Page 142 of Theirs for the Holidays

I can’t lie to myself and pretend I don’t miss them too.

It doesn’t help that the men clearly aren’t satisfied with just sending me texts. They keep doing things, surprising me with over the top gestures that I never would have expected.

On the day I move the last of my things out of the bakery, I come home to three dozen roses on the doorstep of my house. There aren’t any notes, but each vase has a card with one of the brothers’ initials on it.

There’s a huge snow storm the day after Christmas, and I bundle up and get ready to go outside to clear off my car and shovel my driveway, but when I step outside, I’m shocked to see it’s already been done.

There’s no trace of anyone else there, and it’s early enough in the day that if someone had come that morning, I would have heard them.

I turn to go back in the house, but then see that there’s something in the front seat of my car. When I check it out, it’s coffee, kept warm in an insulated bag, from my favorite coffee shop. And French toast in a Styrofoam container from that place we never got to try because Rhett got hit by the car.

That solves that mystery.

When I get my period right after Christmas, someone knocks on the door. I manage to stagger over to it, only to find a delivery person there with a big bag of supplies. The pads and tampons I prefer, the tea I asked them to get for me the last time, and a few DVDs of movies to watch.

A couple of days later, there’s another delivery, this time with different herbal syrups and some rose and orange blossom water from a brand I never would have been able to afford.

There’s a note from Rhett with that delivery that says “So you can keep experimenting”, and my throat goes tight to read it.

There are so many things like that in the days after Christmas, and I can’t wrap my head around it.

Clearly they want me back. Clearly they want me to know that they’re still here, still thinking about me, but the question is why?

When they could have anyone they wanted. When they could just go back to their lives and pretend none of this ever happened.

Why are they spending so much time trying to do this?

Sometimes I bring up my texts with them, wanting to just ask, but I always chicken out at the last minute. I don’t know what I want the answer to be.

It would be so much easier if they were just willing to let it go, so we could all move on, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

I keep telling myself that they’ll get bored eventually. They’ll get tired of me not responding to their texts and their gestures, and they’ll move on.

But it doesn’t seem to be happening yet.

New Year’s Eve comes before I’m ready for it, and while I’m cleaning my house as I do every year, the doorbell rings.

I open it to find a bottle of champagne and a delivery of sushi from the nice restaurant in the city that I offhandedly mentioned wanting to try once.

There’s a simple card that just says “Happy New Year, Violet,” with no signature, but of course, I know who it’s from.

So I end the year on the couch, drinking champagne and eating sushi, feeling conflicted.

If it was just that the three of them don’t like to lose and want to have this end on their terms, they definitely would have given up by now. I keep waiting for them to be like Andrew, to throw in the towel when they can’t get what they want, but they never do.

In the morning light of the first day of the new year, I have to admit to myself that maybe… maybe Sawyer was right when he said that it was real for them.

Maybe it would be safe for me to believe in it. In them. Maybe I can risk my heart and not end up with it shattered into pieces.

It would be easier to just let this play out and hope that they give up one day, but every time I come home to a new gift, a new gesture that shows how well they know me and how much they’ve been thinking about me, it wears me down a little more. Because in my heart, I can admit that I don’t want to move on. I still care about them. All the feelings that I had before didn’t just go away. I don’t know if they ever could.

It doesn’t help that I also haven’t been able to work at the bakery. I bake at home to try to stave off the tide of missing it, but it’s not the same. I miss interacting with customers and the routine of getting up and going in every morning.

Without the bakery, I don’t have anything else to do, but sit around and think about the guys and wonder if I should reach out.

Of course, there’s also the worry about what I’m going to do for money going forward. I have some savings, since the last few weeks of the bakery’s run were some of the best I’ve ever had since opening it, but they’re not going to last forever.

The thought of getting a nine to five makes me want to cry.