Two, he’d completely decimated a sixteen-year friendship.
And three, Soren Christopher Traeger Rudolph was wholly unworthy of love.
Yes, he’d been a wreck after Tom shared that Lori was pregnant.
Yes, he’d jumped to the conclusion that Tom’s only motivation to wed was tied to the obligation he owed to the child.
And yes, while he did contact the strippers, he hadn’t remembered doing it. That was the God’s honest truth. But he wasn’t surprised he’d done it. He’d already been out of sorts about the wedding—not to mention his yo-yoing emotions when it came to the maid of honor. Tom’s baby bomb had thrown him for a loop, and a big stripper blowout seemed like the only card he had to play. It was a stupid, drunken decision. But he’d done it, and he had to own it because that was who he was at his core.
Just like his mother.
Just like his father.
Selfish and self-serving.
He’d used the Abbotts’ acceptance as a mask—a way to play the part of a good person. If they cared for him, he couldn’t be all bad, right?
Wrong.
He’d held on to that false prophecy for far too long.
There was a reason he didn’t practice law after graduating from law school—a reason why he chose to build a business that made money hand over fist tearing other companies apart. It was his true nature. He was a taker. He took and took until there was nothing left but what fell into his greedy hands.
He’d taken Tom’s friendship and fed it to a shredder. He’d taken the Abbotts’ affection and turned a blowtorch to it.
No more Uncle Scooter. No more holidays circled around the kitchen table playing scrabble or putting together one of the kids’ LEGO sets.
He’d come full circle. From this point on, during the holidays, he’d sit alone in a room surrounded by expensive things. At least when he was a kid, he’d spent those dreary holidays with a maid or a nanny. Now, he’d have only his own miserable company.
And what of her? Bridget Dasher, not your average vixen. Not by a long shot.
He had to hurt her—had to sever the connection between them. It was his only choice after seeing the heart-wrenching pain in her eyes. She cared for him deeply—more than he ever deserved. For a beautiful moment, he thought he could be hers. He believed that he could shed the Traeger Rudolph heartlessness and shield her from the part of him that dwelled in darkness.
Had he told her that he wanted to change, that he wanted to make it right with Tom and Lori, she would have stood by his side. She would have vouched for him, had he asked.
That was the heartbreaking beauty of her soul. That was her radiant goodness. He’d seen it the first night they spent together in the hotel, cocooned in anonymity, far away from the truth of who he was.
She was all sweet chocolatey kisses and bright twinkling eyes.
He was one-night stands, power suits, and bank statements.
A soulless Grinch of a scoundrel.
He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to keep out the world and give himself one more moment of tortured solitude before he had to put together the pieces of what came next.
“Is he awake, or is he talking in his sleep?” a man asked as the sound of clinking silverware and the clank of plates being stacked dialed up in his hazy, half-awake state.
“Let him rest! You all swindled the poor thing at poker last night. The least you could do is allow him to sleep.”
“It’s nearly three in the afternoon, and he’s the one who finished off the whiskey, then ate the gingerbread house.”
“He ate it? That gingerbread house was for decoration. I’m pretty sure one of Frank’s grandchildren made it with glue,” the woman replied.
What the hell was going on out there?
Soren swallowed again. Yep, glue would explain the severe cottonmouth.
This is what hitting rock bottom looked like. A man who’d wolfed down an ornamental gingerbread house sprawled out on a couch in a retirement community populated by ex Santas in the middle of nowhere, Colorado.
Could he just sleep until the new year?
“Should we give him the Kringle drunk tank treatment?” a man asked as a rush of frigid air whooshed into the room.
“The what?” he exclaimed, bolting upright, hangover be damned.
The only thing that could make this situation more pathetic was spending Christmas Eve in a cell cooped up with a bunch of hungover