Page 54 of Take Me Home

“Asher,” Hazel said, apparently not for the first time.

He was following her through the attached gift shop of a restaurant called Country Kitschin’ while they awaited a table for dinner, but even a half hour after the zipper incident, he couldn’t get his head out of that dressing room.

“So…no, then?” She waved her hands between them, indicating bright pink mittens.

“For your brother?” he teased.

“Stepbrother.” She cast him a weary look as she dropped the mittens back into the bin. “My dad apparently told them all this stuff about me, but I barely know anything about them.”

“At least they’re nice, though. Sounds like they want you to be a real part of everything.”

“If I were looking to expand my circle, sure.”

“But you’re not?”

“I just don’t see why anything needs to change.”

A little pang twinged in Ash’s chest. She was a fortress, drawbridge always up, archers ready. Her father and his new family weren’t the only ones who wanted in.

“There’s a window for getting new siblings. Once you don’t live at home anymore, it kind of doesn’t matter. But they’re putting in all this effort, buying me presents, wanting my dress to match in pictures—”

One mention of the dress and Ash was right back in that changing room. To get control of himself, he turned his attention to a shelf of mugs.

“Now I have to fake this closeness I don’t feel. It’s like I showed up for my first class on the day of a final, and everyone else has been going to extra tutoring, and they have a cheat sheet. It feels so unbalanced.”

“What would make it balanced?”

Hazel lifted a mug and handed it to him before winding through the tight display area. The mug readTALK NERDY TO ME.“Speaking of talking.”

“There’s a segue,” he deadpanned.

“We always end up talking about me.”

He hadn’t missed her agitation earlier when he asked about her parents. But as uninterested as she seemed in letting people in, she was actually pretty forthcoming, like shewantedto talk to someone. Then she seemed to regret it—or regretted that she’d shared those things withhim. “What do you want to talk about?”

She slipped a headband behind her ears. A unicorn hornjutted out from her forehead. She raised her chin, daring him to tease her. “Your hopes and dreams. Darkest fears. Deepest desires.”

Desires?Nope. Not doing that in the Country Kitschin’ gift shop.

He plucked it off her head and slipped a different headband into its place. She reached up and patted at the sprig of faux mistletoe dangling above her, then pulled it off to look at it. “Oh,” she said softly. She turned to put it back in the bin, stopped, considered, and finally dropped it in.

Before she could think too hard about it, he said, “We should buy all our Christmas gifts here and be done with it.”

He was joking, but it wasn’t a terrible idea. Necessity was the mother of invention and all that. The shop sold a bit of everything—kitschy trinkets, games and nostalgic collectibles, Christmas decor, clothes, housewares, artsy ceramics, candles.

“Make it a competition?” she challenged.

“You sure about that? I actually know and like my family.”

She released a real, spontaneous laugh. “Okay. Terms. If I find a gift for everyone on my list, you have to tell me a secret. Something personal.”

“And if I get everyone on my list?”

“What do you want?”

You.

He scratched his eyebrow. “I need to think about it.”