Page 27 of Cold Comeback (Richmond Reapers #1)

For the next twenty minutes, I watched Thatcher help kids articulate their Christmas wishes. He didn't correct their spelling or suggest more realistic gift requests.

Instead, he listened to elaborate explanations of why they needed specific toys, validated their concerns about whether they'd been good enough, and helped them find words for wishes they couldn't quite express.

When one girl asked whether hockey-playing reindeer were real, Thatcher launched into an elaborate tale about Rudolph's secret career in the NHL. He invented statistics, described training routines, and explained why reindeer made excellent goalies due to their superior peripheral vision.

"And Comet," he continued, "plays left wing because he's got the fastest acceleration off the face-off. Cupid's an amazing playmaker—he can thread passes through traffic like you wouldn't believe."

The children hung on every word, asking detailed questions about reindeer hockey contracts and whether Santa got season tickets. Thatcher answered every question.

Blake tried directing the interaction from behind his camera—"Thatcher, can you look like more of a mentor when you help that kid?"—but Thatcher remained entirely absorbed in the kids' worlds.

Something fundamental materialized as I watched him. Thatcher wasn't performing. This was the real him—patient, present, and genuinely interested in other people's experiences. The children responded to his authenticity. They were experts at detecting fake interest from adults.

Suddenly, his expression changed.

He was reading something on his phone, and the warmth drained from his face. His shoulders tensed.

He shoved the device back into his pocket without responding to whatever he'd received, but the damage was done.

He excused himself from the kids; fifteen minutes later, I found him in the hallway near the coat check, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed while he tried to control his breathing.

"Bad news?"

He opened his eyes and pulled out his phone, showing me the message without comment:

Dad: Saw the cameras. Remember, this is about redemption. Don't screw it up.

No holiday greetings. No acknowledgment that his son was volunteering at a community event, bringing joy to children who would remember the day for years.

Minutes ago, kids surrounded him and hung on his every word. They valued his freely offered attention.

Now, he stared at a message from the person whose approval he'd spent his life chasing—approval that came with terms and conditions, expiration dates, and the constant threat of withdrawal.

"Didn't even say Merry Christmas," Thatcher muttered, his voice flat.

His father's timing was particularly cruel. Thatcher had spent the morning experiencing genuine appreciation for who he was. It was the unconditional acceptance he'd been looking for his entire life.

And then came the reminder that the person who mattered most still saw him as a project that needed managing.

"Come here."

I pulled him into an empty supply closet, away from the celebration and prying eyes. The cramped space smelled like industrial cleaner and construction paper. We heard the muffled sounds of people choosing to spend their Christmas with us through the thin walls.

In the small space, I saw the exhaustion in Thatcher's eyes. It was the bone-deep weariness of someone who'd spent decades trying to earn something that was never truly available.

"I need to say something." I touched his cheek with my fingertips. "I've been questioning your authenticity when the problem was my own fear."

"Gideon—"

"No, let me finish. I watched you with those kids today. You weren't performing for anyone. You weren't calculating how your interactions would look or what they might accomplish. You were present. That's it, completely there with them."

His eyes searched mine.

"That's who you are when you're not trying to be someone else," I continued.

"Patient. Funny. Interested in people because they're people, not because they can give you something.

When you made a terrible paper snowflake, it made a child smile.

You invented hockey stories about reindeer because a little girl asked a question and deserved an answer. "

Thatcher leaned against the closet wall, closing his eyes.

"I've been so afraid of not deserving this," I admitted. "I made you prove you were worth the risk, but you've been worth it from the beginning. The problem was never whether you were real enough. The problem was whether I was brave enough to believe I could have something this good."

When he opened his eyes, tears glistened at the corners. "What if being real isn't about having all the answers?" he whispered. "What if it's about choosing each other even when we're scared? Even when we don't know what comes next?"

"I think that is what it's about." My words felt like a vow I'd never expected to make.

Our kiss was tender and unhurried. We chose to express intimacy despite the possibility that cameras could find us at any moment.

Thatcher's hands settled on my hips. When we broke apart, he was smiling—a real smile that started in his eyes and made him look years younger.

"Merry Christmas, Gideon."

"Merry Christmas."

From the main hall, Blake's voice echoed. "Can we get a reset on the community interaction footage? The lighting changed."

We both laughed.

"Think he caught that?" Thatcher asked, nodding toward the door.

"Do you care?"

"Not even a little bit."

When we rejoined the celebration, we moved around each other with the easy familiarity of people who'd stopped pretending they weren't connected.

Our teammates noticed immediately—Knox caught my eye and nodded approvingly, Pluto grinned like he'd won a long-term bet, and Linc made exaggerated gagging motions that were entirely for show.

Nobody made it awkward. They simply adjusted to the new reality of their captain and their teammate choosing to be honest about what everyone had suspected for weeks.

We worked side by side during cleanup, letting ourselves be seen without apology. When families thanked us personally for making their Christmas special, they addressed us as a unit—the way married couples get recognized as a package deal.

The last family left around seven. They offered warm thanks.

"About damn time," Knox said as we folded tables and stacked chairs. "Watching you two fight yourselves was exhausting for all of us."

"Fight ourselves?" I asked.

"You know what you were doing," Linc added, hefting a box of decorations. "Dancing around each other like middle schoolers with crushes. It was painful to watch."

"We weren't that obvious," Thatcher protested.

"Oh no, you were," Pluto called across the room. "I started a betting pool about when you'd figure it out. Knox won."

"I bet on this community catastrophe," Knox admitted. "Seemed appropriate. Good tidings and all that shit."

As the community center emptied and we finished restoring the space to its standard configuration, Thatcher appeared beside me.

"So," he said quietly. "What happens next?"

"We keep choosing each other." The answer was more straightforward than I'd expected. "We keep choosing to be real, even when it's scary. We trust that what we've built can handle honesty."

"And if we mess it up?"

"Then we figure out how to fix it together."

Outside, Richmond settled into the holiday season—porch lights twinkled against the winter darkness, families gathered around dinner tables, and children speculated about Santa's surprises. They were people choosing to take care of each other, one small moment at a time.

Walking to our cars in the community center parking lot, surrounded by our teammates, I realized this was what building something real looked like. Thatcher paused by his car, keys in hand, looking back at the community center where cleanup volunteers turned off lights and locked doors.

He turned toward me. "You know what the best part was?"

"What?"

"Nobody asked me what I learned, how I'd grown, or what this experience meant for my redemption arc." He smiled. "They let me exist and be useful, full stop."