wine first then so we can get started?”
“By all means.”
29
Hudson
I wasn’t sure what to expect with how secretive Lilly had been all afternoon, but it certainly wasn’t that she’d deck out my home for Christmas on a shoestring budget.
The Christmas tree was pathetic looking, crooked with limbs you could tell had been abused over the years. It curved to one side and the lights on it flickered sporadically, on the verge of blinking out completely.
The rest of the decorations were sparse, and yet she thought of everything down to the candles that were giving off a perfect cinnamon scent. Hell, she’d even flipped on the fireplace and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was playing through my sound system.
The perfect song, because all I wanted was her, and yet my curiosity was piqued at the beautifully wrapped present sitting beneath the tree.
I filled our wine and while Lilly took her first sip, I kissed her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
After all, I had presents of my own to give her.
In my bedroom, I reached beneath my bed where I’d hidden her presents, gift-wrapped from the stores. I was a pretty damn intelligent man. Capable of basic homeownership remodeling. I could wield a hammer and screwdriver and drill with the best of them. When it came to taping and folding wrapping paper, I became all thumbs.
Back in the living room, Lilly was on the couch, feet curled beneath her like usual and her gaze was on the fire.
But she wasn’t there.
For all of her excitement and teasing earlier, she might have been sitting on my couch but the woman was miles away, a glazed expression as she watched the flames from the electric fireplace.
It was then I noticed the stack of papers on the coffee table. I set her presents beneath the tree, keeping my eyes on her as I moved. She didn’t so much as blink as I walked in front of her. Taking my place next to her, I reached for the stack of what I noticed weren’t papers, but envelopes, wrapped in a strip of linen cloth that was fraying and falling apart. Some of the letters were old enough they had started to yellow. Others were torn at the edges, like they’d been opened and read and reused over time.
“What is this?”
“Letters I sent my parents when I was in prison.”
Her voice went cold and monotone.
“Why are they out?”
She held a glass of wine in her hand like she forgot she had it at all. Lilly had told me about the letters, that she’d written her parents, but she’d never said she kept them, just that they were returned.
All of that familiar anger I felt whenever I thought of her parents, what they not only did to her but what they allowed to have happen to her bubbled in my gut.
When I first stepped into my home and saw what she’d done for me—for us—this was not at all how I considered the night would go.
“Lilly—”
She set down her wine and twisted so she was facing me. Pressing her knees to my thigh, my hand fell to them, sliding up and down her denim-covered legs.
“Because I wanted tonight to be the night I said goodbye to them. And I wanted you with me for it, it’s just… taking me a minute to be prepared to do so, I think.”
She should have said goodbye to them the moment her dad told her to take the fall for something she didn’t do.
I bit my tongue to keep from saying it out loud and waited until she was ready to tell me more.
When she only rested her head on my shoulder and let out a sigh, I bent forward. “Can I see them?”
“I reread them earlier. So stupid. I spent the first year begging for their forgiveness. I wrote fifteen letters apologizing for killing Josh, begging my dad to help me get out. Then, I started pleading with them to write me back, to come and see me. I begged parents who essentially threw me in jail themselves to come and see me. What kind of stupid, stupid person does something like that?”
My hand tangled in her hair and I brushed through her curls. Her pulse thundered a rapid pace at her throat while she all but burrowed into me.
“You’re not stupid. You were a teenage girl who wanted to be loved, Lilly. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except for seven years, I never got that memo. For seven years