Page 41

“Wow,” Tara said, “we found Cole’s Achilles’ heel.”

He held a finger up to his lips. “We will never speak of this again. Okay. We are going to build the best snowman in the history of Carrigan’s Christma—Oh, Lawrence is here!”

With that observation, he bounded off as suddenly as he’d come.

“Do you ever get used to that?” Holly asked. “The thing where he’s never where you expect him to be? He just appears and disappears?”

Tara shook her head. “Never.”

“I guess that means it’s the two of us? For the snowman building? Unless you want to go skating, or wander back to the inn while everyone is busy?”

Tara raised an eyebrow. “You keep trying to rush us into bed, but I promise, when we get there, it will be worth the wait.”

“We have limited time for this affair,” Holly said, her mittens on her hips, “and I, for one, would like to have as much sex as possible during that window.”

She reached over and tugged on the lapels of Tara’s coat. Tara raised an eyebrow but came willingly, bringing their bodies flush. “I hear this pond is great for kissing.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Tara asked, her voice a sexy rasp. She wrapped an arm around Holly’s waist and ran her hand lower, until Holly gasped, her whole body lighting up. “I guess we should test that out.”

Their lips had just met and begun to sink into each other, Holly’s tongue teasing into Tara’s mouth, when a snowball hit them.

Tara pulled away from Holly to whip her head around and glare at Cole, already gathering snow for another ball.

Groaning, Holly tried to pull Tara back into the moment.

Instead, Tara held her chin and looked her right in the eye. “I guarantee you that we are going to have the best sex of your life, soon, and you are not going to find any part of it unfulfilling, in quality or quantity. Now,” she said, turning away, “I’m going to go kill my best friend, but after that, do you want to build a snowman?”

Holly did not want to build a snowman. She wanted to melt into a naked mess with Tara, although she might melt all on her own. Parts of her were definitely turning to liquid.

“Hold that thought,” Tara added, pretending to be oblivious to Holly’s pout, except that she had a little smirk. She ran off after Cole.

The two of them rolled around like blond puppies in the snow, laughing and kicking and tumbling as if they cared about nothing but joy. It was the most carefree Holly had ever seen Tara.

Cole had managed to free himself from their childhood training, but Tara was still willingly behaving the way she was expected—except when she was here. God, Holly wished Tara would stay here. Move to Advent, run around getting into trouble with Cole. Give up talking to her family.

And if she were here, maybe Holly would stick around for a little while, too. She had been planning on getting out of Charleston, and Advent was basically on another planet. Maybe they could be friends with benefits for a little longer than a weekend. If Aunt Cricket and the Southern Charm Rejects weren’t in the picture.

Not for good, obviously. Holly would eventually need to leave, because she wasn’t built for long-term. But for just a little longer.

Chapter 13

Tara

Holly was killing her. She was wearing a long black sweater that hugged her body over fleece-lined leggings covered in little pink skulls, her hair caught in a low ponytail under a beanie. She was always incredibly hot, but Tara was finding that, when she wasn’t dressing for work, Holly’s personal style leaned into her emo girl roots, and it was irresistible. The more she dropped all the characters she was playing and let herself get a little messy, the more Tara wanted her.

She also did a thing that Tara was pretty sure she didn’t know she was doing, which was whine a little in the back of her throat every time Tara exhibited any top energy. Which made Tara lean into it more. By the time they actually got to bed tonight, Tara was going to be a powder keg, and the only recourse she had was to light Holly on fire.

She was trying to stretch out the anticipation and cool them both down by insisting they make these snowmen, even though she was terrible at it and she hated to do things she was terrible at. She didn’t expect either of them to try very hard, since obviously the returning Carrigan’s guests were in it to win it.

Holly, however, was seriously gathering and piling up snow, and Tara’s competitive streak immediately kicked in.

“Okay. Here’s the thing about building a snowman when you’re not skilled,” Holly told her. “You don’t want to build up. It takes too much time to get it stable. You want to do something close to the ground, like a… turtle.”

They built a very mediocre turtle, in between sneaking snowballs down one another’s shirts and sharing glances that should have melted all the snow in New York. Tara was deeply grateful for how distracting Holly was. This was the first time she’d been around Miriam and Noelle as a couple.

Tara and Miriam had been together for years, and in some ways, Miriam was still frozen in her memory that way. Enough that there was some cognitive dissonance at seeing her happily engaged to another woman. They were adorable together, in a way that made Tara’s heart hurt. Not out of jealousy, but awareness that she didn’t have that and, if she got the life she was planning for, she never would.

It helped that this Miriam, a year out, was so clearly different from the one who had left Charleston “for a week to sit shiva.” She held her body more loosely, laughed more easily. She was less prone to disassociate in the middle of conversations, a little more frenetic. This was, Tara guessed, what she would have always been like, if not for her trauma.