Page 4 of Daddy's Little Christmas

The tiny click of the case disappearing felt louder than anything else in the room.

“That’s disappointing,” he said quietly.

I don’t know what I’d been hoping for. Maybe for him to argue. To reach for my hand. To say he loved me enough to try to understand.

He didn’t.

The chair scraped softly against the floor when I stood. My legs felt unsteady, but they held. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Nate straightened his cufflink. “You’re making a mistake, Rudy.”

“Maybe,” I said, my voice shaking. “But it’s mine to make.”

For a second, I hesitated. I waited. I let something in my chest hold still in case he saidwaitordon’t goorwe’ll figure this out.

He said nothing.

That was my answer.

I turned and walked out.

The air outside was sharp enough to sting my lungs. The city lights blurred at the edges, but I kept my gaze fixed ahead and my shoulders squared. I would not cry on the sidewalk in front of his favorite restaurant.

My car was two blocks away in a parking garage. The walk there felt both endless and too short, my heels clicking on the pavement in an unsteady rhythm. Every step made the knot in my throat tighter.

In the elevator up to my level, the silence pressed in. I watched the numbers blink: 2, 3, 4. My reflection in the brushed metal doors looked pale and stunned.

When I slid behind the wheel, my hands shook on the steering wheel. I sat there for a minute, forehead resting against the cool leather, breathing slowly until I trusted myself enough to turn the key.

The drive home blurred into a tunnel of streetlights and red taillights. I kept the radio off. If a song about love or heartbreak came on, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the drive. I focused on the road, on my speed, on staying in my lane.

Hold it together.

Just until you get home.

Just until the door closes.

By the time I parked outside my building, my face hurt from clenching it so hard.

Thank God I’d never given up this place. Nate had wanted me to move in fully, had hinted more than once that it was “the logical next step,” but something in me always held back. I told myself it was because my lease wasn’t up—but maybe some deeper part of me knew this wasn’t forever. That I needed somewhere to land if the ground under us cracked.

I locked the car, walked up the stairs to my apartment, and only when the door clicked shut behind me did everything snap.

The first sob ripped out of me before I even made it past the entryway.

I stumbled to the couch, dropping onto it like my legs had given out. My vision swam. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, but the tears kept coming—hot, messy, unstoppable.

Another sob choked out of me. I doubled over, shoulders shaking, tears soaking into my sleeves.

Minutes blurred. Or maybe longer. Time didn’t feel real—just waves of grief and anger and something smaller but sharper underneath, like a splinter of clarity working its way to the surface.

“He didn’t love me,” I said aloud, my voice raw and wrecked, just to hear the truth outside my head. “He loved the idea of me.”

He hadn’t asked me to marry him. Never even opened the box. The truth hit me with a cold, nauseating clarity: this had neverbeen a proposal. It was a performance review. He was waiting—testing me. Seeing if I’d choose him over myself. That realization cut me deeply. The ring had never really been an offer. It had been leverage. It was meant to say, change the part of you I can’t tolerate, and then maybe… maybe I’ll let you have this.

I pressed both palms to my eyes, breathing through the sting. This wasn’t the ending I wanted. And it wasn’t the one I deserved. When the sobs finally waned, I sat there, hollow and exhausted, staring at the dark rectangle of my TV.

I’d spent three years trying to fit myself into the version of Rudy Callahan that made sense in Nate’s world—polished, quiet, agreeable, never too soft, never too needy, never too much.