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CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

arden

“How’s the book?”

I glance upward, wrapped in a blanket in the guest room. I sleep mostly in Carter’s room now, but I always read and take my bubble baths in here. It’s my comfort space. It’s more homey than my own home. I’ve bonded with these four walls.

I close it, resting it beside me. “Getting saucy.”

He leans against the doorframe, brows skyrocketing. “Tell me more.”

“Confidential information,” I tell him, lifting the blanket over the book to pretend like I want to hide it from him. His grin widens. “How was practice?”

“Long,” he grumbles, pushing off the doorframe. He treads into the room and falls onto the bed next to me, rolling until his head is in my lap and he can wind his arms around my legs. On instinct, my hand moves to his soft head of buzzed hair. “I have to tell you something.”

My hand stills.

“Not a bad something,” he clarifies, his cheek pressed to my lap. “Christmas is coming up. ”

“Yes, it is.”

“My family is coming to town.”

I go stiff. “Oh?”

“My parents, their significant others, and Ari,” he continues. He cranes his head up to meet my eyes. “Will you stick around to meet them? Spend Christmas with us?”

I swallow. It sounds like a nightmare. It sounds like a next step I’m not sure I’m ready for, but I want to be.

For him. I have no doubts about how I feel about Carter, but I’m a realist. Right now, this is new.

It feels like I’ve struck gold every time he looks at me, but it isn’t reality.

It’s the honeymoon stage. It comes before the serious parts, like meeting family.

I wish we could stay in this era a little longer.

But Carter is a family man, through and through. He loves his people. He adores his sister. This is important to him. He wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t. He showed up for me when I needed it, and it’s my turn to reciprocate it.

“If you want me to.”

“Only if you want to,” he says carefully, pretty blue eyes studying my face. “I’d love for you to meet them, and I don’t want to spend Christmas away from you, but I know I’m asking for a lot here.”

I smile softly, stroking his cheek. “You’re not asking for a lot.”

He’s just asking simple things of a woman with a ton of childhood trauma.

“Okay, well, I’m about to,” he says, looking more nervous than ever now. My brow furrows, so he races to finish his thought. “I think we should invite your sisters, too. I’ll fly them out.”

I stare at him, unblinking.

He lifts himself from my lap, hand reaching for mine. “It’s your first Christmas since everything happened, Red. Biggie needs her Smalls.”

I squeeze his hand back, but don’t speak for a moment.

He means so well. He was born with his heart on his sleeve and his temper in his gut.

Carter asks for these things because he cares about me.

Even after meeting them once, he also cares about Serena and Anya because I do.

But, unlike us, he comes from a functional family.

Sure, he went through divorced parents instead of a widower, but his family is still a unit.

He doesn’t get the complexities of my family. I’m glad for that. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

“We haven’t spent a Christmas together in a long time, Carter,” I remind him, pulling at the corner of his mouth with my thumb when it sinks. “Christmas is just another day for me. I’ll be okay.”

“Christmas can’t just be another day,” Carter murmurs. “Not anymore. You deserve holidays. You deserve to spend time with family. Even if it isn’t with your sisters, it’ll be with me.”

The idea of plopping Serena and Anya into a house and a holiday with the Forkerro family makes my stomach turn.

They’d smell the distance between us. They’d see all our dark, twisted trauma in the way we look at each other.

I don’t even know Carter’s family yet. The last thing I want is for them to meet me on the very first holiday I spend with my sisters again.

“Maybe next year.”

His eyes soften. His thumb brushes my pulse. “Just think about it, okay? If it’s too overwhelming, let’s invite them for New Year’s instead. Just them and us. Whitney and Autumn, too, if you want.”

I nod, even though I think I’ve already made up my mind.

He glances around the room, still sprawled across my body. “ You’re going to have to stay in my room, though. Ari will throw down for this one.”

I huff a laugh. “I might have to steal her hair products and sneak them into your bathroom first.”

Carter stiffens, shaking his head. “She’ll notice. She’ll take a whiff of your hair when she walks in the door and your head will be mounted on the wall by dinner.”

I bark out a laugh. Oh, how I already love Ariana Forkerro.