How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

I was already out in the cold, I thought. Already living there. And this family… goddamn it, this family kept asking me in.

“I…tried not to hurt her,” I told him. Which was the truth and not the truth. The last few days in the warehouse, pushing her away, I’d hurt her.

“Well, you fucked it up. I suggest you figure your shit out. Quick. Because I don’t like seeing my sister look like she’s been punched in the gut.”

Neither did I.

“You wouldn’t…care?”

“The two of you?” Wes shook his head. “I’d love it. I mean…I don’t need details, but I’d love it. Wouldn’t you?”

15

Sophie

Who gets mad at a guy for saying something nice? For saying something really true? For defending me to my worst critic? My mom. Being angry at Sam didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t like I could stop it.

There was so much about Sam I just couldn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop being friends with him. I couldn’t stop loving him.

Which was why I was standing in the freezing cold in front of his truck in the parking lot, because I couldn’t do anything without him.

It didn’t take long. He’d had his coat and hat with him in Wes’s office and he wasn’t one to linger. Mom had left a few minutes ago, her big old Cadillac easing out of the parking lot, her taillights heading in the direction of home.

The lights were still on in Wes’s office, and as I watched, the lights blinked on in W.B.’s office and then blinked off, and then, suddenly, there was Sam, shoulders hunched against the wind and the snow, looking like a bull coming through the lights around the parking area.

“Hey!” I said when he was close enough.

“Soph.”

“Yeah. What was that in there? With my mom? With W.B.? What were you doing?”

“Nothing, Sophie—”

“No. It wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t…what were you doing?”

He was quiet. Still. His jaw hard as a rock. He turned to stare at his truck, but that was an old trick of his and I swept snow off the hood, packed it into a ball, and threw it at him. And I don’t mean to brag, but my aim was excellent and I got him right on the shoulder. The snow exploded up onto his chin.

His eyes went wide and I refused to smile. He reached for snow off the back of his truck, but I was faster and got him again. My snowball hit him square in the chest.

“Sophie!”

“You can’t have it both ways, Sam!” I snapped. Hot with my anger and everything I’d been swallowing and pretending for the last week. “You can’t be my friend and ignore me. You can’t defend me to my mother and pretend I mean nothing to you. You can’t—”

He rushed me. Rushed me, and I retreated, slipping on the ice, and suddenly my back was against the truck and he was pressing me there with his body.

His hands were holding my face and all I could feel was him and the pound of my heart.

“I have been trying to ignore you,” he said, and I shoved at him. “But you are impossible to ignore.”

I would not be melted by those words. Nope. I was furious and righteous, and pretty words from Fucking Sam Porter meant nothing to me.

“And you mean everything to me,” he said, and if I could resist pretty words I could not…could not resist his kiss. It was too new. Too sweet.

He held my head and kissed me and I melted. I melted as fast and as completely as the snow caught in between his coat and the warmth of his skin. His tongue brushed mine and the smell of him was my entire world. He was my entire world. And I felt myself opening up to him. Opening everything up to him. My mouth. My heart.

“You threw a snowball at me,” he said, kissing my lips. My cheek. I felt myself smiling, despite not wanting to smile at all.

“I’m not sorry.”

“Of course you’re not.”

He sighed and leaned back, away from me. But his body was still pressed to mine, keeping me sandwiched between his heat and the cold steel of his truck.

“You asked me to date some other guy,” I whispered. “Do you really want me to do that?”

I felt his phone ringing in his pocket and he blinked, but didn’t answer it. It rang again. And then again.

“I have to get that,” he said.

“Sure.”

“I mean my dad is around and Mom—”

“Answer the phone, Sam.”

He fished it out of his pants and pressed the screen with his thumb.

“Mom?” He turned sideways. “Mom. Calm…okay. Okay…I’m…crap…okay. Mom, I’ll be there soon. I’m coming right now. No! No. Listen. Do not let him in. Call the cops.” He sighed, his head in his hand. “Okay. I know. But…just don’t let him in.”

He hung up and turned. “I gotta—”