Holly, Jolly, and Oh So Naughty (Festive Flames)
Holly, Jolly, and Oh So Naughty: Chapter 29

“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?”

It’s Christmas Eve and Amelia turned up at my house with a bright smile, insisting that I dress up. I’d agreed to attend her work Christmas night out a few days ago, but I’d been under the impression that it would be just me, her, and a few friends.

Suddenly, I needed to bring Emma.

“Nope,” Amelia says as she walks beside me, popping the P with a grin. “I just need you to trust me.”

“You know I can’t take Emma into the bar, right?” I remind her.

Amelia nods and glances past me at Emma. She’s stomping through the mounds of snow lining the sidewalk with her small, gloved hand clutched in my own. A bitterly cold wind dances past us, kicking up loose snow and sending it swirling into the air.

Walking through town on Christmas Eve is a magical experience. Every shop has its lights on, and a variety of twinkling colors spills from decorated windows onto the snow-covered ground. People hurry past us, caught up in their last-minute Christmas shopping, and I don’t envy them. To some, it’s almost a tradition.

And yet, as I watch people huddle together hand in hand against the cold, the sadness that’s swamped me these past two days threatens to rise up once more. I still haven’t had the confidence to reach out to James, deciding instead to have a nice Christmas with my family and then I’ll tackle all of that in the New Year.

James hasn’t reached out to me either, so I’m not even confident there will be anything to reach out to.

“Where are we going?” Emma whines, stomping her pink boots more aggressively into the snow. “I’m cold!”

“I know, sweetie,” I soothe her. “But Amelia has a surprise for us. And then I’ll take you to Grandma’s and we can set up the tree, okay?”

Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents have refused to decorate their own Christmas tree until Christmas Eve. Our family tradition is that all other decorations will be set up to make the place look festive, but the tree will always be last. I’m fairly certain it’s because my mother’s work used to take her out of town, but she would always be back by Christmas Eve, and thus, one of our favorite traditions was born.

“Not much farther,” Amelia assures me as we cross the street toward the town square. “I just need you both to promise me one thing.”

“Both of us?” I ask curiously, wondering if Amelia is leading us to the ice skating rink. If she is, I wish we’d taken the car.

“Both of you.”

“Okay!” Emma grins and her rosy-red nose scrunches up as she sniffles.

“Remember that I love you,” Amelia says, and she locks eyes with me. “And that I support you no matter what.”

The uncertainty in my chest grows heavy, and I frown at Amelia. “What do you mean? You’re kind of starting to worry me.”

“Trust me,” is all Amelia says, and she takes my hand, squeezing gently. “Okay?”

“Okay.” I nod, and yet the uncertainty still swarms my gut like a flutter of heavy-winged butterflies. Emma is clueless and resumes her attempts to place a boot print on every untouched patch of snow, few as they are.

I have more to ask Amelia, but suddenly, she speeds up her walking, and distance forms between us. She doesn’t stop until she reaches the crosswalk, and then she turns to me with the widest smile on her face.

“I love you, Lily. You know that, right?” she says.

“Of course I do. I love you too. Amelia, what is it because you’re…”

My words die in my throat as I reach the crosswalk and the Town Square becomes visible.

It’s been beautiful since the day everyone came together and started decorating it, but something is different.

A warm orange glow rises from all of the shops and buildings surrounding the square, creating an oval of amber light that sweeps across the town square and frames the central gazebo. The gazebo is covered in white lights that subtly flash and pulse in time to soft, classical music drifting through the air.

Every tree is covered in blue, red, and green lights that reflect off the silver tinsel winding across the branches. Several fake snowmen are covered in glitter that makes them sparkle with the slightest movement from me. The scents of chocolate, ginger, and cinnamon fill the air, and I’m distantly aware that there are no people around, which is strange for this time of night.

But all of that pales in comparison to what is in the middle of the town square.

A long string of new golden lights stretches from one tree to another, twinkling in the darkness like a scattering of stars fell from the heavens and lined up just for me.

“Look, Mommy!” Emma gasps, pointing at the lights. Her eyes are so wide that they reflect the sparkles, and my heart begins to race. The lights above are carefully arranged to spell out a phrase I never could have imagined.

Will you be my family?

Below the lights, looking incredibly nervous while holding a single rose, stands James.

“It’s James!” Before I can stop her, Emma twists out of my grip and sprints across the crosswalk toward the town square. She runs until she crashes headlong into James, who ducks to catch her with a laugh.

James is here.

He’s here.

Part of me honestly thought I would never see him again, yet he stands there like something out of a dream and I have no idea what to say. A hand presses gently into the small of my back, urging me forward, and I obey because I have no idea what else to do.

All I can think about is our last argument and the heartbreaking realization that he was abandoning me once again. Yet here he stands.

As I get closer, I can decipher the hopeful look in his eyes. When I reach the snow-covered grass in front of him, he smiles shakily and begins to speak.

“Lily. I know I have no right to ask this but please, give me two minutes to say what I want to say and then, whatever you want to do after that, I will do it.”

Emma skips back to me with the biggest grin on her face, so I nod because I don’t trust myself to speak. A commotion of emotions clashes together inside me—anger that he left and then didn’t talk to me for two days, hurt that he didn’t believe me about his mother, hope that seeing him again could mean he wants to stay, and confusion at the lights.

What the hell is going on?

“I am so deeply sorry for walking out the other night. I have no excuse other than I was completely stunned by what you told me, and it didn’t fit with what I knew at the time. It doesn’t excuse what I did, but I hope it helps you understand why I had to get away.”

As he talks, clouds of condensation curl past his lips and spiral up to the sparkling lights above.

“I went back to the city and confronted my mother. I needed to hear it from her directly because Lily, you have to believe me. I had no idea that you were pregnant, or that you even tried to reach out. I thought we had gone our separate ways and I wanted to respect that. But my mother finally told me the truth.”

His jaw twitches, and my heart continues to race like a rabbit trapped within a cage.

“She hid it from me for the good of the family, in her words. She also told me that she tried to pay you and, Lily, I am so sorry you had to go through that alone.”

Hearing it come from James’s mouth is strange because that secret—that his mother offered me money for an abortion—has never been uttered out loud. I kept that hidden within me as the main fuel to never look for James or his family again. Hearing that he was completely in the dark stuns me.

Should I have tried harder to reach him? Could things have been different?

Tears sparkle in James’s eyes as he steps forward. “I love you, Lily,” he says softly. “I loved you seven years ago and I never stopped. I squashed it down because I was fighting to make other people happy, but I am done with that life. I am done pretending to be someone I’m not and hiding how I feel. I love you so much, Lily. Some days, it consumes me. I look at you and everything in the world is brighter, and it’s like I can finally see color for the first time. I think about you all the time, and I have ever since I first saw you in your bakery. I love you.”

My warring emotions surge upward, battling for dominance, but there’s a clear winner. My anger fades. I met his mother, and I can’t blame him for not taking action when he had no idea that I was trying to reach him. And Amelia was right—James needed time to process and confront the truth. Which means he believed me enough to fly back to the city and hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Pressure swells in my chest, and I try to speak, but all I do is gasp as a stray tear leaks down my cheek.

“So I’m here, Lily. For you. And Emma. I want to be a good man for you, Lily. I want to make you proud and make you feel happy and safe. I want to be a good father for Emma. If I had known all those years ago, I would have been here in a heartbeat, I swear it.”

Emma’s hand suddenly grips mine, and when I glance at her, she stares up at me with glassy eyes. “My dad?” she asks with a croak.

My heart breaks apart at the look of pure hope on her face. Her view is innocent, and the stories I’ve told her about her absent father have never created any anger in her. She’s looking at me for answers.

“Oh, and…” James suddenly comes a lot closer and he holds out his hand to me. In his palm sits a pair of hand-crafted, wooden, carved ice skates. One has my name and the other has Emma’s name. “When we went ice skating, that was the day I realized that everything I had ever wanted in life was right here, with you and Emma. So these, if you accept them, are a symbol of our past and present coming together. And hopefully, our future.”

He chokes up slightly and his hand trembles, his fingertips turning pink from the cold.

“Mommy?” Emma asks again, and we lock eyes.

I can’t lie to her. I can’t do it, not now. “Yes,” I say, finally replaceing my voice. “Yes, he is your father.”

“Daddy!” Emma squeals and launches herself forward, tackling James’s leg with such force that he stumbles backward. Reflex has me reaching out for his hand to help him maintain his balance, and our hands close over the wooden trinkets.

“You took so long to come home!” Emma wails, and the dam breaks as she sobs against his leg. There’s a flash of confusion across James’s face as he crouches down to comfort her, then he pulls her in for a tight hug as tears fall down his own cheeks.

“I know,” he said hoarsely. “I know. I’m sorry. But no matter what, I’m here, okay? And I’ll always be here.”

A trembling sob escapes me, and I place one hand over my mouth, searching for the right thing to say. Maybe there isn’t a right thing to say. When James stands, he offers me the rose that is now slightly crumpled after being caught in the hug between him and Emma.

“So,” he whispers. “What do you say?”

“You left,” I croak. “You left and I had no idea if you were coming back. I thought you hated me, that I had made a mistake.”

“No,” James says. “I was the one who made the mistake. Blinded by my mother and her laws for too long. I love you, Lily, and if you accept me, I will spend every day for the rest of my life making up for it.”

My heart swells bigger and bigger, pressing against my ribcage and limiting my breaths from how overwhelmed I feel.

There is only one answer, but I have to make sure.

“If you’re here,” I say shakily, “then you have to be here. You can’t leave just because things get hard. Do you understand? She knows now.” I glance down at Emma. “Which means you have to be here.”

“I’m here,” he says, and another tear escapes down his handsome face. “I only left to get answers. This is where I want to be, Lily. I love you. I want this. I want you and our family. But only if you want that too.”

I must be dreaming. Gigantic flakes of snow begin to drift slowly down around us, sharply kissing my cheeks where they land. Staring into James’s eyes, I’m even more convinced this is some kind of dream.

“Yes,” I say, and all my overwhelming emotions bubble forward as I sob. “Yes, I love you too. I do, I love you too!”

James sweeps me into his arms, and his lips crash against mine in a heated, biting kiss. Our tears mingle, and the taste of salt invades the kiss, but I don’t care. His arms are around me, our daughter is clinging to our legs, and my heart soars to be caught up in his hold.

Suddenly, soft cheers and clapping rise up from around me and we break apart with a laugh. On the other side of the street, several of the townsfolk have emerged from their stores and are cheering us on, led by Amelia who is dabbing at her own eyes.

“I had a little help to set this up,” James whispers in my ear, repeatedly kissing my cheek.

Overwhelming love pours through me, and I cup James’s cheek, kissing him deeply once more.

Christmas really is the perfect time of year.