In the picturesque town of Winter Grove, the tenacious Alicia Whittaker faces off against her best friend's snobbish brother Zeke Brighton when his disapproval of his sister's boyfriend threatens to upend their Christmas.
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Tenacious college studen...
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Zeke
Zeke hadn't imagined that hell would look this festive. Not only was he surrounded on every side by children and families drunk on holiday cheer, but he was being also forced to participate. The idea of these juvenile games made his stomach turn, made all the worse because he'd somehow found himself partnered up with Sterling.
And this was all thanks to one person.
Alicia.
He felt the muscles in his jaw strain as he looked down at her. Alicia and Celeste were ahead of them in line, his parents up front at the registration table. He stared into the back of her head, wishing his focused glare could light a fire like sunlight through a magnifying glass.
As if Alicia could feel a prickle of heat, she whipped around to look at him. She held his stare for a moment, her eyes narrowing, before she turned back around.
Zeke's ever-present frown deepened. He wished there was a way to get back at her for this...
Still waiting in line, Zeke's eye was caught on the other teams leaving the registration table, their arms laden with their supplies. They carried laundry baskets spray-painted in red and green and festooned with ribbon. Inside was a sack filled with what looked like painted sponges.
"Are those foam fruitcakes?" Zeke asked as the other teams passed him by. "Where does one even get foam fruitcakes?"
"The Internet, duh," Alicia said, turning around again. "You can get anything on the internet these days. You should know that. You were some kind of tech mogul, weren't you?"
Yeah, emphasis on the past tense, he thought. He wanted to return a snarky, but instead, he looked away, trying his best to ignore her. He had promised his parents civil, and she made him want to be anything but.
"So, what's the objective again?" Celeste asked her dad.
"One person throws the fruitcake," her dad shouted back as if to inform all of them. "The other person catches them with the basket. The team that makes the most throws moves onto the next round."
"Sounds simple enough," Celeste said with a nod, looking at the other to see if they had understood.
"If that's the case," Sterling piped up for the first time, turning towards Zeke. "Then you should probably be the catcher."
Zeke snapped out of his thoughts and frowned. "What? Why?"
"Because I'll be the better throw," Sterling explained like it wasn't even up for debate. "I played a ton of basketball growing up."
"Yeah, you, Olly, and Will practically lived on the court," Alicia said, her eyes dreamy with nostalgia. She looked so pretty when she wasn't scowling... which, unfortunately, was whenever she looked at him.
