Page 71 of Mistletoe and Mayday

“Bailey!” Her voice crackles with panic. “Are you okay? I’ve been calling for days!”

“Still breathing. Leg’s busted, but it’ll heal.” I press the phone harder against my ear, as if I could pull her through it.

“I’m so sorry I can’t be there. We’re stuck in Paris—earliest flight is tomorrow.”

“It’s fine. You don’t need to worry.” What else can I say? That I wish it were her here instead of my parents because she’d understand without explanations? That she’d see the Sebastian-shaped hole in my chest without me having to point it out?

“If you need anything—anything—just say the word. Better room, specialists, whatever it takes.”

I want Sebastian. But even you can’t help me with that.

My eyes burn. Everyone is trying to fix everything when the only broken part that matters can’t be set in a cast.

“I’m good,” I choke out. “Really. Don’t?—”

A shadow falls across my bed. I look up, and time stops.

Sebastian.

I hang up on Cora mid-sentence, our eyes locking across the sterile hospital air.

“Mr. Lockhart!” Mom’s earrings go into strobe mode as she teleports to his side. “We can’t thank you enough for saving our daughter.”

Sebastian shifts his weight, his gaze ping-ponging between my mother’s flashing jewelry and my face. “Mrs. Monroe, please, she saved me.”

Dad ambushes him from the other side, thrusting the Tupperware at Sebastian’s chest. “Cookies. Bailey’s favorite since she was in pigtails.”

Sebastian accepts the container. “Thank you, Sir.”

“Sir? Ha!” Dad claps Sebastian’s shoulder hard enough to wrinkle Italian wool. “Call me Joe. Any man who fights off wolves with my daughter gets to drop the formalities.”

Mom’s already arranging cookies on a fresh napkin. “You must try one. Family recipe. Bailey would steal the dough by the spoonful when she thought I wasn’t looking.”

The perfect mask slips as Sebastian bites into a cookie. A genuine smile tugs at his mouth, the one I’ve only seen by firelight. “These are incredible, Mrs. Monroe.”

“Samantha, please! And take more for your trip home. You’re nothing but sharp angles in that suit.” She stuffs cookies into his hands like he’s a starving child.

I want to disintegrate into the hospital sheets because he’s looking at me over my mother’s Santa-earringed head with something that cracks my ribcage open. Longing or regret or both.

“Your daughter is extraordinary,” he says, and my pulse stumbles. “The way she handled the crash... I wouldn’t be here without her.”

Mom beams like she personally taught me to fly planes. “Our Bailey’s always been special.”

“Yes,” Sebastian says. “She is.”

For a heartbeat, he’s back—my Sebastian, the man who whispered I wasn’t too much as snow piled against our cabin window. The one who understood.

“There you are.”

Reality crashes back with the voice from the doorway. Rebecca stands framed in the entrance, diamonds dripping from her ears, radiating perfection. Her gaze sweeps over me like I’m part of the hospital furniture before landing on Sebastian.

The cookie crumbles in his grip.

His mask slides back into place so fast I almost miss it. “I apologize, but I need to go.” His voice hardens into something corporate and distant. “The jet is waiting.”

His eyes find mine for a fragment of a second, and I see it—everything he can’t say with Rebecca hovering in the doorway like a designer vulture.

“Of course,” Mom chirps, oblivious to the tension crackling between us like a downed power line. “You must be eager to get home.”