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She gasped. “What is all this?”
Kevin shrugged. “Just a little something I threw together—your last Christmas bucket-list item. Well, technically, I guess tomorrow’s ride through the light tour will be the actual last item, but—umph!” Josie pummeled him with a hug more akin to something a linebacker did to a quarterback than an embrace. She hadn’t meant to. But if Kevin didn’t want to get mauled, then he really shouldn’t have put an ice rink in his backyard.
“How did you—why—where did you? Did you know Rockefeller Center is in your freaking backyard?” She turned slightly to look at the spectacle before her, still keeping him in her arms, not just because she didn’t want to let go, but also because she didn’t want him to see the tears streaming down her face.
“Well, now, it’s not real ice. It’s that fake stuff that looks like real ice but doesn’t need to freeze. So, don’t get too excited.”
She mock-scoffed. “Well, then, that’s a deal-breaker for me.” She playfully shoved his chest. “And too late. I’m way too excited.” At the far end of the rink stood a massive pine tree covered with so many lights, astronauts could probably see it from space. He’d thought of everything. And it was all forher.
“How did you do this?” she asked as he handed her the ice skates.
“I had a little elf help me. An elf whose client let us borrow his cherry picker so we could get those lights up there.” He pointed to the tree that was easily twenty feet tall.
They both stood with their skates on and walked to the edge of the rink. Kevin stopped before he reached the ice. “I think I need to tighten my skates a little more before I get out there.” This was his third attempt at “tightening” his skates.
“You’ve never ice skated before, have you?”
“No, ma’am. Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”
“I can try,” she answered playfully. He knew she’d skated before, but not that she’d taken lessons as a child. Better for him to have lower expectations until she saw if ice skating was like riding a bike and not something that would end with her rear end kissing the faux ice. But as soon as she pushed off, the cool air whipped through her hair, and she was gliding with an ease she hadn’t expected. And that was when the music started.
“Did you hook up speakers out here?”
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug and a smirk, his hands tucked tightly in his vest pockets and eyes fixed on her.
“Get out here, Kevin!”
“Ah, I don’t wanna make a fool out of myself.”
“Oh, yeah?” *NSYNC’s “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” played from the speakers, something she knew he’d added to the playlist for her (he’d been a good sport when she tried to teach him their music video choreography when they were teens on the beach).
She gyrated on the ice, pointing to the floor and the ceiling, matching the lyrics of the song. The only sound louder than the music was Kevin’s hysterical laughter.
“Is it working?” The song ended, and she skated over to where he stood at the edge of the rink. “You said you didn’t want to make a fool of yourself. I beat you to it.”
A slow pop ballad of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” played next as Kevin took a small, tentative step onto the ice. “I said that, didn’t I?”
She bobbed her head. “Yep. I bet you’ve never seen anything so ridiculous.”
“Actually, I was thinking I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
She spun in a circle. “You really made it look amazing out here.”
“Not what I was talking about.” His voice sounded like he’d swallowed a handful of gravel from the neighbor’s driveway. And it was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard.
He skated slowly to her, his knees wobbling like a baby deer taking his first steps. When he got close enough for her to smell the peppermint on his breath, she steadied him with her hands wrapped snuggly around each of his forearms. The hard muscle beneath her palms contradicted the boyish flush that spread across his cheeks, staining them the shade of Rudolph’s nose. It endeared him to her even more. Because here was this man—one of the strongest people she’d ever met, with a heart bigger than the fully lit pine tree at the end of the yard but shrouded in a veil of vulnerability evident by the gentle tremble of his hands and his sudden interest in staring at his skates.
She gently tipped up his chin with her mitten-clad hand, the knit fabric catching on the scruff of his cheeks. When his eyes met hers, they were the darkest espresso—fitting, since they made her heart race the same as her favorite beverage. She leaned a centimeter—no, a millimeter—in his direction.
“I was a fool to think we could ever be friends,” she whispered.
His throat bobbed with a large swallow. “Words are just words, right? Until you give them meaning.”
She nodded. They were about to cross a line. She could feel it. But it was never really a line, was it? It was merely a barrier meant to keep out what she didn’t think she wanted anymore. That glass window that kept space between her and the life she’d been watching for the past several years. She wanted to know what it felt like on the other side.
He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “Then I’d like to show you what you mean to me.”
“Kevin, you already have.”
