Page 36 of Daddy's Little Christmas

“Of course,” he said quietly. “Rest, little one.”

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I did.

Chapter 7

Graeme

Rudy sat on the low stool near the front counter, carefully unwinding a length of silver ribbon that had gotten itself into a knot. He worked with quiet focus, tongue caught between his teeth for a second when the ribbon snagged.

A few hours ago, he hadn’t just told methings. He’d trusted me with the parts of himself that taught a person how to break if handled carelessly.

Knowing that shifted something I hadn’t been planning to move.

It wasn’t responsibility—I was used to that. It was the quiet awareness that if I stepped wrong now, I wouldn’t justdisappoint him. I could reinforce every lesson he’d learned about being too much, about softness being conditional.

But what unsettled me was the quieter realization beneath it: that being that man for Rudy would not stay neutral for me.

I could already feel the edge of it—the way my attention sharpened when he was near, the way my instincts leaned toward him without permission.

I’d learned that offering care came with consequences. It created attachment. And attachment made you vulnerable to wanting more than the other person might ever be able to give.

And Rudy wasn’t staying. Two weeks. A pause, not a beginning. I’d learned the hard way what happened when you built emotional scaffolding for someone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—remain.

I checked the clock above the door. A little past nine. Volunteers would start wandering in soon, cheeks red from the cold, arms full of boxes and tins and decorations they insisted on “adding to the chaos.”

“Almost done with that one?” I asked, nodding toward the ribbon.

He glanced up, that small, shy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. It tried to fight me, but I won.”

“Good. I don’t let just anyone wrestle my ribbon.”

His smile turned into a quiet up-curve, there and gone. It did more to my chest than it had any right to.

I moved toward the front door, checking that the walkway I’d shoveled earlier hadn’t vanished under fresh snow. Outside,Main Street had softened into something almost unreal—lamp posts haloed in gold, snow drifting in lazy spirals, the whole street wrapped in light and white.

Rudy glanced around the shop, eyes tracing the half-opened ornament boxes, the stacked garlands, the old bins with handwritten labels.

“Do you… always do this?” he asked. “The decorating night, I mean?”

Something in his voice tugged at me—curiosity, yes, but also that flicker I’d seen before, the one that said he didn’t come from places where people gathered just because someone shouldn’t be alone.

My hand stilled on the ribbon I was straightening. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Every year.” I felt the memory settle over me, warm and sharp all at once. “Started twenty years ago.”

He looked at me, waiting in that way only someone who’s never had a tradition to stand inside knows how to wait. I exhaled, slow.

“It was the year I reopened the greenhouse,” I said. “I’d been working on it for months. Just me, a toolbox, and the ghosts I kept trying to outrun.” The old ache flickered in my chest, not painful now, just part of the landscape. “Winterhaven watched. Didn’t say much. They have this uncanny ability to give you the space you need when you need it.”

I ran my thumb along the edge of a wooden shelf, remembering the dust, the cold, the long days where the quiet felt too loud. “The weekend before opening, I’d planned to decorate alone. Didn’t think anyone would care either way.”

A soft huff of disbelief left me at the younger version of myself who thought surviving meant doing everything by himself. “Butaround midnight, I heard footsteps. Thought it was a raccoon.” My mouth curved. “It wasn’t.”

Rudy leaned in a little, barely noticeable unless you were watching him closely—which I was.

“Half the town showed up,” I said. “Kids in pajamas. Their parents with boxes of used ornaments. Someone brought cocoa. Someone else brought gingerbread. They just… walked right in.” My voice dropped. “And one of the older ladies said, ‘No one decorates alone in Winterhaven.’”

The words still lived in me, steady as breath.

Rudy’s gaze softened, and the expression on his face—awe, longing, something bruised around the edges—hit me harder than I expected.