A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls by Katie Mettner

Author:Katie Mettner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Breaking Night Press
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Braxton stood on the other side of the tree with his hand in his hair. He saw the woman in front of him in a whole new light. Alibeth Robinson was a name that had filled most of his childhood. It was a name he’d heard from the time he was in kindergarten until he was twenty years old. She was a missing child whose case went cold. Then, one day, he heard that she’d been found. His little kindergarten heart had soared at the news, even if his grown-up heart had already been broken by the events of his life.

Brax walked back to her and lowered himself to the cushion, his hand grasping her chin tenderly. “You’re serious right now, aren’t you?”

Carrie tipped her head to the side but couldn’t shake the hold he had on her chin. “No one in our business knows. I hope I can trust you with this.”

He nodded without saying a word. All Brax could do was gaze at Carrie. Finally, her personality had come together to make sense for him. “I can hardly breathe right now. I think I’m in shock, but I’m not going to tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.” He refused to break eye contact with her even as his body hummed with confusion and wonderment. “Wow.” He sighed the word more than he said it. “All of you makes a lot more sense now.”

“All of me?”

Brax winked and leaned in, placing a kiss on her lips that he hoped didn’t end in a slap across his face. She stilled, but she didn’t smack him, so he left her with the gentle kiss and nothing more. When he leaned back, he smiled what he hoped was an accepting smile. “All of you. The way you are on set, the way you are when we’re alone, and your desire to take roles you know will keep you off the big screen. Your lack of trust. The strong look of desire in your eyes that you tamp down as though you don’t deserve love.”

“That’s all true,” she agreed. “It’s why I overreact, underreact, don’t know how to react, don’t trust my feelings, and feel safer being alone than trusting someone else.”

“I can understand all of those feelings. You earned the right to feel that way, right?”

“That’s what the psychiatrists say.” Her words were whispered and shameful in a way that broke his heart forever. That part of his heart would never be whole again. He accepted it because, he suspected, her entire heart was shattered. Sure, maybe someday someone would come along who could put parts of it back together, but an unkind word or action would rebreak it just as quickly. Whoever was blessed to take care of this woman for the rest of his life was going to have to accept that.

Brax cupped her cheek and stared into the fountain of chocolate in her eyes. “I wonder if I had known . . . ”

He said nothing more, just sat there stroking her cheek with his thumb.

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