Love Stories as Rick Gives Tabitha His Favorite Gift

Every year, when December wrapped the city in early darkness, Clara asked Daniel the same question. What would he like this time? And every year he gave the same answer with a slow grin. Surprise me. After seven years together, she had learned that the best surprises were never found in shops. Her favorite gift to give had nothing to do with ribbons or receipts, and she had been planning this one for weeks.

She started with a letter, written by hand at the kitchen table while he worked late. She wrote about the night they met in the rain outside a crowded bookstore, how he had held the door and then held her gaze a beat too long. She wrote about the apartment with the broken heater where they kept warm the old fashioned way. She wrote about the things she still wanted from him, the things she had never quite said out loud. By the last page her cheeks were warm and her handwriting had grown bold.

When Daniel came home, the lights were low and candles lined the hallway like a path. The letter waited on his pillow. Clara watched from the doorway in the dark green silk he loved, saying nothing while he read. She saw his breath change halfway down the second page. When he finally looked up, his eyes held that same hungry tenderness from the night in the rain, and he crossed the room without a word.

What followed was slow and unhurried, a conversation spoken entirely with hands and lips. She gave him her full attention, every sigh and whisper an answer to the questions in her letter. He took his time, tracing each line she had written onto her skin as though memorizing it. Outside, snow began to fall, and neither of them noticed.

Later, tangled in warm sheets, Daniel kissed her shoulder and admitted it was the best gift he had ever received. Clara smiled into the pillow. That was the secret she had known all along. The greatest gift between two adults in love is simply being wanted, completely and without hesitation, again and again.