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Alana

I wasn’t arrogant enough to think I could get away with looking Liam dead in the eye and telling him that I was his gift for Christmas. Not only was I not arrogant enough, but I was also self-aware enough to know that if I pulled a stunt like that, he would never let me live it down. I didn’t need him having that kind of power over me. Although, given that this morning he had kind of said exactly the same thing, maybe he would have let me get away with it.

Once I had come down from my orgasm high in that Macy’s dressing room, I realised that I didn’t have a gift for Liam, and promptly went into panic mode. I was a good gift-giver. Some might even say great.

And giving gifts to Liam used to be where I truly shined. I would spend weeks thinking about what I was going to get him, and it paid off every time. The soft look on his face when he opened a present from me would make my entire day. But I hadn’t been in Liam’s life for over a decade, and even though a lot about him was the same, he was still a thirty-year-old man who had nearly thirteen years’ worth of new interests and desires. He’d probably lost some things I knew about him as well.

So, I had no idea what to get him for Christmas and I’d had almost no time to think about it. In the end, I saw a keychain of a grey wolf hanging on a display next to some scarves. I decided that if I couldn’t give him a thoughtful gift, I could at least give him something funny to unwrap. I’d paid for it hastily on the floor above where he had left me. When I’d found him, he was hanging by the scarves I vetoed, studying one, which immediately made me wish I had bought him one of those instead. At least it would have been practical. Or re-giftable.

So, seeing him holding it in the shiny purple wrapping paper I’d wrapped all my presents in while he had been sleeping at six a.m. made my stomach turn. I wanted to walk over and snatch it out of his hand and tell him to pretend he’d never seen it.

It was making it hard to focus on everyone around me opening their presents because I could see him feeling out the weight and shape of the gift in his hands. He knew it was from me and I knew he was going to be disappointed with it, so I was trying out all the different excuses I could give as to why I’d chosen it in my head. None of them so far didn’t expose the fact that we had only been back in each other’s lives for seven days and not six weeks. Even though we were no longer lying, we had lied. And this shitty, Twilight -based, gift was proof of that.

“Liam, what have you got in your hands?” Mel asked. My hands went clammy and, not for the first time, I found myself grateful for the fact that my skin didn’t turn red in any circumstances. I just felt overly hot instead.

He started to carefully peel the tape off. He was treating it like it was fragile, like it held the secrets to the universe. My tongue didn’t seem to want to work in my mouth. I needed to justify it. To explain myself. To assure him that it was okay if he hated it. It was just supposed to be a joke because once, a thousand years ago, he had given me a wolf.

When the last piece of tape was peeled off, Liam pushed the paper down to reveal his gift. It looked even stupider in the cold light of day when I was not riding the high of coming all over Liam’s hand. Liam smiled softly at the keychain, just like he always did whenever I gifted him something, and then he started laughing. Great. He was taking it as a joke. I didn’t need any of my half-baked excuses.

He looked over at me. “Open yours from me,” he said, his eyes sparkling with humour.

I picked up the brown paper package that he had handed me earlier and started tearing into it. As expected, the dress he had told me I needed to act surprised about was nestled in there, but then I noticed something sticking out of the neckline.

A russet wolf keychain.

I could feel everyone in the room looking at us. I guess they were trying to figure out why two people in their thirties were exchanging wolf keychains.

Eventually, Mom broke the silence. “Aww, isn’t that sweet?”

I didn’t know which one of us she was talking to or if she was even talking to either of us at all. I couldn’t stop looking at the keychain. It was dumb, the way seeing something that I knew cost five dollars partially hidden in the folds of an expensive dress was making me feel.

Seen. Cared for. Understood.

Loved .

Even though I knew that the feeling had been resurrected over the last week, it hadn’t fully taken flight. At least not until now. While I struggled to keep tears at bay over a damn keychain. That matched the one I had bought him.

Or maybe this was the first time I was accepting that it had taken flight. Maybe it unfurled its wings and took off this morning when I woke up and saw him sleeping next to me.

Maybe it happened when he walked into my kitchen as I was starting to bake and, just like I knew when we were teenagers, I knew it again now.

I was in love with him.

“Where have you gone?” It was Liam. I hadn’t noticed him settle in next to me. Everyone else had left the room.

“Nowhere. You got me a keychain.”

“You also got me a keychain.” He put his next to mine.

“Yeah, I forgot I didn’t have anything for you, and I panicked.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything. When did you even buy it?”

“I guess at the same time that you did.”

“You know what this means right?”

We might just be in love with each other.

“Do not make an imprinting or a knotting joke right now,” I said.

“You’re no fun.” He pulled me into his side and pressed a kiss to my temple as I rested my head on his shoulder.

“I’m very fun. Did you not see my bow earlier?” I gestured in the direction of his dick.

“Yeah, I did. Do you want to go unwrap that gift? ”

I pulled away from him slightly. “You know I bought that keychain because I didn’t think you’d let me get away with saying that I was your gift, but here you are, doing just that and expecting me to not give you shit for it.”

“You can give me shit for it if you want. In fact, I fully expect you to. And I definitely would not have said no to unwrapping you.” His palm tapped my hip.

Then I remembered that he had left me to get dressed earlier while he went to take my cookies out of the oven, just before they burned to a crisp, which meant he didn’t know what was hidden under my clothes.

“Maybe later. I think you’re gonna like the underwear I have on.” I patted his knee as I stood up.

“That’s…not fair.”

“Nor was the fact that I had to portion up a whole batch of cookies with your dick pressed against my ass and pretend that it wasn’t there,” I said, heading for the kitchen. Just as I left the room, I heard him groan.