Together by This Christmas Tree

cally mcgregor

Before I knew it, dinner had been served and eaten with laughs and me and Gemma’s secret smiles, and coffee had been made and consumed. The happy couple had retreated to their huge bedroom, leaving me and John sitting on my small bed, both of us practically falling off either end. John had his fingers on his lap, playing with the end of his shirt while I played with the elastic on my sweatpants, jet lag catching up with me as I laid down to sleep.

John and I had been operating in a content silence, occasionally giving each other smiles and ending in me biting my lip. I was exhausted, but couldn’t fall asleep, and John was still here, laying beside me and staring at the ceiling. “Let’s watch a movie,” I murmured, whispering against the black around the windows and the terrible whispers surrounding the stone walls. I dug my MacBook from my bag and began surfing iTunes, trying desperately to find a good movie. I was in the romance and dramas when John spoke.

“There, that one.” His voice was gruff, that hot sleepy voice that I loved so much in guys. His hair was all messed up, and he was leaning over my lap to see the laptop screen, his body warm against my legs. He was pointing, his fingers an inch from my screen, to a movie I knew would have thought he would have picked.

“Really, John?” I whispered. “’27 Dresses’? That’s what you want to watch?” I murmured, my breath hitching in my throat somehow, like against all odds, he was here, with me. He smiled up at me.

“Shut up and let’s just watch it.”

Sunlight creeped through a window, my MacBook laying forgotten on the floor and two souls lost between a sea of blankets, disconnected with fates forever intertwined. My head rested on John’s chest, his arms around my waist as we slept. It wasn’t intentional; far from it. When we grew tired of the flawless romance of the Kevin and Jane, we decided to just ... fall asleep. John started out on the other end of the bed, facing the window, and I facing the wall on my side.

But when my eyes cracked open far too late, my head had made a pillow out of John’s tattooed chest and his arms had wrapped around my waist. I knew I should have been freaked out: after all, there was Sumner to worry about back in Arizona, but this was ... this was just nice. It was a throwback, a flash into a past I had chosen to forget. But there was something different about John than Howie. I felt safe in John’s arms, and there were no lingering doubts. Except for the obvious.

John pulled me in tighter, yawning in my ear as his eyes cracked open and he murmured quietly, confidently. “I know we shouldn’t be cuddling but goddammit, this is too comfortable and I’m too tired to move.” I smirked.

“Plus you love me, right?” I said, completely kidding at face value. But I was growing impatient, wondering when and where I would find the man that Gemma found in Henry; that Isabelle found in Damien; that I thought I found in John. John chuckled, but his voice was laced with seriousness.

“And I love you.”