Through His Eyes

❄ Bonus Chapter ❄

           

A/N: Hey guys! Remember me? As you can see, I ain't dead yet. As Christmas draws near, I wanted to invite you to have dinner with some of my favorite people. So, here's a bonus chapter. Nothing much happens but I thought you might like to spend this little bit of extra time with Caleb, Rhea, Willa and Wade. Hope you enjoy!

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Time passed very quickly, once you'd stopped holding your breath, waiting for something magnificent to happen. Days became weeks, became months, even became years. Rhea didn't have to wait anymore, because her something magnificent had happened years ago. Seven years, to be exact. Now she held in her hands seven years' worth of love, intimacy, and laughter, with a side of sorrow and grief, made bearable by the knowledge that someone was there to shoulder the burden with her.

Rhea looked out of the living room window of their two-bedroom apartment onto the busy road below. The noise from the hectic coming and goings of the last-minute Christmas travelers reached up to the fourth floor and mingled with the sound of the Christmas album she'd had on loop since the morning. 

"Not this again," said Caleb, sticking his head out of the kitchen. "We've had four goes of it already. I cannot listen to that Bublé guy sing White Christmas one more time."

"Oh, you love it," Rhea called out without turning away from the window, smiling to herself.

"I do not," said Caleb, sounding indignant.

"Well, all I know is someone listened to it on my Spotify account last week when I was out visiting my mother, and it wasn't me."

"Okay, let's get one thing straight. I do not love Michael Bublé." His voice got closer and closer, until he was standing right behind Rhea, looking out of the window over her shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her middle and said the next words with his nose pressed against the crook of her neck: "But I do love you. I missed you while you were gone and I wanted to do something that reminded me of you. Is there something wrong with that?" 

Rhea turned around without stepping out of his embrace. Her lips were stretched into a huge grin that she couldn't seem to get rid of and her eyes were twinkling. "There is nothing wrong with that," she whispered.

She brought both her hands to the sides of his face.

"Your hands are so cold," said Caleb, looking down at her through half-lidded eyes, smiling seductively.

"Caleb," Rhea whined, even though she snuggled closer into his embrace. "There's no time for your bedroom eyes. They'll be here any minute."

"All I'm saying is, I know a way you could warm up."

Rhea rose to her tiptoes and went to bridge the gap between their lips. They were a hair's breadth away from each other when the doorbell rang, making them spring apart from each other like two teenagers who'd been caught making out in the basement of their parents' house. Not a completely unfamiliar feeling.

Chuckling, Caleb went to answer the door and Rhea followed after him to greet their friends.

"Hi!" Rhea squealed as she went to envelop her best friend in a bone-crushing hug.

Willa and Wade had moved over a state when Willa had been offered a job that was too good to pass up. Wade had asked to be transferred to another branch of the company that had an office located close by their new place and they'd found themselves comfortably settled in their new home in mere weeks.

Though Rhea was over the moon for the life her friends were building for themselves, she'd taken the move pretty hard. It wasn't easy going from seeing your best friend of a decade all the time to seeing them once a month, and that is if they were lucky.