“Two birds with one stone, huh?” He snorted, crossing his arms to keep himself from shaking with cold. A cold winter night to reflect the cold heart of this woman.

“I’m not going to deny that Miller’s Point is always my first priority, but I never lied to you. I want to be with you.” Again, she reached for him. He backed away before she got the chance to touch him. “I’m falling for you. Please don’t let this get between us.”

“You’re just saying that because I haven’t given you what you wanted,” he said, no uncertainty wavering his stern voice.

“No. I’m saying it because it’s true.”

True. She made countless spoken and unspoken promises today, and she’d broken every single one by lying to him. If she would go to these lengths to win back a stupid festival, what kind of person was she really, deep down in her heart? He thought of his parents. The stories he’d told her about them. He kept them so close to his heart no one ever saw or heard about them, yet he’d opened his mouth and blabbed his tightest held secrets. As much as he despised her in this moment, he hated himself the most. His lifestyle of cold calculation wasn’t a bug; it was a feature that protected him from heartbreaking blunders like this one.

Why did this hurt so much? How had he given her so much power? He wanted to crawl under a rock and never re-emerge almost as much as he wanted to sell her beloved festival off piece by piece in front of her just to show her how spiteful and cruel he could be, in spite of her assertions to the contrary.

“I don’t think you know what that word means. I opened up to you. I told you things I’ve never told anyone. For what? So you could use them against me?”

This fight began with his decision to remain rational and unattached, to tell her how badly she hurt him without ever allowing him to show her how badly this betrayal pained him. But the more he spoke, the faster his avalanche of anger grew. She’d quivered in fear when he raised his voice earlier; he wanted her to do it again.

“I did it so you could finally understand what it’s like to have a friend.”

No. He wouldn’t listen to that line again. He wouldn’t be a victim twice. She said this stuff because she needed him. He was nothing more than a pawn in her game, a piece she could move around to get what she wanted. The glory of having saved Miller’s Point.

Did she even like Christmas? Or was her slavish devotion to the rituals and false promises of the season nothing more than a ruse, too?