All I Want For Christmas Is You Read Free

at five-thirty in the morning.
    She stopped at the bottom step. Paused and blinked slowly.
    Then her face lit up, and with a burst of energy, she shot across the small space, a happy cry of “Daddy!” filling the void in his heart.
    He scooped her up, holding her close and breathing in the scent of her. She was clean and safe and warm.
    She was his little girl.
    “You came.” She nestled close with a happy sound.
    He caught Sam’s eyes over Natalie’s shoulder. Her expression was blank, but in her eyes was a hint, the barest hint of something beyond the dead, listless stare he’d seen since she’d come home from Iraq.
    He wanted to shake her, to push her to snap out of it. To bring back the woman he’d fallen for all those years ago when she’d let him into her home and her life. A life that had included a baby girl that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with the moment she’d entered the world.
    He didn’t know how to fix things. He didn’t know how to fix her.
    And because of that, he was losing everything that mattered in this life.
    Natalie leaned back. “Will you come with us to see Santa today?”
    His gaze collided with Sam’s. He saw her open her mouth. Braced for the denial. Braced for her to ask him to leave.
    To ask him to stop being a father to the little girl in his arms.
    “Honey, I’m sure Daddy’s tired. It’s a long flight from Texas to Maine.”
    Patrick stilled, analyzing her response. Her words bounced around his brain, seeking some point of reference before he recognized that she hadn’t said no.
    “What time are you going?” he asked when he could find his voice without risking embarrassing himself.
    That feeling, that choking, uncertain feeling was hope modulated by pure terror.
    “I was thinking about noon,” she said quietly. “You could get settled first. Maybe take a nap if you wanted.”
    He tried to keep the surprise off his face and was pretty sure he failed.
    Natalie bounced down and rushed to her mother. “Thank you! This way Grammy can go visit Mr. Thomas and have Grammy and Thomas time.”
    Patrick choked. He didn’t want to know if “Grammy and Thomas time” meant what he thought it meant. He’d known Nancy and Thomas were close since the first time he’d come home with Sam. Natalie raced back up the stairs, yelling for Grammy. If Nancy had been trying to go back to sleep, she definitely wasn’t now.
    He’d always liked Samantha’s mother. Nancy Egan hadn’t approved of her daughter’s choices, but she’d never breathed a rude word toward Patrick. When he’d shown up on her doorstep that morning, the only thing she’d done other than let him in the house was make coffee and then go back to bed.
    Patrick watched Sam closely at the mention of her best friend’s father. Had she seen Thomas since she’d been home? Sam may have lost her best friend but Thomas had lost a daughter.
    How on earth was Sam coping with her death? He looked at her then, seeing the too-familiar grief looking back at him. He wanted to ask, to say something that would make the pain easier to bear.
    But nothing, not even time would do that. It would sneak up on her, again and again over the years.
    It was something no one told you about going to war. That it never really leaves you when you come home.
    “I’m sorry, Sammy,” he whispered.
    She turned away, but not before he saw the tears glittering in her eyes, and his heart broke for her all over again.
     
    ***
     
    Her lungs hurt. It felt like a massive sucking chest wound that ripped open all at once with the mention of Mel.
    She thought she’d made her peace with her best friend’s death on that convoy.
    But standing there in her mother’s kitchen beneath the sparkling white Christmas lights, her chest felt tight, her lungs compressed.
    She couldn’t breathe.
    All she could do was feel.
    And it fucking hurt.
    She swiped at her cheeks, blinking and trying desperately to shove the emotion back down where she could pretend it