Cruel Winter with You (Under the Mistletoe collection)

It’s clear that the storm won’t ease up until tomorrow, and I decide to spend the night at Marc’s. The two things are, surprisingly, completely unrelated—even though that’s not the story I spin for Dad when I call to let him know that I won’t be able to make it home.

“As long as when you guys come over tomorrow morning, you bring the pan,” he tells us, a little concerned for the future of his baked ham.

Marc’s eyebrow shoots up, and I end the call before Dad can overhear him say that he should “stop playing fast and loose with my girlfriend’s safety.”

Until an hour ago, I thought he was over me, and now he’s calling me his girlfriend. This relationship has escalated very quickly, and my heart feels like fireworks.

“Marc, in case you are considering buying my dad a whole set of pans—”

“Absolutely not.” He pulls me into him, chin grazing the crown of my hair. The Comptons have never been a particularly affectionate family, but he can’t seem to stop touching me. “Your father’s lack of a copper pan brought you to me and fixed the shittiest misunderstanding of my entire life. I’m going to do my best to make sure that this man spends the rest of his life as pan-less as possible.” I feel his smile. “Also, ham might be my new favorite food.”

“Is this a good time to remind you that you’re a vegetarian?”

“Hush,” he murmurs, and drags me upstairs to his room while outside, the storm still whistles fiercely. It’s been about ten years since I’ve been in it, but it hasn’t changed much. His vinyls and record player are still in what Tabitha named “the hipster corner,” and his high school trophies sit on the bookshelf, a little dusty. The biggest difference, the one that has my breath catching, is in the way he pulls me onto his twin bed with him.

It’s a first. And I should be embarrassed, or nervous, but being here with him feels like the most natural thing in the world. He’s a large man, and it’s a tight fit, one that requires me lying half on top of him, but I don’t mind. I inhale his clean, familiar scent, and I expect—no, I hope, I pray—that the fingers drawing circles on my lower back will get bold and slide under my sweater, but for a long while he doesn’t do much more than stroke my hair.

“What will your sister say?” I ask him after a moment, trying not to feel too impatient.

“About?”

“This. Us. Will she be shocked?”

“Tab?” He snorts. “I doubt it. She’s always known that you and I have a special relationship. She’s the who told you how I felt, remember?”

I do remember. “Is it in there, still?”

“What?”

I point at the desk. “The box. With the pictures.”

“No,” he scoffs.

“Oh.” I’m a little disappointed.

Until he adds, “The box has moved with me, Jamie. To every single address.”

“Oh.” I swallow. “Did you . . . The one you took of me in a prom dress. Did you ever . . .”

“Print it? No. But . . .” With some maneuvering, he slides his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. The background is . . .

“No.”

“Yup.” His lips press against my temple. “I put it there the second I took it. And then . . . occasionally, I’d switch it out with something else, but after a few months I’d always go back to it. That’s why I never thought of you as the one who got away, Jamie. You said that’s all you were to me, back on your birthday, but that’s just not true. Because for you to get away, I would have needed to let go of you. And I never wanted that.”

My heart beats in my throat. I burrow in closer.

“It’s not puppy love, either. There is nothing innocent about the way I want you. And as soon as the tequila is out of your body, I’ll show you.”

“Marc, I’m not drunk.” It’s the truth. I may not be able to walk a tightrope, but . . . it’s not like I have great balance in the first place. And my judgment is in no way impaired.

“Shh.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m very clear-headed.”

“Maybe tomorrow we can—”

I let my hand slip under his shirt, spread wide against his warm skin. And then I allow it to dip under the waistband of his jeans.

Marc’s breath hitches. “Jamie . . .”

“If you don’t want it,” I say before my courage runs out, “that’s totally fine. I can wait, or . . . we can talk about it. But if all that’s stopping you is that you think I’m not in the position to make a choice, then I need you to know that I’ve never been surer than—”

That’s all the reassurance he must have needed. Because he flips us around, and a second later, Marc Compton is on top of me, dark hair falling on his forehead as he kisses me with his whole heart, my mouth and my neck and my jaw. He says my name a million times, in a million different ways that only mean one single thing. Then he finally does slide that hand under my sweater, and even though the wind whooshes outside, concepts like cold and snow are so removed from me, I cannot remember if I’ve ever experienced anything but this rising, all-consuming heat.

His muscular thigh slides between mine, deliciously invasive. His fingers unclasp my bra, and his rough palms rub across my nipples. I arch, about to fully melt into the pleasure of his touch, but an old calculus textbook catches the corner of my eye, and . . .

“Is this weird?” I ask him.

Marc lifts his head, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, almost out of breath. “Jamie, believe me. Nothing—nothing—in my life has ever felt less weird than staring at your breasts.”

“No, I mean . . . the bed? Doing this in your old room? Are we defiling your wholesome childhood memories or something?”

He mulls it over. Nods. Then says, all business, “You’re right. Let’s move to Tabitha’s room.”

“Oh. Um . . . I’m not sure that . . .”

“You’re right, that’s crazy. My parents’ bed is larger.”

I gasp. And when I realize that he’s messing with me, I pinch his side.

“Jamie,” he tells me between laughter, “pretty unspeakable things have happened in here, and pretty much all of them had something to do with you. The defiling you mentioned has long taken place.” I try to kick him in the shins, but we’re pressed too close, his strong arms gathering me to him, and after a moment he’s once again panting against my neck, and my jaw slackens as he takes off my clothes and kisses me everywhere, chest and belly button and inner thigh, and then, when I’m biting my lower lip so hard that I might draw blood, large sweeps of his tongue on my clit, right where I need him.

I lose all focus. Comb my fingers in his hair to hold on to something and dissolve in a hazy, pleasure-addled kind of state. He makes me come so many times, I lose count. And when I tell him that I can’t take it anymore, he gives me a small break, only long enough for a hushed conversation about birth control and protection, in which we both admit how very little sex we’ve been having—we’ve been interested in having—in the last few months. Or maybe years.

“I was getting so close to having the company right where I wanted it, to be able to come to you, and . . .” His lips slide against mine. “God, Jamie. I couldn’t think of anything but you.”

I’m eager. Impatient. Losing track of time. Once we’re both naked, I want him as close to me as possible and I grab at his sweat-slick skin in a silent plea to hurry, to seal this before it can slip through our fingers once again. It’s not as easy as I hoped, though.

His hands twine with mine on each side of my head, and all I wish for is him, inside me. But even though I’m very wet and he’s very hard, it just doesn’t seem to work. “Come on, Jamie,” he whispers against my jaw after a few blunt, stilted thrusts. “Relax. Let it happen. Didn’t you say that ten inches isn’t that much?”

I laugh. He grins. My entire body glows with love for him, and miraculously we are able to fit.

“Fuck,” he whispers in hushed tones against my throat. “Oh, fuck. Jamie, I knew that you’d . . . but . . . Fuck.”

It’s a little disjointed, the way we grind against each other. At the beginning there is a burn, but it quickly turns into something so good, I have no words to describe it. My constant worry, the fear of being abandoned, the anxiety of not being enough—I’m so full of Marc, there’s just no room for any of that inside me. A large hand wraps around my knee, bringing it up to widen me, and then he rocks so deep, I know I can take everything he wants to give me and more. His control snaps, thrusts that are shallow, then deep, then erratic. Elbows on the mattress, hands cupping my face, I feel the upward spiraling of the toe-curling pleasure, the incipient trembling in my thighs, the pooling tears.

It’s all soft praises. Low words. His mouth, open against mine, deep, new and familiar. Spine-licking shudders and bruising grips. It’s all the best thing I’ve ever felt.

We could have had months of this, I think. Or maybe I say it out loud.

“Jamie.” His voice is rough. “It’s okay. We’re going to have decades of it.”

We come together, and it’s like falling from the tallest building into the deepest sea. I am overwhelmed after, trying to recover, wondering if this is what sex with Marc will always be. Then wondering if it’s just what sex is like when it’s mixed with love. Full of eagerness and desperation and laughter. And long moments later, when the sweat is cooling and our bodies stick together in too many places to count, when we’re safe under the comforter and about to fall asleep, when my nose nuzzles against the skin behind his ear, he speaks to me.

“I’ve already told you I love you,” he says. “Back on your birthday, and . . . I think it was too much, too soon. I know you. I know why you’re scared. So I won’t say it again. I can wait and be patient. But make no mistake, Jamie. Next year, when we fly home for the holidays, we’re going to do it together. We’ll show up at your dad’s at the same time. We’ll sleep in the same room—either here or in yours. Everyone is going to know that you’re mine and I’m yours. And before we fall asleep, you’ll let me say it.”

My tears are so quiet, I doubt he’d know I’m crying if they weren’t falling on his skin. “Marc?” I say against his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Next year, before we fall asleep . . .” I let my fingers slide into the short hair at the back of his head. “I’m going to say it back.”

The grandfather clock downstairs rings midnight.

“Merry Christmas,” I whisper.

Marc says nothing back, but I feel his smile against my cheek.