for hours on end.

The sidelong glances were bad enough, and by New Year’s Eve, she finally put her foot down and brought up the topic of my mood. “You’re pining.”

“I’m fine,” I said, even when my shoulders were practically up to my ears out of defensiveness.

“You’re pining. You’ve been out of sorts all week, Nicky. What’s going on?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lauren eyed me speculatively. “Maybe you need to talk about it. I promise not to push if you don’t want me to, but you’re my partner, and I hate seeing you look so sad. We could go to Dinah’s to chat, if that’s easier. I’ll get you some pie.”

“Oh, no. No way.” If Dinah caught wind of what was going on with me, then everyone in the entire diner would know in a matter of minutes. That meant everyone in the town would know within a few days.

Lauren twisted in her seat. “How about this? I go in and get some pie, we eat it in the car, and you can tell me what’s up in the privacy of your own Jeep.”

I half smiled at her. “Sounds like you just want some pie.”

“Are you kidding? Of course I want pie. You think I can keep that kind of thing around the house for more than a day? Work pie is the only kind of pie I don’t have to give away.”

I considered stonewalling her, but…what good would it do? At least this way, I got some pie, too. “Okay.”

I drove to Dinah’s, careful on the road. It was almost eleven at night, a time when the diner was usually closed. Dinah was hosting the town’s New Year’s party, though, which meant it would be full of parents with babysitters out enjoying their evening, single people who didn’t think a full Netflix queue was a good enough reason to stay at home, and civil servants who had to be there.

I parked at the far end of the parking lot and turned off the headlights. Lauren sighed. “Really?”

“It’s not even snowing,” I pointed out. “And I don’t want to be convenient in case someone decides to come out and ask me how I am.”

“Yeah, God forbid you interact with someone else in a positive way on New Year’s Eve.” She got out of the Jeep and headed for the diner. I watched her go then stared down at my hands. I didn’t glance at my phone. There was no point. Hal and the girls were undoubtedly in bed now—he’d sent me a picture of them having an “early toast” with glasses of sparkling cider three hours ago—and the one person I was dying to hear from was probably living it up in Times Square.

He hated that party, though. I knew that. And he hardly ever drank. Or maybe his perspective had changed. Either way, I didn’t want to dwell too hard on Max being either raucously happy or lonely and sad tonight. What could I do about it, after all?

I mean…I could text him.

But he might not want to hear from me.

Although, if I had to pick any night to break the ice, this was the night.

I groaned. Thinking like this was getting me nowhere.

I opened up my phone and looked back at our last text conversation. It was the one we’d had before I’d been called out to the accident on the highway, before everything had gotten all fucked up. It was light, it was cute—Jesus, it was so cute, it was full of pictures of the girls trying on fancy clothes and Max wondering why dress-up was so complicated. There was even one of him in there, wearing Marnie’s tiara and puckering his lips for the camera.

Why had I ever made him think he wasn’t wanted? Why had I ever let him go? I needed to do something—to text, to call… My hand hovered over the phone app, poised for action.

The door opened in a rush.

“Damn, it’s cold out there!” Lauren said cheerfully as she got back into the Jeep. I scrambled to put my phone away before she noticed my indecision. “And it turns out the pie’s on hold because of the party, but there’s some killer cake, so I brought you a slice.” She handed me a paper plate and plastic fork topped with a slice of red velvet cake covered with way too much thick, sugary frosting. I scraped some of it off then took a bite.

“Pretty good,” I admitted once I swallowed it down.

“Don’t let Dinah hear you call her cake ‘pretty good,’” Lauren warned me.

“It’s not like I’m saying it in the diner.”

“True.” She had her own piece, which was already half eaten, and took another bite of it before continuing. “So. Spill. What’s bothering you?”

I didn’t have to tell her. I could hold it in and let it fester, and eventually it would fade away until it was just a scar, like an old wound. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I felt it more than ever now—I missed Max, and I wasn’t going to feel right until I told him that. Lauren was a good start.

“I wish Max were here.”

Lauren nodded slowly. “I knew it.”

“We had an argument before he left. And it changed things between us, and that wasn’t what I wanted.”

“What do you want?”

“I want him to be here,” I burst out. “I want him to come back to Edgewood and stay. I want him to be there for the girls and for Hal, but mostly I want him for myself.”

Lauren whistled. “You’re really hung up on him, aren’t you?”

“I think I’m in love with him.” My mouth went dry putting that out there, but it was true; that was the fucked-up thing. I was in love with Max, and he wasn’t here, and that was my bad. But it wasn’t impossible that I could fix it. “When he was here, we just…we clicked, we connected. I wanted to see where it could go, but I screwed up, and he went back to New York.”

“Did you try talking to him? Apologizing?”

“Of course I did! But he still left.”

“Maybe he was just overwhelmed and needed time to sort things out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dinah was saying the other day that their delivery guy had seen Max stopping by his father’s place on Christmas. God knows what the man said to him,” she said. “Did you not know this?”

Oh fuck. I hadn’t known any of that. And why would Max tell me, when I’d just picked a fight and given him the impression I was kicking him out? To think that he’d gone to his father’s after that…and nothing good had come of it, or I wouldn’t have found him alone on an icy trail in the dark.

God, did he still feel that way? Alone and rejected?

“I need to talk to him.” I grabbed my phone, intent on calling, but no, that wouldn’t do. “I need to see him. I have to see him. What do I do?”

“You have a car,” she said.

I blinked. “Um, yeah.” I gestured around us. “We’re sitting in it.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “You have a car, and you have tomorrow and the next day off, and you could go and visit him right now, genius,” she said impatiently. “Especially if you’re worried. Go to him. Text him first if you really feel the need, but nothing says ‘I love you and I’m there for you’ like actually being there for him. Show him that you’re serious.”

“That’s…” Wow. “Not what I expected to hear from you.”

“Are you kidding?” Lauren scoffed. “I’m a total romantic. I fell in love with Jimmy at first sight. We were married in less than a year. You think we could hold it together with his disabilities and my job and four kids if we weren’t madly in love with each other? No way. You have to go the distance for the people you love. This is your chance.”

Maybe there was something to this. “You really think so?”

She tapped the phone so the lock screen lit up. “Oh, look at the time! We’re off in five minutes. I think you should leave me here—Mary already offered me a ride home tonight. You know she lives right down the street from me. Then you should drive home and pack a bag, maybe catch a little sleep if you have to in order to drive safe, and get your ass to New York City on New Year’s Day to tell Max how you feel. I mean, that’s just my two cents.” She shrugged and ate her last bite of cake, scraping every last scrap of frosting off the plate.

“That was more like five bucks’ worth of opinions.”

“Bargain for you then, bud.” She gestured at my cake with her fork. “Are you going to finish that?”

“No.” I offered it to her, and she took it with a smile.

“So…” She left it hanging.

“So…” I grinned. “Get a ride home with Mary, because I’m heading out tonight.”

She grinned back. “Atta boy,” she said and opened the door again. A light snow had started to fall. “Drive safe.”

“I will.” She shut the door, and I watched her walk back into the diner before checking my phone. It was just a few minutes to midnight. I could get back to my house in fifteen, grab a few things, and—

“Unit Nine, we have an eleven eighty-two out on Highway 10, repeat, eleven eighty-two. You’re our closest unit. How quickly can you respond?”

Closest unit, shit. I was their only unit for another…two minutes. Great. At least an eleven eighty-two meant the accident didn’t involve any injuries. “I’m right next to Highway 10,” I said into my radio as I headed out of the parking lot. “How far out are we talking?”

It must have been a slow night, because dispatch was being downright loquacious. “Just a couple of miles. Poor guy slid off the road, but from the sound of things, he’ll be okay once he’s towed out of the ditch. Probably won’t be able to get a truck there until tomorrow, though. You know how tonight can be.”

“Yeah.” I turned my Jeep onto Highway 10 and drove, keeping my eyes peeled for headlights off to the side. “What kind of car am I looking for?”

“Um, some sort of…let me see…a BMW coupe, looks like.”

I just about drove off the road myself as I fumbled the radio. “Repeat, please.”

“Black BMW coupe, just the driver to worry about, I’ve got his name here somewhere…”

Up ahead on the left, a roadside flare illuminated an emergency warning triangle. A little farther down I saw a pair of headlights. One of them was partially covered by snow, but the other one illuminated the silhouette of a man. It was a very familiar silhouette. “Never mind, I’ve got it,” I mumbled before putting the radio away.

I pulled over on the far side of the road, put my Jeep into park, and took a deep breath. Oh my god. He was here. He came back. And I was making him wait in the cold. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment then grabbed my flashlight and got out. We were separated by only the width of the road. The clouds overhead were clearing, and I could make out Max’s features in the light of the moon. He was smiling.

“Hey, Dominic,” he called out, tucking his hands in his coat pockets sheepishly. “So, um…this wasn’t how I planned on seeing you.”

“Are you sure?” I managed, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “Because this is the second time I’ve found you on the side of this road. I’m starting to think you’ve got a thing for being rescued.” I forced myself to take a single step into the road then another. The third came easier, and in a few seconds, I was there, in front of him. Max was dressed for the weather this time, at least, but I still wanted to hold him tight and warm him up.

“Maybe I do,” he admitted. “But only if it’s you doing the rescuing.”

“I guess you’re lucky I was working tonight.”

“I guess so.” He pushed a gloved hand into his hair then grimaced. “Look, I came back because I realized that…being in New York, it isn’t…it hasn’t…”

I decided to take the plunge and try to make things easier on him. “I’m in love with you.”

Max blinked.

And blinked again.

He looked as stunned as if I’d just walked up and slapped him.

I hoped my confession was more welcome than that, but I was on a roll now, so I was gonna go with it. “I love you, and I was going to pack a bag and drive to New York City tonight so I could tell you that I love you in the morning. Things got weird before, and then they got weirder because we didn’t talk, not really, but I wish we had. I want us to talk about the good things and the hard things. I want us to talk, the next time we argue about something. I want to fight it out with you, and then I want to kiss you and make up, because I have never been a sadder excuse for a person than I was this last week, and that includes the week I spent at Walter Reed recovering from tour.”

“Oh.”

My heart was about to beat out of my chest, and that was the best he could do? “I’m kind of looking for a little more specificity than that,” I said haltingly. “Do—do you want me to back off, do you want to call Hal, do you want me to—”

Before I could say another word, Max reached out, grabbed my jacket, and pulled me into a kiss. It was a cold, awkward kiss—our noses were freezing, his lips were chapped, and my mouth must have tasted like too-sugary frosting. But damn. It was still the best kiss I’d ever had. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer, warming him as best I could, welcoming him against my body. He could stay there forever, as far as I was concerned.

Finally, Max pulled back, though, just far enough to catch his breath and say, “I came back because I missed you too much to stay away. I’m not happy in New York anymore, and once I finish the case I’m working on, I want…I want to make a new future for myself. A new life. And I want you in it.” He chuckled. “I want to move back to the weird, codependent town where the mayor dresses like a beaver and news travels at light speed in the diner and my own father doesn’t recognize me.”

That last part sucked, and we’d be talking about it soon enough, but first… “And where there are people who love you,” I said. “Hal and the girls and me. Especially me.”

Max smiled again and kissed me gently. “I love you, too, Dominic.”

Oh, Jesus. It was like a huge weight had lifted off my chest. I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him again and again, until the sharp beep of a horn as a truck drove by on the road reminded me that, technically, I was still on the job for at least another—

Bedoopadoop. Bedoopadoop. I reached into my pocket and silenced my phone’s alarm, reminding me that it was finally midnight.

“Happy New Year, Max,” I said, warm and close and a little breathless with how giddy I felt, like sparklers were going off inside my rib cage.

Max’s expression was soft, a smile still dancing on his lips. “Happy New Year, Dominic.”

Yeah. I think it would be.

Epilogue

Max

“Sit, Baby!”

Baby sat, tongue lolling out and waiting for the next command, like the good, obedient girl she was.

I turned to Jake. “You see that? That’s what we’re shooting for, buddy. Sit, Jake!”

Jake blinked his big brown eyes and looked up at me, happily panting.

Baby glanced between us then stood, like she was testing whether or not she needed to stay sitting.

“No, Baby, you’re my role model,” I told her. “I need you to stay strong. Sit!”

Baby sat again.

“Good girl.” I looked at Jake, the two-year-old Labra-mutt that Dominic and I had picked out from the shelter for his birthday. “Sit, Jake!”

Jake reared up, put his paws on my chest, and tried to lick my face.

“Oh my God, you’re gross,” I informed him, scratching him behind the ears. I didn’t coo when I talked to him, no matter what Dominic said. “Groooooooss.”

Baby joined in asking for pets a second later, apparently making an executive decision that her time sitting on her rump was over. I couldn’t blame her.

The front door opened, and the sound of excited voices filtered down the hall. Baby ran in the direction of her family.

“Uncle Max! Can Jake do it yet?” Steph called out, right before giggling, “Hi, Baby!”

I grinned. The girls had only began calling me uncle a few months ago, and it still left me feeling all sappy. “That’s a definite nope,” I called back as Jake ran out of the kitchen after Baby. A second later, I heard the girls start to laugh, which meant the dogs were being funny again.

I turned around and checked the timer on the Instant Pot. Two minutes to go, and then my sherry-roasted London broil would be done to perfection. I had the potatoes done, the salad done, the rolls were done…

Warm arms wrapped around my middle as cold lips pressed a kiss to the back of my neck. I shivered, but not really from the cold. “Hey there.”

“Hey.” I turned around in Dominic’s embrace and kissed him, soft and slow, letting him warm up against me. “How was the hike?”

“Freezing,” he replied. “We were right not to bring the dogs. They’d have had trouble without booties on.” And neither of them liked wearing booties. Jake still couldn’t handle them without doing the ridiculous, straight-legged walk of a dog who knew something was wrong and didn’t know how to fix it. “It smells amazing in here.”

I leaned back against the granite countertop the Instant Pot was on, pulling Dominic with me. “It’s almost ready.” I flexed my feet against the hardwood floor, glanced around at the sunshine-yellow walls and white trim, and smiled against Dominic’s cheek.

“What?”

“What, what?”

“I felt that.” He pulled back and looked at me. “What was that for?”

“Nothing, just…” I gestured at the room. “It’s done.”

Dominic grinned brightly. “Yeah, it is.”

It had taken most of the year and more time than I’d imagined, but the house was finished. After I moved back to Edgewood in February, with the promise that I would continue to work long distance for the firm as the point man with the big client I’d brought in, I stayed at Hal’s place for about a month before it became obvious that Dominic and I spent most of our free time together anyway, so we might as well move in and make it official. It should have felt fast, but if anything, I wished we’d done it sooner. I was more comfortable with Dominic in his half-finished house than I was anywhere else.

Getting the house done had been this year’s project. Getting a local law practice up and running instead of only working remotely like I had been would be next year’s big project for me, and I was looking forward to tackling it. I’d found an office space not far from Mayor Clawson’s store—she’d pointed it out to me, in fact, and introduced me to the landlord. Dinah had given me a slice of pie on the house when she heard, and what Dinah heard, everybody got wind of eventually. Half a dozen people I barely knew had come up to ask me legal questions since then, which hopefully boded well for my future business.

I’d never thought I’d live here again. Now I couldn’t imagine leaving it.

Everything I loved was here. Everyone I loved was here. Especially the man in my arms right now.

“You look serious.” Dominic ran the pad of his thumb between my eyebrows. “You get a furrow here when you’re thinking serious thoughts. What’s up?”

“Just…thinking about being back here.”

“Yeah?” He looked a little worried.

“Yeah. All good things,” I promised. “I’m still kind of surprised by where I ended up and how much I like it.”

The tension eased from his back. “Good. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it surprised me, too, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

That meant a lot, coming from him. I knew there were times it was hard living with me, letting me in when he was having a bad day or coming down from a nightmare. He was used to shutting it in and keeping it all to himself. Admitting he needed help to someone outside the VA, someone who didn’t share his experiences…that was tough. For the first three months we lived together, a rough night for him meant getting a lot of reassurance from me—assurance that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I didn’t think less of him, that I didn’t expect him to be perfect.

I wasn’t about to expect something from him that I couldn’t accomplish myself, that was for damn sure. Mostly it was great between us and sometimes it was rough, but no matter what, we made it through. That was what family did.

Dominic held me through my angst attacks over seeing and hearing about my dad’s antics again. We’d actually made eye contact half a dozen times since I got back to town, each time from a distance with no talking involved. I’d shared with Dominic what happened on that impromptu Christmas visit I’d made, and it had felt good to talk it over with my partner, even better to snuggle on the couch after I was done ranting and watch a comfort movie together.

In turn, I helped as best I could with his PTSD. And on the family front, both of us had spent last week with Hal when the girls were off in Jersey having Christmas with Ariel. They’d come back on the twenty-sixth, full of stories and laughter, and Hal had hardly stopped smiling since.

“Oh, hey.” Dominic pointed at the kitchen table. “I checked the mail before I came in. You got a card. A fancy one.”

“Yeah?” I glanced over his shoulder. The envelope was forest green, with a beautiful foil snowflake stamp in the corner. In perfect penmanship, the first line of the return address read The Stallers.

“It’s from Marcus,” I said with a smile, walking over to the table to pick it up. I slid my finger under the flap and pulled it open.

“That was nice of him.”

I took the card out—a cardinal on a snowy bough—and read the inside.

Happy holidays in your new home, Max. I wish you all the joy in the world, and a very happy new year. Best to you and yours, Marcus, Clara, Marcus Jr., and Zachary.

This was the first Christmas card I’d ever received from him that included his whole family. I hoped that meant he was spending more time with them. I listened to Hal and the girls play with the dogs in the living room and felt Dominic beside me, reading with interest and knew all the way to my bones that I couldn’t possibly be happier.

The Instant Pot began to beep, and Dominic whirled to take care of it as Jake ran toward us, barking with excitement and worry. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay,” Dominic said soothingly, kneeling in front of our dog and stroking his head until he stopped whining. “It’s okay, yeah, that’s a good boy. Good boy.”

“Is it done? I’m so hungry!” Marnie called from the front.

“So hungry!” Steph agreed.

Hal appeared in the kitchen door. “Help me out here. The kids are about to turn into cannibals.”

I handed him the bread basket. “Placate them with rolls. We’ll be done in here in a minute.”

“Thanks.”

Dominic was so wrapped up in Jake he hadn’t even noticed the commotion. I loved seeing him so at ease in our home, in our life.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “Are you ready?”

Ready for dinner? Ready for a new year? Ready for a life with me?

He beamed at me. “Yeah, I am.”

“Good. Me, too.”

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Acknowledgments

I couldn’t have done this without my plotty ficwife Tiffany, who helped me test out the concept in the first place, and my amazing editor Amy, who worked so hard to help me polish it into something I’m amazingly proud of.

About the Author

Cari Z is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal people sometimes.

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