I cocked my head to the side as I stared up at him. “Why am I staying in your cabin?”
He sighed. “It’s technically still my parents’ old cabin. They haven’t updated it at all, and they don’t have any plans to rent it out just yet. I just stay there most of the time when I come for visits. If I need a change of pace or different scenery, I come here and get some writing done.”
“It’s also close enough that he can freeload meals off of our parents,” Lainey said with a smirk, taking a bite of her roll drenched in maple butter.
Jack and Sandy tapped on the microphone from their spot on the stage a moment later. Lainey and Jett’s attention turned toward the stage, as did everybody else’s in the room.
I turned to Miles, whispering, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He leaned over, his mouth brushing against my ear, sending chills up my spine. “I needed a bargaining chip, and you’d have never stayed there if you knew it was mine.”
“You’re right,” I said. “So all that stuff downstairs? That’s yours? You just, what? Chucked everything down there the minute I agreed to stay?”
He grinned sheepishly. “I threw most of my personal stuff in the second bedroom and just locked it. The stuff in the basement is stuff my parents left when they moved.”
All this time, I had been sleeping in the bed Miles slept in when he visited. I don’t know why that felt so different to me, but it did. Very much so. I had been imagining this place as a cabin people rented. Comfortable and cozy, but not belonging to anyone. It felt much more personal knowing it was the cabin Miles used. It was a mixture of mortification and gooey sweetness, and I wasn’t sure which would win out.
“That was…so freaking sweet of you,” I choked out.
Again, his lips brushed my ear as his voice whispered, “Well, I’m definitely not a saint. I got you where I wanted you.”
My eyes narrowed. “In your old house?”
He gave me a roguish grin. “In my bed.”
I smacked his arm, which only made him laugh and pull me closer, planting a kiss on my head. Eventually, we focused on the stage where Jack regaled the crowd with funny anecdotes and old Christmas stories before relinquishing the stage to a band for some Christmas music. When Miles’s hand dropped back down onto my knee so casually, squeezing gently every so often, a warm glow made an appearance like it always did. But this time, anxiety began to bubble up where it had laid dormant for a while—the chew-on-my-fingernails-and-stare-off-into-the-distance kind of anxiety.
This was our last night.
Tomorrow, we’d pack up and head back to New York. We’d drive back to our respective houses alone. The bubble would officially burst. It frightened me how quickly I had done a complete one-eighty in my affection for my coworker. It happened both slowly and quickly, as we were literally here for only six days. Our time together under the covered bridge, whispering secrets and sharing kisses. Our night cuddled on the couch, watching Home Alone. The teasing and flirting. Jumping into the pond together. The sincerity in his eyes when he looked at me. All those kisses. My heart wanted to lean into all of it. Believe all of it. But it was too good to be true–the kind of stuff that just doesn’t happen to me. Not in real life, anyway. And as I looked around at the cozy lodge covered in mistletoe and garland, sitting next to Miles Taylor as his hand on my knee drummed to the beat of the local band performing “Little Drummer Boy,” it didn’t feel like we were in real life.
“Why do you look like you’re on the verge of a freak-out?” Miles's voice rumbled softly in my ear.
When I could only stare at him helplessly, his brow furrowed. Wordlessly, he scooted his chair back and stood up, motioning me to follow. We were toward the back of the lodge, and only those seated at our own table took note of Miles taking my hand and leading me toward the doorway. Once we passed through the threshold, he kept walking, leading me down the hallway and into an empty room.
Miles flipped on the lights, lighting up a large room with shelves lining the perimeter and a bundle of shelves in the middle. It was a storage room of some sort, probably for all the tables and chairs and decorations it would take to pull off events for a large crowd. Empty storage tubs sat open, the lids flung off as if someone had just rushed in to grab something really quickly.The air had the briskness of a room with a closed heating vent. I rubbed my arms to ward off the chill. Miles closed the door, and the space grew smaller. He filled every inch of the room. I leaned on one side, against the wall between the door and a shelf full of bins, bracing myself for this conversation. He watched me with cautious amusement, mirroring my stance against the wall, both of us facing each other but not touching.
“Now, one more time,” he said, “why are you freaking out?”
“I’m not freaking out,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’m concerned a very normal amount for a rational woman.”
“What are your concerns?”
His voice was so soft, so tender and sweet that I almost wanted to lie and tell him I had none and kiss him senseless right here. But when the kissing was over and we left tomorrow, I’d be right back where I started, which was, I’d say, a healthy 7 out of 10 on the freak-out scale.
“That this bubble will pop. Christmas is over. Tomorrow, we leave and go back to a place where you’re not some sweet and sexy alter ego moonlighting as a hot lumberjack man.”
“A hot lumberjack man?” He folded his arms across his chest, looking very pleased by this assessment.
I ignored him. “We have our rhythms at school. You do things to bug me, and I get mad at you for it.”
“That all sounds perfect to me.”
I stumbled on my rant. He kept breaking into my stride, leaving me not quite remembering what I was going to say next.
“Me annoying you and you pretending to hate it,” he clarified.
“These feelings will all go away when we’re back in the real world where we barely tolerate each other.”
He took a step closer. “Let me explain something to you. I’ve always liked you. I’ve had a massive crush on you since the second I started working at the school.”
I was all primed and ready to fire off more reasons at him, but instead, my mouth could only gape at him. “The second you started?”
“Yeah. You were like this big, brown-eyed, sexy librarian bombshell. Right out of my dreams.”
Another step closer. One more step and I would feel the heat from his body. “And I can’t imagine myself breaking up with the woman I’ve been into for nine months.”
Okay, that was a pretty good answer, even if it was hard to believe.