Oh, but how could he? It couldn’t be as fresh and bright and happy as it had once been, could it? It never could be again.
She pressed her head down on his shoulder just a moment, drawing strength or belief, and then went to get the cinnamon and allspice.
It was so easy to start laughing, making Christmas crafts together. It was so easy to have fun. Kurt was insanely good at making them, for one thing, and he made her laugh more and more and tease him as he came up with one thing out of his childhood after another. Why had they never done this before? Well, she supposed because Christmas crafts were the kind of thing a mom typically pulled out to work on with her kids, for one—the grief squeezed and sighed and let her be—and probably Kurt had more than had his fill of Christmas crafts as his mother’s only child. As a couple, they had kept with her own tradition of collecting ornaments wherever they traveled and filling the tree with those. She had saved the crafting sessions for what she thought would be their later, that time in their lives when kids would fill their house.
That time that had just not been meant to be.
So now they went all out. They even tried the white feather Christmas trees from his mother’s latest December issue, and when Kai looked up and discovered Kurt concentrating fully on his craft, oblivious to the feather glued to his cheek, a giggle burst out of her, and she clapped her hands over her belly in surprise, not quite sure where it had come from. Once that first giggle had bubbled itself out of her, more came suddenly, like a pot that had finally been brought to boil, and she giggled and giggled, until she felt as effervescent as a glass of champagne. Kurt upended the bag of white feathers over her head in punishment for laughing at him, and then pulled her to him again, kissing her and kissing her, as the feathers drifted off her hair, gliding softly over her cheeks and tickling his hands.
The scent of cinnamon and cloves filled the house. She made cookies again, while the cinnamon dough was baking in one oven and the glue on the snowflakes was drying, and that added scents of butter and sugar and everything homey. Then she realized it was past lunchtime, and she heated up last night’s soup and then, while she was thinking of it, started a stew in the Dutch oven for that night. Through this flurry of cooking, Kurt chopped onions, carrots, and whatever he was told, looking very happy.
I can still make him happy?
I can, can’t I? I can still make him happy.
That was kind of a precious miracle in and of itself.
She kissed him, and he set the knife carefully far away from them as he kissed her back—which was so like him, that care and attention. She kissed him more for it, and then, and then—all the pain she had caused him rose up in her, and she pulled back, ashamed, knowing she didn’t deserve this. Damn it, would the weight of her guilt never go away?
Kurt must have thought her withdrawal was from another wave of grief for the miscarriages, because he squeezed her shoulder and pulled a feather out of her hair, going back to work on the potatoes without comment. By the time the ornaments were dry enough to let them decorate the tree, a plethora of scents filled the house to bursting: cinnamon, cookies, stew, the fir itself as it prickled over her arms, the fire Kurt started. Given that she was a food stylist who often did her work here, scents of food had filled this house ever since she had moved into it. And yet it was so different when the scents were shared.
So much warmer, so much more full. As if life was full. Not this great empty thing she had to get through.
She kissed him again, and he pulled her into his arms, squeezing her far too hard.
He couldn’t seem to let go. Even when she had to wiggle for freedom because her lungs started protesting, he couldn’t loosen his arms, and when she squeaked, he took them down onto the plush rug in front of the fire. The early winter evening was lowering by then, gray deepening toward night over the snow, and their fire and their tree lights glowed over their faces in the otherwise unlit room.
Kurt captured her wrists over her head as the only thing he seemed to know to do with his hands to keep them from squeezing her too tightly. When she tried to pull free, his hold tightened. “Kurt,” she protested, half-laughingly.
“In a minute.” The firelight gilded over his cheekbones, throwing them into relief, his face intense, severe.
Arousal washed through her. Of course it did. How could she help it? They had discovered a long, long time ago that sometimes she liked that game. And oh, so did he. But she said, “Kurt, no. I want my hands free.”
With some difficulty, he pulled his hands from her wrists and sank them instead into the thick rug, digging into it.