Page 8 of Make You Mine This Christmas (Holly Ridge #2)

Austin

The light turns green, meaning I have to stop watching Brody squirm. I decide to take pity on him and answer. Well, it’s not entirely pity. I have some questions of my own.

“Wanting to know why you’re asking the question is a good place to start.

Before Brody, on the path to being a corporate prosecutor, asked all sorts of sharp questions.

I felt like you were interviewing me on at least our first three dates.

But Santa Brody?” His head whips in my direction, and I wince, realizing it’s the first time I’ve called him that out loud.

I push on. “Santa Brody is a little softer. More reserved and more cautious. More aware of the weight his words carry and the impact they can have on someone else.”

“Okay . . .” he says, slow and soft. When I sneak another glance, he’s looking out the window.

Did I get too real with him? I guess maybe this is another way Santa Brody differs from the one I knew—he’s more willing to show how other’s words affect him.

“And it’s way easier to make you blush now, too. ”

Brody brings his hands up to his cheeks, forgetting we’re in the dark and the flush isn’t nearly as visible. “I dunno, you were always pretty good at making me blush.”

I lose my mind at a stop sign and look over to throw him a wink.

He averts his eyes to look down. My eyes trace over the green knit hat I gave him for Christmas all those year ago—I recognized it right away and am trying not to let knowing he kept it get to me.

A passing streetlight lets me get a glimpse of his blush, his lower lip tucked between his teeth. While he’s off his guard, I strike.

“Why did you leave ten years ago without saying goodbye? You weren’t at UMass.

What happened?” Brody looks up, his eyes wide and stricken.

Before I can name all the emotions I see flash through them, a car honks its horn behind me.

My eyes are forced back on the road. The silence hangs around us like a weight.

Will Brody’s answer lift it off or pull it down to smother me?

“UMass pulled my funding at the last minute. Columbia and Dartmouth both gave away my spots. The plan said I needed to go to law school that year, and I needed to be fully funded. My blinders were on so tight, and I had been following the plan for so long, I couldn’t consider any other option.

I had to call my grandma for the first time in a decade, tail between my legs to ask her to pull strings at NYU.

It’s where my grandpa went to law school and they’re major donors.

NYU found a fully-funded spot for me within a day. ”

I roll this over in my mind, still not seeing how changing schools leads to leaving a committed relationship without saying goodbye. Well, I guess he wrote it in the note he left me, but I’m not willing to count that.

“Okay . . . so you were going to New York instead of right down the road. We could have made the distance work. I would have come with you?”

“I heard you, you know.” The pain in Brody’s voice cuts through me.

My fingers clutch the steering wheel tighter to keep from reaching for him.

“I heard you tell Cole you’d come to Columbia with me, back when we didn’t know where I’d end up.

You even being in my life contradicted the plan.

No serious relationships until after I made partner, no distractions.

But, if I went to UMass, I thought I could have both. You would be here and so would I.”

“So what, you allowed me to factor into your decision for law schools, and when you lost your funding, you blamed me?” My head is spinning, and I’ve never been more thankful for the fifteen mile per hour speed limit along the streets of Holly Ridge.

“Yes and no. You were the reason I chose UMass, and I couldn’t let you come with me.”

My mouth opens but no words come out. My brain is whirring too fast to stop on a single thought.

The leather of the wheel creaks under my hands.

My existence screwed up his plan? He couldn’t “let me go with him”?

Did I embarrass him? My small-town, high school graduate self didn’t fit into his perfect vision for his life, so he let me go?

I realize we’re in front of Jitters and I still haven’t said anything. What is there to say, really?

“Austin?” Brody starts, his voice tentative and nervous. It’s trying to reach me across the gap he widened between us with his words, but there’s no rope in the world long enough to reach the other side right now.

“Got it. Now I know. Well, I won’t burden you with my presence anymore tonight. Your stuff’s in the back.” I reach down and pull the lever, knowing I’m being a first-class ass, not even helping him unload everything, but even the thought of looking at him hurts.

“Austin, wait. I don’t think—”

“Goodnight, Brody,” I say, infusing as much finality into my tone as I can muster. My eyes stay trained on the crack in the steering wheel leather. I know he’s looking at me, his gaze hot on the side of my face. Eventually, he pops open the door and gets out.

“Goodnight, Austin,” he says, right before the door closes.

Still, I don’t look up, through the closing of the back hatch and the clunking up the steps in his boots.

It’s quiet enough I hear what might be the door to the studio close.

But still, I keep my eyes trained forward, blurry now with tears I will myself not to shed.

After I know there’s no chance he’s out there watching me, I wipe my eyes and put the Bronco into drive.

The deserted roads and a desire to get home as quickly as possible without going the whole way around the square has me execute a three-point turn to go back the way I came.

And there, in the rearview mirror, a curtain from above the coffee shop twitches closed.