Preciousness is only revealed to one worthy of such things.

By Erozetta. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.

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What’s a girl to do when everyone has been hinting that her boyfriend is going to propose in front of his family on Christmas Eve?

 Then, upon receiving my gift, instead of a ring I found a note. Not a promise of a ring to come, but a note folded to fit into the slot of a beautiful ring box that read:

Rin,

I’ve thought long and hard about this. I know you were expecting something else, but I think we should see other people. We’ve always been on different paths and I don’t think long-term is going to converge those two wildly different walks of life. I would appreciate it if you kept up appearances until after we leave my family gathering. They’re expecting me to propose, but I just don’t feel it’s the right move with you. We can pretend this is a placeholder then part after we get back home.

So sorry,

            Tommy

I didn’t pretend.

I lifted my gaze to him as he had the gall to kneel on one knee in front of me while his family looked at me expectantly. The tears in my eyes were quickly found to be the unhappy variety as I said, “Are you fucking kidding me, you asshole?”

Pushing him away from me, I dropped the note and box on the floor in front of one of Tom’s brothers as I fled the cabin where his family was celebrating Christmas Eve. I noticed, during my escape, the oddly placed mistletoe hanging in the door frame past the front entrance. I was the only unrelated person present at this gathering, the image of expectant kisses should I get caught by his family under the decoration made me irrationally angry. I slammed the door behind me before running out into the snow.

Mortified and put on the spot, I didn’t really care where I went or how heavy the snowfall was. I headed down the driveway without grabbing my coat, or even my shoes. My heavy wool socks became soaked as the snow melted around my feet and I jogged away with tears burning my eyes as the cold wind threatened to freeze the evidence of heartbreak to my face.

James, Tom’s youngest brother, ran after me, quickly catching up and grabbing my hand to stop me. I pulled out of his grip and fell into the soft snow, laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing. James leaned over and picked me up. My protests fell on deaf ears as he lifted me over his shoulder and carried me back toward the cabin.

I hit his back, pushed off of him, squirmed and tried to get him to drop me, but he held onto me with ease. He might’ve been Tom’s younger brother, but he certainly wasn’t smaller or weaker than the man I thought I was getting engaged to.

“Put me down!” I snapped amidst a choked sob.

James sighed and dropped me back to the ground a few hundred feet from the cabin, “It’s freezing and there’s nowhere to go for five miles in any direction unless you want to hang out with some lonely old local men that probably wouldn’t even see you as human or a grizzly or two, should you decide to venture into the woods. My brother’s an asshole, but the rest of the family ain’t. Mom sent me after you and everyone is tearing into Tommy for breaking up with you the way he did.”

I looked up into the sky as large fluffy snowflakes landed on my face and eyelashes, “So, are you offering to let me sleep in your bed instead?” I asked without shifting my eyes to him, “Or I can share a bed with your parents, I suppose.”

“Tommy’s on the couch, you’re getting his room,” he replied with zero emotion to his tone.

“Why’s mistletoe hanging in the doorway?” I asked as James grabbed my hand and pulled me back to my feet before putting his coat over my shoulders.

“What?”

“I’m the only one in the house that isn’t related to anyone else, so why hang mistletoe?”

James huffed, “We don’t actually use it. Mom likes how it looks.”

I laughed, “Well, maybe I’ll put that to the test and hang out under the mistletoe. See if anyone’s willing to bite and help me get back at your brother.”

The scowl that had been lingering on his face faded to a smirk as he glanced up at the house, “Is that an invitation to taunt my big brother, Rin?”

My gaze lowered over his frame, “Older brother, J. Not so sure he’s the bigger brother.”

We headed back to the cabin, but before we went inside, he turned me and planted a gentle kiss between my cheek and the corner of my lips. “My brother’s an idiot,” he whispered as he turned the knob and pulled me back into the warmth of the cabin.

Tommy’s mom was pacing inside the front entry and grabbed me, pulling me into a big hug. James stood aside and tilted his head as he watched me accept his mother’s apology for her oldest son, “Dorin, I’m so sorry Tommy did that to you…”

“Rin,” I said. “Please, Irene, call me Rin? I kinda hate my given name.”

The older woman smiled and took my hand, “My goodness, you’re freezing. Let’s get you into some dry clothes.”

I glanced back at James and smiled as his mother walked me through the front entrance and under the mistletoe. Wasting no time, he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from his mother. His lips were soft and wet on mine. They were also much warmer than mine as he closed his eyes and his tongue passed between my parted lips.

Irene stared, her jaw-dropping open as her youngest son planted a much more intimate kiss than I’d anticipated on me. My hand lay against his jaw and cheek and I drew in a deep breath as he released me. James’s gaze broke from mine and he turned to his mom, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“She was under the mistletoe,” he said as he walked back into the living room. He smiled as he endured the penetrating glares of his other brothers, his father and a few aunts and uncles while Tommy scowled at me.

Oh, he didn’t like that.

I smiled and Irene led me through the front room and into Tommy’s room, where she closed the door and tilted her head. “Do… Rin,” she corrected herself, “I’m not happy with what Tommy did, but I also don’t like the idea of taunting him with his younger brother…”

I looked at the older woman as I opened a drawer and pulled out dry socks and warm pajamas for myself, “Then you should talk to James about it because I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

She nodded and left the room as I gathered the things I needed to shower. My fingers went up to my lips once she left, that wasn’t only a show for his brother. There was something behind that kiss for James and I really wanted to know what.

I showered while the family bickered. After my shower, I changed into my pajamas and went out into the living room. Sitting by the fire warmed me up a little more. I was by myself on the floor, uncertain of how to handle the giant pink elephant in the room.

The feeling of pity emanating from Tommy’s family was suffocating, but I didn’t want to hide in the bedroom for the rest of this trip either. Their cabin was basically a log-mansion with giant windows giving breathtaking views of the Rockies, conifers and snow along steep ridges as far as the eye could see. Which wasn’t far on that night as the storm was kicking up and limiting the view to the few trees surrounding the cabin.

Tommy and Rick, one of his brothers, sat on the couch behind me. Their youngest sister, Jaime, came over to sit next to me as James sat on a chair nearby and one of their uncles stared at me from the front entryway, where the mistletoe hung. Leering old pervert.

“You can do better than any of my brothers,” Jaime said as James came over to the couch and leaned over, swatting his sister on the head. “Ow,” she snapped with a laugh, “it’s true and you know it.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to lay it out for her,” he retorted as he glanced at me.

A soft blush covered my cheeks but the orange glow of the fireplace covered it. Jaime was older than me by a few years and younger than Tommy by a dozen. She was also James’s ten-minutes-younger twin sister.

My attention turned back to Tommy, but he intentionally looked anywhere but at me. It was dumb of me to think a suave and successful thirty-five-year-old was about to propose to a naive and immature twenty-year-old. But my family and friends thought it was going to happen. I’d been dating Tommy for a couple years and it started off with people calling me Tommy’s flavor of the month. Nothing but a barely eighteen-year-old piece of arm candy to his friends and co-workers.

Six months in, I graduated to flavor of the year. After a year there were whispers that he was getting serious about me. None of his other relationships lasted more than a few months at a time. As the two-year mark approached, the whispers of proposal began swirling even among his friends.

I should’ve known better. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but I did. It was easy to get into the mindset of that being a possibility since he’d never wanted to bring me to his family gatherings before. What else would make him change his mind about bringing me? Proposing made more sense than bringing me there to publicly