“I think we’ve more than made up for that,” Noah countered. “I guess I just want you to know. That’s why the festival is so important to me. Cat, that was the only time of year I could really escape. When that tree was lit the day after Thanksgiving every year, when the whole town was decked out in lights and tinsel, I had a place to go every day after school besides home. I helped out wherever I could just so I wouldn’t have to go home. And the people of Merry let me. I manned the hot chocolate stand. I swept sidewalks. I wrapped gifts. They fed me, paid me. Even when they didn’t have to.”

He cleared his throat, his voice thick with emotion. “I went to every tree lighting. Ada Romanski—she was the last city manager—she’d give a little speech and then push the button that lit the tree, and I thought it was the coolest job in the world. I wanted that job. Sometimes in the summer when my parents were fighting or when there wasn’t enough to eat, I’d go to bed, and I’d dream about those lights.”

Cat blinked back a hot rush of tears. “Jesus,” she breathed. “Is your dad still alive? Because I’m all for driving to his shithole apartment—because I know an asshole like that doesn’t have a house—and kicking his ass.”

“He left when I was a teenager. Went to work and just never came back. It was a relief to me at first. He wasn’t around to tell me what a disappointment I was or how pathetic I was. But then reality set in. Mom didn’t work, never had. And we went from barely scraping by to heads underwater.”

Cat squeezed his hand, her heart breaking to bits over the little boy who dreamed of Christmas lights.

“The only things I had in those days were school and the Christmas Festival. Two bright, shiny things that I could hang onto to get me through the rest of it. The fights, the never having enough, the never being good enough. So I worked hard, got some scholarships, and decided I’d spend my life giving back to the town that had given me so much. And my mother? By the time he left, there wasn’t much left of her. She moved, a couple miles outside of town. Neither one of us could stand the sight of that house anymore. But she just gave up a long time ago.”

Cat dropped her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Noah, this explains so much.”

“Like what?”

“You’re not an asshole. You’re scarred.”

“I’m not scarred,” he argued. “It was decades ago. I’m over it. I should be over it.”