He nods. “They are. But when things...got to be too much for me last year, I don’t know. It was easier for me to stay away than to face that they were right.”
“So why now? Why are you going home after all this time?”
He lifts his head to look at me. “Because of you.”
“Me?” I don’t understand.
“I want them to meet you. And I want you to meet them. You’re important to me and having you there will make it easier.”
I touch his forearm and lean forward, resting my chin against his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re taking me home,” I whisper beside his ear, and I see him close his eyes.
The flight attendant brings us a fruit plate and sparkling water with lemon wedges and croissants. He tells me to ask for whatever I want. If I’m craving pancakes or crème br?lée or toasted hazelnuts, the flight attendant will somehow magically prepare it. The plane is fully stocked, he tells me.
But I just want to curl up beside Tate, settle my head on his chest, and stare out at the world below. Miniature houses and patchwork farms and mountains that rise up snowy and white—I can’t resist taking pictures, even though it’s just with my phone. Maybe I can Photoshop them later, at school, work on them until they look more like the landscape that’s unfolding below me.
Finally, I put my phone down, and close my eyes. “Sleep if you want,” Tate whispers against my temple, folding his arm around me. He begins to hum against my ear, his breath warm on my neck. It’s a melody I don’t recognize—not one of his songs—but even muted, his voice is effortless and beautiful. And I listen for a while before I tilt my head up to him and ask, “What song is that?”
“Nothing special. Just a tune I’ve had stuck in my head.”
“For a new song?” I ask tentatively.
“I don’t know,” he answers softly. “Maybe.”
I close my eyes, feeling the vibration of his lips murmuring against my ear. Sometimes the fullness of his mouth brushes across my earlobe or along my hairline and I stifle a shiver.
I let myself drift in and out of sleep, listening to Tate Collins hum for me, my own private melody.
*
If our yard had resembled a winter wonderland, Telluride, Colorado, is the set of a Christmas movie. Several feet of freshly fallen snow have already piled up on the tarmac and more is drifting down from the dark sky. A black SUV is waiting for us when we land, and we hurry from the plane to the car, the sharp, cold air slipping through our coats.
“You’re shivering.” Tate reaches out to take my hand from my lap. “And your fingers are freezing.”
“All part of the winter experience,” I say, still marveling as we drive through town. It’s just after sunset, and the storefronts are lined in silver and white holiday lights, displays of paper cutout snowflakes and elves in green pointy hats set behind the glass windows. It’s a fairy tale. “I like it here. It feels like a place you’re supposed to come back to.”
He presses my palm to his lips, holding it there for several seconds, his mouth warm.
“Good,” he says.
We pull up to a house on a street that winds along a low hillside. All the homes are cloaked in snow, powdery drifts that have collected on the roofs and cover the lawns. They look like gingerbread houses, twinkling with Christmas lights. Some even have blown-up snowmen in their yards and plastic Santas with reindeer on their rooftops. People put these up in LA, too, but here they look natural instead of gaudy.
“I can’t believe you used to live here,” I say, stepping out from the SUV and standing in the driveway of his parents’ house, a two-story chalet-style home with a mailbox decorated with blinking red lights. Compared to our house, it’s a palace, but it’s nowhere near the size of Tate’s fortress in LA.
“Me neither,” Tate says, sucking in a deep breath and taking my hand again. “Ready?”
“I think I’m more ready than you are,” I say.
Tate looks stiff and uncomfortable, like he’s preparing for battle. His grip on my hand tightens as we walk up the icy steps to the front door, his thumb tapping against my forefinger.
But when we ring the doorbell and a lovely middle-aged woman with Tate’s eyes opens the door, we’re both immediately enveloped in a rush of hugs and the scent of cinnamon and pumpkin and wood burning from a fireplace. It’s hard for me to understand what could possibly make Tate nervous about coming back here.
We shuffle into the entryway, Tate’s mom, Helen, clutching Tate while his dad, Bill, shakes my hand. Bill has speckled gray hair and the same chiseled chin and jawline as Tate. He’s wearing a festive red sweater with a Christmas tree stitched onto the front that looks like it might have fit him ten years ago, but now is being stretched along every seam. Helen probably forced him to wear it—an effort to seem in the holiday spirit.