Page 114 of Daddy's Little Christmas

“And then you walked into my shop looking like you were trying not to fall apart over a broken ornament and a too-loud memory,” he said. “And everything I’d packed away in myself woke up.”

My chest clenched so tight it almost hurt.

“I wanted to ask you to stay,” he went on, voice roughening. “Last night. This morning. Every second these walls felt too quiet.” A humorless smile ghosted across his mouth. “But I kept thinking about your age, your life in Chicago, your work. I didn’t want to be the selfish older man who asked you to tradeeverything for a town of four thousand people and a greenhouse full of Christmas.”

He shook his head once. “So I tried to be noble. Let you go. Tell myself those two weeks were a gift I had no right to ask for more of.”

“And?” I whispered.

“And it felt wrong,” he said simply. “Like I’d been handed the missing piece of something I didn’t know was incomplete and then told to put it back in the box.”

My breath hitched.

His hands slid from my arms to my sides, fingers spreading, anchoring me. “I don’t want a two-week memory, Rudy,” he said quietly. “I want to know what happens if we keep choosing this. Choosing each other. One day at a time. One season at a time. However long we get.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been leaning toward him until the moment my cheek hit the worn wool of his sweater. My body just… gave. My hands fisted in the fabric. His scent filled my nose—soap and something warm and unmistakably him—and all the panic that had been pounding through me since dawn drained out in a moment that left me a little lightheaded.

Graeme’s arms came around me without hurry, solid and sure. He lowered his mouth to my hair, not kissing, just there.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Talk to me. How are you doing right now?”

The question threaded through me gently, anchoring instead of interrupting.

“I’m okay,” I said after a beat. “Just… a lot. Big feelings.”

“Good boy for telling me,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

The praise slid under my skin, settling me like a blanket. I exhaled, long and shaky, the sound muffled against his chest, and let myself stay right there while my breathing evened out.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.

His hand splayed between my shoulder blades, warm and sure. “You don’t have to know how,” he said. “You just have to do the next right thing. And then the next one.”

“And what does that look like?” I asked, voice small.

He pressed his cheek to the top of my head. “Right now? It looks like not getting back in your car.”

A wet laugh broke out of me.

“And after that?” I asked.

“After that,” he said, “we talk. We figure out what you need to wrap up in Chicago. We figure out what it looks like for you to be here longer. We don’t have to plan every detail today. We just have to agree on one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That this,” he said, squeezing me gently, “isn’t over.”

The words slid into a place in me I hadn’t realized had been waiting, empty, for years.

I tipped my head back to look at him.

His face was open. Vulnerable. No walls. No careful politician’s smile. Just Graeme. The man who’d built a life around Christmas and community and still made room for a scared, soft-hearted stranger with too many jagged edges.

“What do you want?” he asked again, quietly. “Not what you think you’re allowed to want. Not what hurts least. Truly. Right now.”

The truth rose up, hot and terrifying and solid.

“I want to stay,” I said. My voice cracked, but I didn’t look away. “Not forever in this exact second, not signing my whole life away today. But… I want to stay long enough to see what it feels like when this isn’t just a holiday bubble. I want to wake up and know I’m not on borrowed time.”