Shannon Stacey - Mistletoe & Margaritas

His shoulders hunched under his coat as he waited for the accusations and recriminations from the woman who’d been a second mother to him. He wouldn’t try to defend what he’d done or hide from the pain. He deserved to hurt as much as she did. More. Because he’d betrayed her, too.

“I’ve loved you like a son, Justin. The boys. That’s how Phil and I always referred to you. The boys. You were probably closer than any real brothers could have been. And he’s gone now.”

The agony in her voice and in her eyes made his heart clench and his throat close up until he could barely breathe. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

“But I still have you. I still have one of my boys and I have Claire, who will always be a second daughter to me. And seeing the two of you like this hurts me.”

He shook his head, his hands curling into fists in his pockets. He didn’t want her soft words and compassionate tears. She should be angry. She should pound her fists on his chest and yell at him for betraying her son’s memory-for betraying Brendan’s friendship.

Instead, she stepped forward and opened her arms, but he shook his head again. His vision blurred with unshed tears as she cradled his cheek with one of her hands.

“I get through each day by believing my son is in some wonderful better place,” she said softly, but firmly. “I believe he can feel my love for him and, since I believe that, I also have to believe he can feel your pain. He loved you and Claire so much. Both of you hurting would make him unhappy.”

“I slept with his wife,” he whispered, and she dropped her hand.

She stepped around him and set the bouquet of cheery flowers at the base of her son’s headstone. He watched her shoulders move under her coat as she took a deep breath and ran her fingers over Brendan’s name.

Then she shoved her hands in her pockets and faced Justin again. “You have to stop telling yourself that. You have to stop believing it. You slept with Claire. You slept with the woman you love and who loves you and, as trite as it might sound, Brendan would want you both to move on. To be happy.”

He might as well tell her the rest of it. Before she wished him any more happiness, she deserved to know it all. “I’ve always loved her, Mrs. R., even before he…before the accident.”

“If I believed for a second you had in any way betrayed my son, I wouldn’t be able to look at your face, Justin McCormick. You know that, don’t you?”

He nodded until she held his face between her hands again and made him look at her. “You can’t choose who you love. And you can’t will it away.”

“I tried. I tried not to love her.”

“And look where you’ve ended up. Both of you are miserable. Brendan might have been your best friend and Claire’s husband, but he was my boy and I know-I believe in my heart-that he would consider the two of you being happy together a blessing.”

He wanted to believe her. But he’d spent so many years telling himself his feelings for Claire were wrong, and the guilt wasn’t a switch he could flip because Brendan’s mom said it was okay. He wanted to, though, and for the first time he allowed himself to imagine telling Claire he loved her.

Mrs. Rutledge sniffed and then seemed to gather herself up emotionally. “Are you going to stop by the party tonight?”

“Probably not. I’m not very good company and I’m not really up to pretending I am.”

“That’s more or less what Claire said, too. You should go see her, Justin.”

“I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure he could give her what she needed.

The smile Judy gave him was warm, with only a hint of sadness. “You both lost Brendan. Do you really want to lose each other, too?”

As he drove home, that parting question wouldn’t leave him alone. It echoed through his mind, over and over, until he wanted to beat his head against the steering wheel just to make it stop. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but there was one thing he knew for damn sure. He didn’t want to lose Claire.

When the knock at the door came, Claire knew it was Justin. She recognized the sound of his truck pulling into the driveway. She knew the sound of his boots on the stairs. And she turned up the television, determined to continue crying her way through one of the greatest holiday comedies ever made, even though National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation wasn’t the same without him.

Justin knocked again. She ignored it. Ignored the pounding on the door and the pounding in her heart and the god-awful ache in the pit of her stomach.

She heard the scratching of metal against metal and the ache intensified. His key wouldn’t do him any good. She’d changed the locks.

He gave up after a few seconds and then resumed banging so hard she was surprised he didn’t dent the metal. Or maybe he did. Right now, she didn’t care. “Open the damn door, Claire, or I swear I’ll kick it in.”

Since he’d helped Brendan install the thing, she knew there wasn’t much chance of that.

She heard him kick the bottom of the door-not in a real effort to kick it in, but in frustration. “Claire…please.”

The change in his voice went straight to her heart. But if she let him in and he pulled her close only to shove her away again, she wasn’t sure her heart could stand it. And he would because he couldn’t separate his friendship with Brendan from his feelings for her.

“I’m not leaving, Claire. This time, I won’t leave.”

Considering how long he’d been standing outside her door in the frigid cold, she was starting to believe him. And her nerves weren’t going to be able to stand much more, so she threw off the fleece blanket and walked to the door, flipped the deadbolt and opened it.

“I saw you first.”

He looked like hell and her heart twisted for him. “What do you mean?”

“I saw you first.” He reached for her face, but she took a step back. “You should have been mine, Claire, and I’ve lived with that for seven years.”

“When did you see me first?”

“That night at the party, I’d been watching you and I was going to ask you to dance. But I made the mistake of going to take a leak first. When I came out, Brendan was talking to you. You were laughing and the chemistry was so obvious. Later that night he told me he’d met the girl he was going to marry.”

She tried to wrap her mind around what he was saying. “I never knew that. And Brendan didn’t, either. Or he never said anything.”

“I’ve spent the last two years telling myself I had to do right by my best friend’s memory. But hurting you doesn’t do right by him. Destroying myself doesn’t do right by him.”

“A few days ago you were calling yourself a lowlife asshole. Now, all of a sudden, it’s okay?”

“I found out the hard way I can’t live without you. And I realized Brendan would want us to be happy.”

She shook her head, afraid he was simply at a high point on the emotional rollercoaster. “Until the next morning-after rolls around and you feel guilty and push me away again.”

“I didn’t realize it on my own. I had some help from Brendan’s mom.”

“You talked to Judy about…us?”

“Pretty sure I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. Or suspect, anyway.”

While Brendan’s mother’s blessing probably went a long way toward easing Justin’s guilt, it was risky to hope it was some kind of magical wand that made everything better with a flick of the wrist and a bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. And it had hurt when he pulled away. A lot.

But her own conversation with Judy wouldn’t stay buried in the back of her mind. Don’t give up on Justin-or yourself-just because it’s hard right now.

He took her hand and she watched as he ran his thumb over her knuckles because it was easier than looking him in the eye.

“I know I hurt you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“The past few days of not having you at all hurt more than anything.”

“I don’t ever want to go through that again, Claire. It was pure hell.” Every minute of that hell was as evident on his face as she was sure it was on hers. “I can’t promise you there won’t be times it’s a little weird for me, but I can promise I won’t walk away from you ever again.”

Those were the words she thought she’d wanted to hear, but they weren’t enough. “This isn’t about Brendan and that’s the problem. It has to be about us. You and me, Justin. Just us.”

“I love you.”

She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. “Justin, I-”

“I love you, Claire. If you take away everybody else and everything else and it’s just you and me, that’s all there is. All that’s left is that I love you.”

Looking into his eyes, that was all that was left. Maybe it wouldn’t be magically easy, but he loved her and he could say it and that was enough. “I love you, too, but-”

“No but, Claire. I love you. You love me. And if we move just a little to the left, we’ll be under the mistletoe.”

“A little to the left, huh?”

“Yup. My left.” He pulled her sideways so she had to shuffle her feet to stay upright. Looking up, he took her by the shoulders and lined her up beneath the sad-looking sprig. “Right there.”

“I’m not letting you kiss me until we’re finished talking about this. About the but.”

He slid his hands down her arms to her hands, where he threaded his fingers through hers. “Then let’s talk about it.”

“I want it all. Marriage and a house, whether it’s yours or one we find together, and kids.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“I guess it is. Will you marry me and have kids with me and kiss me under the mistletoe every Christmas?”

He closed his eyes for a second as the tension seemed to drain out of his muscles, and then he was grinning and lifting her off her feet. “Yes, I want to marry you,” he said just before he kissed her.

When he was finished taking her breath away, he set her back on her feet. “I’d like to stay tonight, if it’s okay. Drive you down to your folks tomorrow and then stay tomorrow night. And the night after that.”

“I’d like that.”

He winced as Moxie started climbing his leg and, after disengaging her claws from his jeans, he cradled the cat and stroked her head.

“She missed you, you know. So did I.”

“I won’t walk away from you again, Claire. Ever.” Then the television caught his attention and he smiled. “You’re watching our movie.”

They made it to the couch in time to watch the Griswold family’s Christmas tree go up in flames and they were laughing as she curled up in his arms, nudging a reluctant Moxie out of her way. The cat sniffed and curled up in her lap.

“I love you,” Justin said against her hair. “I’ve waited so long to say that you’re probably going to get sick of hearing it.”

“Never.” She tilted her head back so he could kiss her. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas. And did I mention that I love you?”

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Shannon Stacey lives with her husband and two sons in New England, where her two favorite activities are writing stories of happily ever after and riding her four-wheeler. From May to November, the Stacey family spends their weekends on their ATVs, making loads of muddy laundry to keep Shannon busy when she’s not at her computer. She prefers writing to laundry, however, and considers herself lucky she got to be an author when she grew up.