Warmth in Ice (Find You in the Dark #2.5)(20)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

“We’re doing this holiday thing the right way, Clayton Reed. So roll with it,” she warned, picking up the tree and walking over to the coffee table. She plugged it into the wall and smiled when it lit up.

I lay back on the bed and watched as she set up our Christmas decorations, hanging the stockings from the TV stand and stringing more lights around the window.

When she was finished, she went back to her bag and pulled out a bunch of wrapped gifts and placed them under the tree. It was then that I started to panic. I had sent her gift to Virginia over two weeks ago. Crap! What if she hadn’t gotten it yet? Then I’d be the shittiest boyfriend in the world of shitty boyfriends. Making an excuse to sneak out to get her a quick present wouldn’t fly.

“Stop the meltdown, Clay, I brought the one you sent me,” Maggie said, giving me a wry look. I laughed.

“Was it that obvious?” I asked, holding my hand out to her after she situated the gifts and had come back to the bed. She wrapped her fingers around mine and I gave her a tug, pulling her down onto the bed with me. I noticed the sucky wrapping job of the present I had sent her.

That gift had taken a lot of time to put together. It would have gutted me if she hadn’t been able to open it on Christmas.

“Like a neon sign, Clay. You wear your freak out on your sleeve, babe,” she joked, nudging me with her elbow.

I squeezed her into my side, her head fitting under my chin. “Thank you for doing this, Maggie. I can’t believe it. I’ve wished for this for so long, I keep thinking it’s a big, crazy delusion and I’ve finally tipped the scales to full blown psychosis,” I said, breathing in the scent of her shampoo as I pressed my nose into her hair.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of not being together for Christmas. The distance was killing me, Clay. I knew this would be hard, but…”

“We had no idea how hard it would actually be,” I finished for her. Maggie folded her hands under her chin on my chest and looked up at me, her brown eyes serious.

“I’ve been so worried,” she admitted and I frowned. Had I given her a reason to think I wasn’t doing okay?

“I’ve been fine, Mags. I swear it. Every day is a challenge, but they’re getting easier. I promise,” I assure her, wanting to erase her fears.

Maggie shook her head and looked away. “I wasn’t worried about that,” she murmured.

Now I was confused.

I tucked my fingers under her chin and pulled her face around to look at me. “What was worrying you then? If it wasn’t about me relapsing, what was it?” I asked.

Maggie sighed and didn’t say anything. The silence stretched between us and I was starting to feel a tension that I didn’t like between us.

“Maggie, please, just tell me.”

I was shocked to see the tears fill her eyes and spill over. What the hell? I wiped the wetness away with my thumbs and pulled her up so I could kiss her mouth. I needed to take this away. Her sadness, her anxiety. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

“I thought you’d get better and move on, Clay. I’ve been scared to death I’d lose you,” she sobbed and buried her face into my shirt.

You could have knocked me over with a f**king feather. Had she completely lost her mind? How could she ever think I’d move on from her? She was my entire world. My entire reason for trying so damn hard. Without Maggie May Young, there was no Clayton Reed.

“Maggie, look at me,” I said softly as she continued to cry into my chest.

I sat up and held her away from me, even though all I wanted was to hold her. But I needed her to look at me when I said what I had to say.

“Maggie, damn it, look at me,” I said harshly, feeling a little out of control with this whole situation. The fact that she could even for one second think that was too much. I couldn’t stomach the thought of her feeling pain over something so completely ridiculous.

Maggie finally looked at me, her eyes red and puffy. I kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks. I rubbed my nose with hers and clasped my hands around the back of her neck.

“Mags, I’m in this forever. You are my future, my always. How could you ever think that? Everything I’m doing here is to make a life with you. Sure I’m learning to live for myself too, but there’s nothing without you. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. You are what keeps me going through the day and your face is what I see when I go to sleep at night. If there is one thing in this messed up universe you can count on, it’s my love for you. It’s constant. It’s endless. And it’s never going anywhere,” I swear.

Maggie is crying even harder now and this is not how I wanted our time together to be. I didn’t want us sitting in a hotel room while Maggie cried.

“You’ve just been so distant since I went to school. Being away from you is so hard, Clay. I start to imagine things and think things that drive me nuts.” I laughed and Maggie glared at me.

I hold up my hands. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, I’ve been trying not to be an over the top jealous boyfriend. The first time I saw those guys in your room I wanted to fly up there and beat the shit out of them. Every time I think of you living your life without me, I start to think that maybe you’ll leave me. That you’ll realize that what we have is too hard. Too complicated. Not being able to hold you every day is the worst kind of torture. It’s all I can do not to lose it some days.” Maggie starts to look panicked again but I silence her with a kiss.

“But then I remember why I’m fighting so hard to begin with. For you. For me. For what we are building together. And then I can get through the day.” Maggie had finally stopped crying and she was smiling. Just a tiny grin but it was there all the same. I placed her palm over my heart.

“I told you once that this was yours. There’s no giving it back. Even if you decided you didn’t want it anymore, it would still only ever belong to you,” I said. I knew with a certainty, soul deep, that our love was more than a moment.

It was a lifetime.

9

“Wake up, Mags. It’s Christmas,” Clay whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck with his lips. I burrowed down into the covers and grumbled. I was not a morning person and I was even less a morning person when I had only been asleep for what felt like a few hours.

Even if the reason for my lack of sleep was kissing the skin below my ear, sending pulsating waves of warmth throughout my body.