When their welcome home hug turned into a welcome home make-out session, my cousins began cheering and calling out scores. I couldn’t help but laugh, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Despite having a decent group of guy friends back home, I’d never been in such a fun, welcoming group as this one with so many examples of healthy relationships. It was easy to let the affection in the room wash over me, and I wondered, not for the first time, if it would ever be my turn to find something as special as many of my cousins had found.
After a giant round of introductions during which Ginger almost fainted from fangirling and Hallie, one of the middle Wilde sisters, almost fainted from Tiller’s sheer hotness, we settled down to finish the big breakfast. I took the opportunity to glance around at all of the faces of my new-ish extended family.
You would have loved this, Mom.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and dug in.
“Finally, a true white Christmas,” Charlie said, holding his hands out to catch the few flakes coming down as we exited the passenger vans at the Christmas tree farm. “Not many white Christmases in Ireland. The most we get is a dusting.”
Hudson held out the gloves Charlie had forgotten in his haste to exit the van. “Put these on, or your hands will be white, too,” he warned.
Charlie’s long red hair blew around his face, and his grin made his eyes bright. “As if you know snow any more than I do, Hudson Wilde.”
“We get snow,” he said defensively.
“Pfft,” Hudson’s sister Sassy said, flitting past him with her bright-red scarf wrapped snugly around her neck. “Hardly. And you lived in Dallas for several years, remember? It rarely snows there at all.”
“Back in my day,” Grandpa began, but the rest of his story about walking uphill in snow both ways to school was drowned out by the sound of everyone within earshot groaning. Doc looped his arm through Grandpa’s and leaned his head against his husband’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll listen to your boring old stories any day of the week.”
“Mpfh.” Grandpa grumbled before turning to press a kiss against Doc’s forehead.
As I watched everyone spread out to assess the lay of the land and head down different paths through the trees, I realized Darius had been right about another thing. It was much easier to handle all of my outgoing cousins when we were engaged in an activity.
“This way,” AJ said, leaning in to speak softly enough that no one besides Dante and me would hear. “I know the secret stash of perfect trees.”
I followed them all the way down the path past row after row of trees. The light snow flurry was just enough to make the Christmas tree farm a little magical but not too much to make it hard to see. Like Charlie, I hadn’t experienced white Christmases either. I’d grown up in California, and my time in the snow had been kept to irregular visits to Tahoe for skiing.
This was vastly different from the larger town of Lake Tahoe. Aster Valley, including the ranch with the Christmas tree farm on it, was nestled in a narrow valley between two mountain ridgelines. The eastern side held Rockley Lodge and the ski slopes, and the western side supposedly had more private residences. Without the vast expanse of the lake, Aster Valley seemed somehow cozier and more intimate than Tahoe.
What I’d seen so far of it, I’d really liked. I wondered what it would be like to have one of the houses on the mountainside that looked out over the valley below. AJ’s family lived in a house like that, and Tilly had mentioned the view. I imagined how small we would look from above, meandering slowly among the trees.
“Daddddeeeee!” I recognized the child’s scream from off to my right. It was a sound of terror coming from Jude and Derek’s son. All of us went running in that direction, imagining the worst.
When we got to the row where Wolfe was now sobbing into Derek’s neck, we realized the source of the little boy’s fear. Someone very large was dressed up as Frosty the Snowman, and the costume was disturbingly menacing on such a large person. Clearly, the person in the suit was horrified they’d scared little Wolfe, so they tried apologizing and patting Wolfe’s back which only scared the kid more. “I’m sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Get the fu—uh-udge away from him,” Derek growled at the overgrown snowman.
Jude became the peacemaker. “We’ll take care of it from here. He’s just easily overwhelmed by large… cartoon… characters.”
Granny wasn’t so polite. She took her handbag and swung it around at the snowman’s fluffy white ass. “They’re telling you to fuck off, Snowy. Get lost. Who the hell scares the bejeebers out of a kid like that? Psychopaths, that’s who.”
Dante leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I’ve never been able to figure out why she’ll use the f-word one minute and then a word like bejeebers the next.”
I bit my lip against a laugh.
The snowman suddenly seemed to notice he was surrounded by at least thirty adults related to the child he’d inadvertently scared. He began backing away slowly with his paws up. “Easy… easy now. I only smiled at him, I swear!”
“Sam? What’s this I hear about you having a surprise for…” An adorkable young man in a bow tie came hustling over to the scary snowman. He took in the scene with a single glance and shot us a nervous smile of apology. “Oh. Oh, wow. Babe, when I suggested tapping into my costume collection for later, I was thinking more gladiators.”
The snowman rolled his eyes to the sky. “Now you tell me.”
“Sam… I mean Frosty… means well, I promise,” Bow-tie-man assured us. “He just doesn’t understand that when you’re as tall as he is, a snowman with a big smile looks less like less like Olaf from Frozen and more like… well, a terrifying, man-eating yeti.”
“Truman’s right. I’d never intentionally frighten a kid.” Sam the snowman sounded remorseful.
“No harm done,” Derek said grudgingly as Wolfe peeked his head out and smiled.
“Let’s go home, baby,” Truman suggested, patting Sam’s arm. He lowered his voice just slightly. “I’m not sure I’ve ever told you this, but I kinda have a thing for terrifying, man-eating yetis.”
Sam snorted. “Is that so?”
“Mmhmm. I’ll let you scare the pants right off me,” Truman assured him.
Once he’d hustled the snow menace away from the children, we all scattered again to find the perfect tree, even though there was an unspoken agreement little Wolfe would be the one selecting the tree today. Thankfully, his dads helped make sure it was the right size for the spot Mikey had designated.
After an incredibly long family portrait session, we returned to the lodge to discover a large spread of lunch foods and hot drinks set out for us.
I helped fix plates for Granny and Irene, who had to have been tired from all the walking and waiting in the cold, and then I got myself a bowl of shrimp and grits along with another piece of homemade bread.
Once I’d eaten it all, I secretly wondered if it would be appropriate to claim nap time. For the sake of the older ladies, obviously.
But as everyone finished their meals, I somehow ended up with little Reenie in my arms. She was rosy-cheeked and adorably dead asleep, which meant I didn’t dare even breathe for fear of waking her. Nico came over to check on his daughter, crouching down in front of my chair and brushing a wisp of hair off her forehead.