it out from me.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
Because falling in love isn’t on the agenda.
Now or ever.
I cup his face in my hand, my thumb strokes his cheek. “You don’t have to tell me.”
My hand drops away, and I turn to leave.
I don’t get far. Landon gently grabs my hand and hauls me against him. His lips find mine, and he pours whatever he’s thinking into that kiss, my heart speeding up in reply.
After a minute—or an hour, I really have no idea which—Landon pulls away slightly. He returns Santa to the mantel and leads me to the couch. Without a word, he sits and pulls me onto his lap. Whatever he’s contemplating is hidden from his face. All I see is someone who wants to talk but doesn’t know how.
Someone who feels vulnerable…and it’s scaring him.
I straddle his legs. He threads his fingers in my hair, cupping my head with his powerful hands. His vulnerability shines back at me again, and this time it’s me kissing him.
Doing what I can to drive the demons from him.
Doing what I can to say I’m sorry—sorry I indirectly caused him so much pain.
Sorry he had to go through whatever put the demons there to begin with.
His tongue slides along mine. I meet it stroke for stroke. I can’t remember the last time it felt this way to kiss a man, with every nerve in my body a lit fuse.
I keep expecting his hands to start exploring my body, to rip off my clothes. But they don’t. He just keeps kissing me. Driving my body insane with need.
I can’t tell if he’s waiting for me to make a move, allowing me to set the pace after everything I told him, or if he really isn’t interested in going there. For now.
He’s just following my lead as I try to fix the nicks in our armor before everything we’ve built up inside us—the thing that prevents further heartbreak—shatters.
We kiss for a while longer; then he rests his forehead on mine. “I told you I had a serious girlfriend after college. I loved her and figured she was the girl I would one day marry. She was a lot like you when it came to Christmas. She loved to decorate.”
I stare at him for a heartbeat, surprise pulsating through me that he’s telling me this much. But at the same time, icicles form in my veins, spreading throughout my body at his use of past tense, and I can’t help but wonder what happened to her.
A deep sense of foreboding fills me, and I shift off his lap to sit next to him. I cover his hand with mine, wanting to know her story, but also willing to wait until he’s ready to tell me.
If he ever tells me.
“So she was a decorator-holic like me?” I give him a soft smile.
“You could say that. She didn’t even wait for Thanksgiving to be over. As soon as November first hit, the Christmas decorations would begin popping up everywhere.”
His gaze moves around the room, and he releases a slow breath. “Six weeks before Christmas, she wanted to go to a house-warming party with her friends. I wasn’t a huge fan of the women. To be honest, I thought they were stuck-up bitches. I told her that. Told her I didn’t want her to go to the party.” His eyes return to me. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go down too well. She told me off, told me she was her own boss and didn’t need me thinking I could control her life.”
“Did she break up with you because of that?”
“No, she went to the party with her friends. I was playing in a competitive hockey league at the time, like I am now. My team had a game that night. I can’t even remember who we were playing or if we won. I had no idea she’d gone to the party.”
That deep sense of foreboding? It switches to dread—I have a feeling I know what he’s going to say next.
But I’m wrong.
“Her friends quickly grew bored of the party, but Sarah was still talking to a colleague of hers. So they ditched my girlfriend and went out for drinks elsewhere.
“Sarah had driven with them. Instead of calling me to pick her up—even though she knew my game would be over by then—she decided to walk the short distance home.
“Some guys at a local frat party saw her leave and followed her. They