Matt Sanders

Aubree looked around her tiny house sadly. She snapped her tiny suitcase shut, put her book Bliss on top of it.

She was going to cry. She knew it.

Just thinking of those last moments on stage--not Ace's performance, or Brenda's either--but the moment those children had surrounded her. She had hugged each and every one, only she knowing the truth.

Goodbye.

When she thought of not seeing her kids again, or her friends at the school, when she thought of not seeing Matt or Ace, the lump in her throat grew so large she could not even swallow.

Of course, she was going to cry for the rest of her life every single time she thought of Ace, The Christmas Angel, giving up her dream so that her friend could have hers.

She was going to cry for the rest of her life every single time she thought of these days before Christmas that she had spent with Matt.

They had a shine to them that was imprinted on her soul.

She was exhausted. She should probably wait for morning, but the thought of waking up alone on christmas morning in this sweet little house was more than she could bear.

Just as she moved toward the door, there was a tap on it. Aubree froze, thinking she might have imagined it, thinking that maybe a branch had tapped the window.

But no, there it came again.

She tiptoed to her front window, craned her neck and could see her doorstep. Matt stood there.

Now what?

She was determined to go, to give this independent life a genuine shot. To make it a success this time. To not be swept from her chosen path.

He had gotten in the way before, a test that she had failed.

Maybe he was still testing her. And she wasn't going to fail this time.

Hoping only she could ever know her boldness was a complete pretext, she went and threw open the door.

"Hi."

"Matt."

His eyes drank her in, like a man who had crossed the desert, and she was a long cool drink of water.

This his eyes left her, found the suitcase, went back to her. He frowned.

"Did you decide to go spend Christmas with your family after all?"

"Yes," she lied. So much easier than saying, I am running away from you who wants no part of me or the kind of dreams I offer.

Something in her voice tipped him off, because his eyes went back to her face, then suddenly skeptical. Without being invited, he moved by her and stood in her living room.

"What happened to your tree?"

"I took it down. I don't want to come home--" her voice caught on the word home, but she rushed on "--to find a pile of needles on the floor."

He was looking now at the boxes packed neatly on top of the purple couch. His eyes scanned her living room.

"Where's all the highly breakable bric-a-brac?" he asked.

She said nothing.

"Are you leaving?"

She couldn't look at him. Her shoulders were shaking. She looked down at her feet. She was mortified to see a teardrop on the end of her shoe.

His feet moved into her line of vision. One lean finger came under her chin and lifted it.

"You can't leave," he said huskily. "We've just begun."

But it was him who wasn't leaving. he took off his jacked and hung it on one of their coat hangers. He set down a wrapped christmas package beside it.

"You said you didn't need me or my kind of dreams," she reminded him shakily, as he turned back to her and regarded her with those steady eyes.

We've just begun? That weakness was sweeping her, that longing was knocking the legs right out from under her.

She pulled away from him, caught a glance of her book sitting on top of her luggage, a stern reminder of the bliss that awaited her if she could just get through this.

"Did you know," she told him, "whole cultures are dispensing with relationships?"

He folded his arms over the mightiness of his chest, she suspected to keep himself from shaking her, but she bravely went on.

"In some Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Iceland, women are choosing not to get married anymore. They still have children, they've just dispensed with the, er, bothersome part."

"You mean men?" he asked grimly.

"Yes," she said, tilting her chin at him, "the bothersome part."

"Ah. The insensitive part."

"Uh-huh."

"The part that tends to run and hide when something like commitment begins to look likely."

"Exactly."

"The part that looks for an excuse to drive people away when they start getting too close."

Was he talking about him or about her? Because wasn't that what she was doing? Literally driving away because she had gotten too close. Her relationship with Karl had never asked this much of her, but she had driven away from that one, too.

"Well, dispensing with men is probably all well and good, we are a bothersome lot, but who puts up their coat hangers?"

"I'm sure they hire out."

"Ditto for Christmas trees?"

"I haven't got to that part of the book, yet."

"And who deals with the stubborn ponies?"

"Not everyone has a stubborn pony to deal with."

"Who do they teach to make cookies?"

"Their children."

"Ah, the children that they dispensed with the bother of giving a father. How do the children feel about that?"

"I don't know," she said, a little goo querulously. "I don't know any Scandinavian children. Or Scandinavian women for that matter."

He moved closer to her, stared down at her.

"Who holds them in the night, Aubree? Who do they laugh with? Who do they hold hands with? Who do they kiss? Who makes the loneliness go away? Who makes the sun come out when it's raining?"

"You can't make the sun come out when it's raining!" Oh, hell. They weren't even talking about him. They were talking in general terms. Why had she said that?

But he moved closer to her. "Try me," he breathed.

"It's not raining."

"It is in my world, Aubree. The thought of you going away is making it rain in my world."

And then he closed the small distance between them, bent, cupped his hand at the back of her neck and drew her lips to his.

She willed herself to pull away in the interests of being the woman she should be.

but it seemed when her lips met his, she discovered, anew, exactly who that was.

"It's working for me," he said softly against her lips. "The sun is coming out for me, Aubree. And I know. Because I've been without it for a long time. Do you have to go there? Do you have to see for yourself what a lonely place in the world can be?"

His lips took hers again before she could answer.

"I've been married," he said to her, a whisper. "And I've been single. A good marriage is the best, Aubree. You live with your best friend. You aren't lonely anymore."

She could feel something stilling in her, rising up to meet him.

"And you know what else, Aubree? you don't have to be afraid."

And that said it all. All her life she thought she was afraid her dreams would not come true.

Now, she could see, she was much more afraid they would. What could ever live up to the expectation she had in her mind, after all? How long before the disillusionment set in? How long before one of them crashed out the door in the middle of the night and never came back?

Stunned, she realized she was repeating the pattern of her childhood. She was abandoning the ship because of exactly what he had said.

Aubree was afraid.

He looked at her, and in his eyes, she knew he could see her fear. he took her hand, and guided it gently to his face.

And found what he said was true.

She did not have to be afraid anymore.

She touched his face with her fingertips, explored it. The word beloved came to her mind and stayed.

"Don't go, Aubree. Stay. Stay and marry me. I love you. I have loved you from the first moment you ignored my Go Away sign."

"You didn't. You were annoyed by me."

"Some part of me may have been annoyed. Another part knew that you had come to get me. To pull me out of the darkness. And now, I'm coming to get you, Aubree. I don't care what they do in Iceland. I don't want you to be alone."

She could hardly believe what she had just heard, what he had just offered, but when she saw his face, she knew it was true.

"Look," he said. "I got you a Christmas present."

He handed her the package he had set on the floor.

"This is one of the worst wrapping jobs I've ever seen," she said, tears, this time of joy, sparking in her eyes.

"You have a lifetime to teach me how to wrap parcels. And bake cookies."

the wrapping fell away, and she saw the hammer he had picked for her. and tied to it's sturdy handle was a fine piece of silver wire was a ring.

"And I have a lifetime to show you," he continued softly, "how to hang coat hangers and choose the right hammer. I have all kinds of skills you don't know about, too."

She could feel herself blushing, and he grinned wickedly.

"Well, there is that. but I'm also a champion diaper changer. You don't get that in every man."

And that miracle she had waited her whole life for had just come. To have someone to lean on. To belong. To love.

"Will you?" he asked softly. "Will you come and spend Christmas Eve out at Michelle and Brian's? And spend Christmas Day with us?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"We'll start there, then," he decided. He took the hammer from her, carefully unwound the sparkling diamond ring and slid it onto her finger.

She held up her hand, and the ring twinkled, and diamond sparks of light flew from it.

That matched the sparks of light that flew from his eyes.

"Yes," Aubree whispered again. Not just to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but to a life spent beside this man, bathed in the Light.