How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,19

feet. “I should get going,” I said. Both of them stared at me, knowing I was lying. “My mom’s expecting me.”

“Oh. Well. You want to take her some cake?” Betty asked. She seemed crestfallen that I was cutting short our visit, and I realized this was just one more thing that was ruined by what Sam and I had done last night. What I had done.

I’d ruined everything I loved. Everything that mattered in my life. Except Wes. Suddenly, I felt outrageously alone. And it was all my own doing.

“No thanks. You keep the cake. Sam’ll eat it. Sam will eat anything,” I said and kissed Betty’s cheek. I grabbed my coat and took the long way around Sam who stood in the middle of the room, dominating the space, taking up all the air with his black knit cap and his frown.

“Merry Christmas, Sam,” I managed to whisper.

“You too, Soph.”

I got out of that trailer like the Grinch was chasing me.

8

Sam

The thing about my job, my old job, was that it was mostly about waiting. The recruiters don’t tell you that. The drill sergeants, when they’re screaming at you, don’t mention it. But by the time your LT is leading you into the darkest of dark, you’re beginning to understand.

The job is about waiting.

That it’s learning how to count backward from a hundred in Farsi and playing twenty million rounds of Never Have I Ever with your spotter. It’s about getting so still and quiet in your brain that the minutes stop feeling like they’re burying you. It’s about waiting so long that action actually feels strange. Waiting so long that training takes over and you’re halfway into action before you even realize what you’re doing.

Stillness and waiting—that was half the job.

And I was so good at it that it was really hard to stop. To remember how to move. To act.

Sophie left the trailer, the sound of her Jeep starting up clear through the snow and the walls of Mom’s trailer.

And I stood there, listening, my head cocked, wondering if there was a problem with her timing belt and thinking I should look at it sometime because she was so bad at taking her Jeep in for service.

“Well, what the hell did you do?” Mom asked, her hands on her hips, her eyes spitting mad.

Something I’ve been trying not to do for five years.

That was the hard-core truth, right there. But I wasn’t telling my mom that. I wasn’t telling anyone that.

“We got in a fight last night,” I said.

Mom made a sound in her throat that meant bullshit.

I took off the black hat and scratched the scar tissue at the back of my head.

“That girl is all alone this year on Christmas—”

“Mom.”

“I was going to invite her to dinner.”

“I know,” I sighed.

The other part of my job? Regret.

I knew more than I wanted to about regret. I knew its face and its size. I knew how it felt like the kickback of a M110 against my shoulder .06 seconds after I pulled the trigger. “You want me to go get her back?”

“I want you to make it right, whatever it was that went wrong.”

I looked up at my mom’s face and I remembered every bit of regret I’d felt as a kid when I couldn’t keep her safe. Not from my dad. Not from poverty. Not from me.

“Oh, honey,” she said, coming forward to touch me. She moved slowly so I could lurch back if I needed to, but I held myself still and let it happen. She touched my cheek and my hand, and her smile was the safest place I knew. “You’re a big dummy.”

I was shocked for a second and then I laughed. “You’re not wrong,” I said. “But to what exactly are you referring?”

“You and Sophie Kane.”

I stiffened. There was no me and Sophie Kane. Never could be. I’d had ten minutes with her in the dark last night and even that was stolen. Stolen time. Stolen touch. My hand clenched against the remembered feel of her, like I could hold the memory tight in my fist. She was not mine to have.

“I’ve been watching you watch her for years now, Sam,” Mom said. I shook my head and she lifted her hands. “That’s all I’m saying. That girl’s alone and I was going to feed her dinner.”

I took a deep breath and held it, letting it out slow. Trying to get my heartbeat to stop pounding. Meditation was supposed to help with