Page 140 of Under the Mistletoe with You

And he’s believed that was a universal truth for so long that he closed off that part of himself, too scared to show his own vulnerabilities to someone who could love him lest that person throw it back in his face.

Alongside that sharp pain is the waning of friendships, people who have loved and cared for him in vulnerable moments.Yes, perhaps due to a lack of tending by him, but also other things like geography and changing personalities.But his personal life has quietly felt like a place of loss, fast and slow, of people still living but moving forward and away from him for so long now.It makes him feel ever more stuck.

He’d become an island.And he’s just realising that he’d been starting to consider a change.A bridge to land of sorts.

What he’s frankly terrified of is that Christopher might be someone who could choose to love him not in spite of his differences and difficulties, butalongsidethem.They might spark and bite and snap, but he sees Nash as a whole person, and hasn’t backed away.

He knows, deep down, that he would stay, or ask Christopher to follow, if one of them was brave enough to ask and the other to agree, but then he would never want Christopher to accept.So that would be two people’s dreams-in-progress destroyed, and for what?A glimmer of lust?Foolish hope?Or, instead, something that could grow to be so much more if they just tended it?

God, he’s going to miss him.He misses him already, and they’re just across the room from each other, Nash on the stairs and Christopher gently spotting the edge of a gingerbread roof with red and white.He could watch him forever.

And when he looks up, there’s just this huge, unafraid smile on Christopher’s lips that Nash wants to kiss and kiss and kiss.

The truth of the matter, which he doesn’t want to look at too closely, is that Nash is going to have to break two hearts to leave.

But not tonight.

He wants one last night when they can just be Christopher and Nash, whatever that means.Another night where he can pretend it’s not almost over.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Christopher

Christopher wakes in an empty bed.

They had been up late, far later than he’d expected Nash to want to be after his Christmas Day seizures, but he had insisted that he hadn’t been tired, some kind of sleep cycle thing.So, they’d watched movies and kissed and eaten yet more leftovers, and when Christopher had shown Nash the gingerbread house, he’d taken photos and even told him how good it was.Kind of a perfect evening really, especially because they got to eat the gingerbread house, something he hasn’t been able to do in decades, what with his mother always offering them up to Christmas fêtes over the years rather than letting him enjoy them.

He stretches out, his hand finding the cool of the sheets where Nash usually is.Hopefully he’s not constructing another gym somewhere.

Karma/Felix/Paddington is curled up around his feet, and grunts in protest at being disturbed, presumably for the second time this morning.

‘Do you want some breakfast, cat?’Their eyes prick up slightly, and he takes that for a yes.

While Nash was sleeping yesterday, Christopher had managed to drop off some supplies at the community centre, only to be presented with several pouches of wet cat food from Tamara, whose own cat had shuffled off this mortal coil several months ago.That saved him yet another trip to a shop, though realistically he’s going to have to go today.Godknows what food is even left, and even if the cat is an obligate carnivore, he’s not sure how long he and Nash can live off leftover lamb alone.

He finds Nash in the kitchen making coffee, dressed fully, with his hair properly done for the first time in a few days.Perhaps he’s feeling a bit more himself today.The cat, who looks particularly tiny next to Nash’s broadness, weaves around his ankles.

‘Morning,’ Christopher says, leaning against the door frame.

It’s a curious look that passes over Nash’s face.He looks happy to see Christopher, he’s pretty sure, but there’s something else there in the eyes.

‘What?Do I really look that terrible?’Christopher laughs.

‘You look lovely,’ Nash says softly, kissing him on the cheek, which sets Christopher’s alarms running even louder.

Something tells him not to look at the stairs, to stay focussed on Nash and this cat they’ve taken in.But he does turn, and there, he sees a suitcase.Nash’s suitcase.

His heart is beating so loudly that it thunders in his ears in desperate pleas.

‘What’s going on?’

Nash closes his eyes.‘I have to go.’

‘Go?Now?’

‘Yes.There’s a car coming for me, and I’m flying home to LA in a few hours.’

Christopher’s mouth is dry and he’s begging himself to wake up because this has to be a dream.It cannot be right that Nash is leaving right now?