Three Nights before Christmas Read Free Page A

anyone in law enforcement. And no associating with other ex-cons.”
    Ex-con. I’m an ex-con. She’d never said the word out loud before. No matter how many times she rolled it around in her head, it didn’t feel real, as if it belonged to someone on TV instead of a label she could own.
    She hoped it never felt real.
    By the time they drove through Marietta and made it to the farm a few miles past the town’s outskirts, Lacey’s stomach had knotted so hard it could’ve been tied by a sailor. Every piece of familiarity seemed to underlie how very different she was than the teenager who’d left home with the prospect of a big career and a chance to make her own way in the world. They passed the weathered sign she’d helped her dad make about two decades ago, Gallagher’s Christmas Tree Farm freshly painted in red with an arrow pointing left down the side road. Jenna slowed as the paved road turned into gravel, and even the sound of it hitting the SUV’s undercarriage took Lacey back to the nights she’d broken curfew to hang out with Dave, inching her mom’s car carefully over the drive in the hopes she wouldn’t wake her parents. If she had, they’d never confronted her about her tardiness. Sawyer, on the other hand, always seemed to know where she’d been, and after a couple of years he hadn’t even needed to voice his thoughts; she’d heard the criticism of her boyfriend enough to know how Sawyer rated him. Loser. Waste of time. Not good enough.
    Damn it, but she still hated how right he’d been.
    The gravel ended at a parking lot next to the log cabin she’d grown up in, the one her grandparents had built and her parents had extended. The outside was decorated for Christmas, something she knew Sawyer did only because it added to the farm’s festive feel and made customers more excited about buying the perfect tree. He’d strung bunting and flashing white fairy lights around the barn near the house, and he’d lit fires in a couple of forty-gallon drums flanking the barn’s door, brightening the ever-shortening winter day and providing some heat.
    “Why don’t you go ahead and find your brother, and I’ll park the car,” Jenna suggested.
    “Thanks.” Lacey couldn’t keep the gruffness from her voice, no matter how hard she swallowed. She slid out of the SUV, closing the door behind her and making her way across the lot. The chilly air bit through her sweater and shirt. She crossed her arms, pretending to warm herself up instead of giving herself a hug. She wandered through the cut firs and pines and spruces, displayed like a fragrant forest in their stands. She found Sawyer on the other side of the lot, feeding tree after tree through the baler, slimming them down with plastic wrap so families could get them in their cars and trucks. When he glanced up, his face ticked through several emotions so quickly she couldn’t catalog them. Her feet stopped moving. She’d been given two hugs today, one by Charlene and one by Jenna. Now she realized she wanted only one, a bear hug from her big brother that would make words unnecessary. An embrace that would sweep away all the disappointment she knew he felt even though he refused to come out and say it. One that would let her know they could start over, as fresh as seeds that hadn’t yet grown roots, much less fungus.
    He straightened away from the baler, his gaze shifting over her just as hers did to him. How strange to stand and look at him after years of sitting uncomfortably across from him at a table and chairs too small for her, much less his carrying-sycamores-is-easy body. His face was hard, inscrutable and chiseled into sharp planes, but in the two months since she’d seen him his beard had grown unruly and hid most of his lower face. She was tempted to tell him he looked more like an ex-con than she did. He probably wouldn’t find the humor in that, though.
    “Was beginning to think they hadn’t let you out.”
    Well, shit. So much for that