“His name is Chris,” Winter said. “As in my Chris and I’m hoping you and dad are okay with us dating.” Winter felt as though she was holding her breath waiting for her mother to answer.
“Chris Shepley?” her mother asked.
“Yes, Mom,” Winter said. “We’ve been seeing each other for a few months and well, we didn’t want to make things awkward by just showing up together for the holidays.” God, she was an awful liar. If her mother had been there in person, she’d be able to tell that Winter was lying and she was suddenly thankful for the miles that separated them.
“I have to say that this is probably the best Christmas gift you could have given to me and your father,” her mother gushed.
“Great, so I’m off the hook for a present then?” Winter teased.
“Yep,” her mother agreed. “Unfortunately, you’ll both have to stay on the old sofa bed in the den. I’m afraid that your sisters have already claimed all the bedrooms. I’m assuming you’ll be staying with us since Chris’s parents will be out of town over the holiday.” Shit, shit, shit. Yeah, Chris had forgotten to tell her that little bit of information.
“Where are they going again?” Winter asked, trying to act cool.
“A cruise to the Bahamas,” her mother said. “They are embracing the whole empty nest syndrome. When Chris called to tell them that he wasn’t going to make it home for Christmas a few days back, they booked their dream vacation. I guess you only live once, right? What changed Chris’s mind about coming home?” her mother questioned. This was the reason why she didn’t want to lie to her parents. One lie turned into many and that would have her tongue-tied and flustered.
“Um, I think that he was supposed to work over the holidays but then he was able to get off the whole week. His mom and dad probably couldn’t change their tickets, so he agreed to come home with me,” Winter lied. She wasn’t sure if she was up to five or six lies now in their short phone call but she knew that the number was growing quickly.
“Well, you are both welcome here—assuming you’ll both be able to share the sofa bed,” her mother said. She wanted to shout, “No,” as loudly as possible but that would only make her look like even more of a liar.
“Sure,” she lied again. “We’d love to.” Yeah, she was going to have to start taking notes to be able to keep up with the long list of lies she was telling.
“Oh, Winter,” her mother gushed. “This is such good news.”
“Thanks, mom. Listen, I’ve got to run. Chris is coming over with pizza and we’re going to watch a movie,” she lied.
“How fun,” her mom said. “Tell Chris we send our love.”
“Will do, Mom,” Winter agreed. “Night.”
“Goodnight, Honey,” her mom said and ended the call.
“Shit,” Winter grumbled and tossed her cell onto her sofa as if it offended her. She possibly just made the biggest mistake of her life but there would be no turning back now. She was going to have to pretend her ass off to get through this Christmas season.
Chris
Chris still wasn’t ready to tell Winter all of what his plan entailed. Sure, he had lied to his parents and told them that he wasn’t going to make it home. That gave him the entire week to spend with Winter. It gave him a whole week to convince her to give him a chance. It also gave him one week to persuade both Winter and Luke to try something unconventional—something that might have them all finding happiness that seemed to elude the three of them. They were due some happiness and he was pretty sure that he’d find his with his best friend and the sexy man who so easily cast him off after college. How it was going to all work, he didn’t know but he had to try. Chris was hoping that by New Year’s Eve, he’d be ringing in the next year with them both in his bed and he was pretty sure that would make for one fantastic resolution.
They still had three more days to get through until he and Winter made the trip home. Since the night that he called her, last week, all but demanding that she call her parents and tell them that she was bringing him home for the holidays, Winter had been avoiding him. She took her break at the department store at odd hours so that he wouldn’t be able to walk into the breakroom to find her, pretending that he didn’t have a clue that he’d find her there. She even took off a couple of days, saying that she had something last minute come up but not giving him much in the way of details. Winter would smile and tell him that she was “fine,” that everything was “great,” but he could see straight through her. Chris was always able to read Winter and when she wasn’t sure about something or was overthinking things, she tended to hide from the world.
Sure, he had given her a lot to think about but watching her retreat from him felt like a punch in the gut. He all but told her that he wanted to find more and hell, he told her he wanted that with her. She just couldn’t see past the fact that he wanted it with another person in the mix too. Maybe that made him greedy but he wouldn’t apologize for what he said. She asked him if he could see himself five years down the road, what he wanted his life to look like, and he answered honestly. He was always honest with Winter—sometimes to a fault and having her push him away now hurt. It was time to get a few things straight between them before they headed back to San Francisco. The last thing he wanted was for this ugly tension to be hanging between them over Christmas. He didn’t want to ruin Winter or her family’s Christmas just because he pushed her into something that she either wasn’t ready for or didn’t want.
He pulled into the parking garage at her apartment and found a space to park. Her place wasn’t bad, just small. He tried to convince her to move into his place but she turned him down flat, saying that she liked her own space. He knew it was her way of avoiding feelings that she didn’t want to admit she had for him. Chris saw the way Winter looked at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. Now, he was finally doing something about his wanting her and Winter was pretending that she didn’t feel the same. He was going to face her tonight and call bullshit and if Winter continued to push him out of her life, he’d find a way to give her the space she seemed to be needing. He just hoped like hell that she stopped pushing and started to open to the possibilities that he saw for them.
He pushed the button for the elevator and after waiting for what felt like an eternity, he decided to take the steps up to her fourth-floor apartment. By the time he got to her door, he was out of breath, panting for air and the damn elevator doors dinged and opened as if taunting him. And, of course, Winter stepped off the elevator and found him standing breathless, disheveled and probably looking like a lunatic, ready to pound on her door.
“Chris,” she said, “what are you doing here?” she almost whispered. She looked him up and down and there was that damn desire in her eyes again. He wasn’t imagining it—he couldn’t be.
“When you look at me like that, Winter, you confuse the hell out of me,” he admitted. She pulled her keys from her purse and turned her attention to getting her door unlocked and open. Chris worried that once she got into her place, she’d find some excuse to shut him back out again. The last thing he planned on doing was having a conversation in the hallway through her apartment door.