NiningGay1978
Eight years ago, Cole Harding left Cedar Falls for Memphis and let his silence do what he was too afraid to say out loud. He has told himself, in the years since, that Brianna was fine. That she was capable. That she didn't need him. He has told himself this so many times it has started to feel like the truth.
Brianna Calloway has gotten pretty good at surviving Christmas.
She comes home to Cedar Falls as little as possible, keeps the visits short, deflects her mother's gentle questions, and drives back to Nashville before anyone can look too hard at the life she's built - the too-small apartment, the job she doesn't love, the eight-year-old daughter she is raising entirely alone.
What she hasn't gotten good at is Cole Harding.
Cole was the boy next door - literally, across the cedar fence, close enough to throw a comb at her when they were twelve and cause a three-week neighborhood incident. He was her first real fight, her first real friend, and, briefly and devastatingly, her first love. He was also the man who went silent when she needed him most, and who has spent eight years being too proud to undo it.
Cedar Falls is a small town. The fence between their houses is still standing. And some things - the hard, complicated, inconvenient ones - have a way of coming back around.
EVERY CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU is a story about the cost of pride, the damage done by silence, and what it actually takes to come home.