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December 1st

Anna stared at the homemade advent calendar on the kitchen table in her brother’s condo. The one he no longer lived in. Because he no longer lived.

Damn it, she was going to cry again.

“You need to open it.”

Luke, her brother’s best friend, the man she was currently sharing Colin’s New Jersey condo with—as if her life wasn’t wretched enough—glared at her from the doorway.

“Why me?” Her voice cracked and she stomped to the counter, ripped off a few squares of paper towel, one would not be enough, and wiped her eyes. Then noisily blew her nose.

Luke’s dark brows shot up but, as usual, that was the only reaction she got. She wanted a fight. Wanted to scream at the world for taking Colin away from her. To cry at the waste of it, the loss. To shake someone, preferably the emotionless, lumbering brute she was currently forced to live with. To ask her brother what the hell he thought he was playing at, forcing her to grieve not in her cozy studio in Brooklyn, but in this vast condo full of memories. And with a man whose idea of showing emotion was to blink, swallow, and clamp tight on his jaw.

“As you keep telling me, he was your brother.” Luke shrugged his ridiculously wide shoulders. She thought the gesture was designed to make her think he wasn’t bothered by any of this. Not the moving in to live with her and Colin six weeks ago. Not the death of his best friend two weeks ago. Not the promise they both gave Colin that they’d stay in his place until after Christmas.

She glared back at him. Two could play at the pretending not to care game. Even if he was so much better at it. “He was your best friend. Not that you’ve actually told me that, because God forbid you talk to me. But I guess there’s a reason he wanted you here . . .” She swallowed. “At the end.” The waterworks started again and she fumbled around with the soggy squares of paper towel. For God’s sake, she should have grabbed the whole roll.

Luke sighed and reached up to the top shelf in one of the cupboards by the sink. A shelf she had never seen because she wasn’t well over six foot.

He pulled out a box of tissues and slid it across the kitchen table towards her. “Here.”

“Special tissues only for tall people, huh.” Colin had been tall—had been. Her heart stuttered and she yanked out a tissue.

“Just tissues, Anna.” He gave her a level look. “You don’t need to turn everything into a competition about who was closer to him.”

Wow. “How dare you.” Anger fizzed inside her, licking up against emotions raw from the last month of seeing her strong, full of life brother fade in front of her eyes. Raw from holding her tongue every time Luke took Colin out for one of his “adventures,” knowing full well her brother would come back exhausted.

She was the nurse, the carer, yet Luke had ignored her advice every frigging time.

Eyes blinded by tears, she rounded the table and pushed at Luke’s giant of a chest. “Screw you, Luke.”

Predictably he stood rock still, arms rigidly by his sides. No flinch, no grabbing her. Not even a pithy swear word.

“I was trying to make a joke,” she hissed, hands still on his chest, like they needed the human contact and didn’t want to let go. Even though the human in this case was more like a lump of coal. “You know, an attempt to lighten the atmosphere because Colin would be livid to see us so damn miserable.” She prodded his chest with her finger. “And no, I’m not saying that because I knew him better than you. I’m saying it because whether you want to believe it or not, it’s the truth.”

Luke’s big wall of a chest rose and fell. A beat later she felt his hands rest on her shoulders, their touch firm, sure. “He also wouldn’t want to see us fighting.” His deep rumble of a voice, the British accent he still hadn’t lost . . . a shiver skated down her spine and she cursed inwardly, angry that her body enjoyed the sound of his voice, though her mind rarely enjoyed what he had to say.

“No.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and she took a step away. The motion caused his hands to slide off her shoulders and she immediately missed the connection. They may have been his hands, but for a brief moment, their touch had made her feel less alone.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the advent calendar. Colin’s surprise final gift to them. He’d left it in a trunk in the hall with strict instructions to take it out on the last day of November. Yesterday, after two painful weeks of avoiding each other, of not knowing what to say, how to behave with each other now that Colin was gone, they had removed it from its box.

She traced the roughly drawn outline of the gingerbread house, complete with twenty-four windows. It was like something made by a primary school kid, not a thirty-two-year-old man.

“He was never much good at art,” Luke said dryly.

“No. I got Mom’s genes.” Unlike Anna, who’d painted as a hobby before life had got in the way, her mom was a proper artist who sold her paintings online.

Luke’s unusual green eyes flicked to hers. “They arrive back okay?”

“Yes, thanks.” A few years ago her parents had decided to travel while they still could. They were currently in New Zealand, having flown back last week after the funeral. Every few months they packed up and went somewhere new. In between exploring their new environs, her mom painted and her dad wrote cozy crime books.

It was a relationship of equals, of two people who had the same interests, the same outlook. Who doted on each other.

It was a relationship Anna aspired to, but despite several attempts, hers had fallen well short of the mark.

Her finger hovered over the first window. “I think we should read his instructions again.”

Luke exhaled heavily. “You know what he wrote. Behind each window is an activity we’re to do on the day, or he’ll haunt us,” he added dryly. “Twenty-four days to Christmas. Twenty-four windows. Twenty-four activities we need to cram in and photograph. Now open the damn window for today so we can get it done.”