Page 88 of A Winter Wish

“Lexie.” Her mum squeezed her hand. Across the table, Lexie could sense Theo looking at her again, but she didn’t glance over this time. “I would be absolutely delighted to have Rachel—and you—for Christmas. I will spend the whole year looking forward to it.” Her eyes were shining. “Do you know, I never had any siblings growing up, and I wanted a second child so that you wouldn’t grow up on your own like I did…It’s lovely to know that you might have ended up with that, despite everything.”

It wasn’t until the end of the evening that Lexie managed to get Theo on his own. She followed him to the bar, where he was standing before a Christmas-themed beer on tap. Over the smell of spilled ale, mulled-wine spices, and chips, Lexie breathed in the sandalwood scent of him. It was amazing, how her body seemed both to relax into the relief of being near him and also go tense, nerves jangling under her skin.

“I don’t think we should sell the company,” she said by way of greeting.

He glanced at her, his eyes scanning her face, as if looking for clues.

“At least for now,” she continued, words coming a bit too quickly. “But…” She swallowed. “But I want to be involved. I want to run it with you, and I want to do your idea, of investing profit back into local business and…and everything,” she finished, somewhat lamely.

He looked at her for another long moment, before saying, “I want you to be involved too.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You’re smart, and good with the customers, and you have good ideas.” Right. He meant on a professional level, not a personal one.

“OK.” She was bobbing her head, like one of those silly nodding dogs. “OK, good. Well. That’s, um, settled, then.”

Theo paid for the drinks the barman was handing him, scooped them up to take them back to the table. “Great,” Theo said, his voice cool and professional. Distant, in a way he’d never really been with her—one way or another. “We can chat about it after Christmas, maybe?”

“Right,” Lexie said again. “OK.”

He turned to walk away. And she nearly let him. Because it would be easier than risking being hurt. But she’d vowed to try, hadn’t she? So she took a breath. “Theo?”

He looked back at her.

“I’m sorry for leaving. I’m sorry for not listening. And I’m sorry for not coming back sooner.”

His body had gone very still, so that the only movement was the liquid in the glasses, sloshing gently from side to side.

“I thought it was a sign, that I shouldn’t be here. I thought…” Her throat was constricting. God, why was this so difficult? “I thought I might be losing myself, and I didn’t want to risk things going wrong.”

I didn’t want to risk getting hurt. But I’ll risk it now, if you will. She was on the verge of saying those words, as stupid as they might sound said out loud, when Theo sighed.

“Maybe it was for the best.”

Lexie felt a crushing weight coming in to sit on her chest.

“I’m not sure…” He broke off, shifted position. “I want us to run this company together, Lex.” His voice was a little less cool now. Kinder. But it still wasn’t the tone she wanted to hear. “It’s yours as much as it is mine. More, maybe. But…maybe I’m not right for you. Maybe you were right and we’d make a mess of things, down the line. So maybe we should keep things professional?”

Even just a few months ago, this would have been enough to shut down hope for her. But she thought she could hear it, the vulnerability under what he was saying. The worry that he’d make a mess of things—that he’d be a disappointment to her, like with his parents. She hadn’t thought enough of that, when she’d bolted, but she was thinking about it now. And she was thinking about her dad’s letter, and how he was right—you couldn’t change the past. But you could take chances in the present.

He was walking away from her when she called out. “I’m going to Iceland.” She moved away from the bar, took the few steps she needed to close the gap between them. Over at the corner table, she thought she saw a few of their group looking their way, but she didn’t care. “I leave tomorrow, and I’ll be there over Christmas.” She reached into her back jeans pocket, drew out the ticket that she’d been carrying around with her all day—and slipped it in the crook of Theo’s arm.

“My dad got me tickets to go,” she explained. “He got me two tickets, in case I wanted to take someone with me.” She met his gaze unflinchingly. “And it’s you I want with me, Theo. Not just for this, but always. But only if you want that too.” She hesitated, then gave his arm a brief squeeze, before turning away. She didn’t need an answer right away. She knew he wouldn’t be ready to give her one now, just after she’d dropped it on him like that. But at least, when tomorrow came, she’d know she’d tried.

Chapter Thirty-four

Theo hadn’t come to the airport. She’d looked for him as she’d arrived at Heathrow, scanning the terminal as she’d headed to check-in. Through the security queue, her heart had leaped each time she’d seen someone that could have been him from the back, then sunk every time each man had turned around. She’d kept hoping, right until the plane took off. Maybe he’d be let onto the plane late, maybe he was one of those passengers they were doing the final call for. But when they were in the air and the seat next to her was still empty, she’d had to accept it—he wasn’t coming.

She’d allowed herself to mourn that, on the plane. To think about what might have been, if she’d not scared Theo by running away in the first place. And then she’d let that go. Because even if the ache around her heart felt like it was settling in to stay, even if she had no idea how she was supposed to go back to Bath after Christmas and find a way to be colleagues—and nothing more—with Theo, she could look back on this moment and know that she’d taken a chance and put herself out there. And that, maybe, she was strong enough to deal with the fallout from that.

Besides, she wasn’t just here for Theo. She was here for her dad, too. She was finally in Iceland, at Christmas. She wished she could reach back in time and tell seven-year-old Lexie all about it. About how dark it was here, with only four hours of daylight, so that time was already distorting, even after only a couple of days. About going into Reykjavík today, on Christmas Eve, and seeing the holograms of the Yule Lads projected onto buildings around the city, and about meeting the Christmas Cat—the illuminated giant cat sculpture in Lækjartorg Square. She’d imagined her dad’s voice, when she’d gone up to the cat. His voice as it would have been, had they come here together all those years ago. Look, Little Lex! What do you think his name is? He’ll come alive on Christmas Day, you know. An imagined conversation, of course. But one that had made her smile.

There was so much she wanted to do while she was here. She wanted to go to one of the thermal pools, of course—the thing she’d been most excited about when she was little. Tomorrow, for Christmas Day, she planned to go to a concert at one of the churches in the city and she wanted to go to one of the ice caves on Boxing Day. For now, though, she was spending Christmas Eve evening curled up in her pajamas in the log cabin her dad had booked for her. It was out in the countryside, where the darkness was more complete, with trees around the outside, frosted with white. Snow was sitting on the wooden roof when she’d arrived, making it look like something out of a fairy tale, and she’d already made use of the hot tub out back—there was something so decadent about sitting in steaming water while snow lay practically untouched around you. There were a few cottages nearby—all part of the same group—but it was blissfully peaceful.

Her wish jar was set on a bookcase, right next to the wood-burning stove. She’d been through the wishes this evening, reading them for the first time since she’d put them in. Some of them had made her laugh, remembering how much she’d wanted something so silly—she definitely no longer felt the desire for her hair to grow purple naturally, for instance. But some of them were things she’d hoped for and had been too scared to go after, and that had given her a pang. So this Christmas, she vowed it was going to be different from now on.

On the little table next to the sofa she was curled up on, there was a pen and paper, ready when she was ready. She really wanted to write, I wish Theo was here. But that wouldn’t be a wish for her, not really—it would be about him, and she couldn’t control what he did. Just like she hadn’t been able to control her dad. Instead, she thought, from now on she would write things she’d like to do in the future—wishes she might be able to make come true.