Page 54 of Hope and Hot Chocolate on Mistletoe Lane

I let go of one of her hands after we’d gone around the rink a couple of times.

‘Let’s try skating side by side.’

I moved around so we both faced the front and started skating slowly. Holly still clung to my hand and watched the ice but she was moving on her own more now. ‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

‘Still nervous and wobbly but I can’t believe I’m moving on the ice!’ She managed to glance at me and gave me a wide smile.

My heart gave a little lurch. ‘You’re doing great.’

‘I wish I’d come on the ice with you sooner.’

‘Kind of surprised you agreed to it tonight.’

Holly was quiet for a couple of minutes and I thought she wasn’t going to reply but finally, she broke the silence. ‘I’m trying this new thing where I don’t just run away from what scares me or that I find difficult or challenging – especially in my personal life. I started my own business and had to deal with all that shit with Grant and it’s been hard but I’ve also thrived on the challenge. I was worried that I’d failed, that it was over before it had even properly started, but I got a second chance here with Willow and this winter wonderland, and I want to seize that opportunity. I don’t want to say no to things like I used to. Because look what happens when I say yes.’ She gestured around us with her free hand but that made her lose her balance; she wobbled then stumbled on the ice. I grabbed her around the waist and held her up.

‘Oh,’ Holly breathed out shakily as our eyes met. ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly. She put her hands on my shoulders to steady herself as I gripped her waist. I found myself swallowing hard and she tracked the motion. Her eyes glanced at my lips then quickly back up to my eyes. The light behind her gave a warm glow to the skin, which coupled with the cold wind and the skating, made her look pretty as hell. She looked brighter than I’d seen her since she arrived in Birchbrook.

I realised then I’d missed the slow change that had happened while she was here – the dark circles under her eyes had eased and both her eyes and skin looked brighter. She was dressed more casually and the tension in her shoulders had eased, along with how she’d found it hard to meet the gaze of people she was talking to. Now her head stood taller.

‘You didn’t let me fall,’ she whispered then.

‘I never will,’ I promised her wildly then as we still clung to each other.

‘You can’t promise me that,’ she said with sadness in her eyes and voice.

‘Of course I can,’ I snapped at her, unable to help myself. I was just so frustrated she couldn’t see what she meant to me.

I helped Holly skate to the side from where we stood in the middle of the ice. She leaned against the fence as I stood in front of her and held her steady by her waist as I spoke to her urgently.

‘Do you want to know why I kept stopping myself from leaving Birchbrook every time I told myself I should do something different with my life?’

‘You love it here,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked terrified, and I hated making her feel scared but I was scared too. Taking a leap with anyone was scary and neither of us had done it yet but doing it together somehow made it feel less scary. This was my best friend. Who better to do it with?

I shook my head and pulled her a little bit closer still as I gazed into her eyes, and realised that since she’d come to Birchbrook, I hadn’t even looked at another woman. I only wanted to see her. ‘I stayed because I’d always hoped one day, you’d come back.’

‘No.’ She let go of the side of the ice rink like she meant to move but then she wobbled and had to grab on to me harder. Which I didn’t mind in the slightest. ‘That’s not true, Paul.’

‘It is. I wanted to kiss you so many times before you left. And the day you left, I wanted to hold you and not let you go… I wanted to beg you to stay but that felt so selfish, I couldn’t do it. You were so excited to go to the city. I never stopped thinking about you though, or hoping that one day you would find me again,’ I confessed. She looked down like she didn’t want to have this conversation. But I knew we needed to. ‘Did you ever think of me in the city?’ I demanded then.

She bit her lip, hesitating again.

‘Hols,’ I groaned, her silence giving me physical pain.

She looked over my shoulder then finally back at my eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘How long ago?’ I asked, letting myself hope just a little bit that she felt something similar to how I felt about her.

‘I thought about you last New Year’s Eve,’ she confessed in a rush. ‘I was in bed as the clock struck midnight and I wondered where you were and what you were doing and if you had someone… and I… I…’ She trailed off, unable to say it.

‘Holly,’ I whispered, saying her full name, hoping she’d finish her sentence.

‘I hoped you didn’t,’ she finished finally. ‘But⁠—’

I carried away her ‘but’ by kissing her on the lips probably too hard, too passionately, too desperately but then she kissed me back just as frantically and the careful distance we’d been keeping from each other broke.

36

HOLLY