All I Want for Christmas Is You (Short Story) by Molly O'Keefe Page B

turning you into someone I don’t know.”
    “That’s bullshit—”
    “No. It’s not. Just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean it’s bullshit. And being married to you is turning me into someone I don’t know. I can’t do it anymore, Billy. I just can’t.”
    Maybe because she wasn’t screaming, wasn’t crying and trying to hurt him, he finally got the message.
    His face, so handsome, so very dear to her—despite the scar, or maybe because of it—crumpled.
    “Please,” he whispered. He begged. If her heart weren’t already cracked, she might actually have felt something.
    But she looked at the boy she’d loved since she was thirteen and felt nothing.
    There was a God—the proof was that when she pushed the button the elevator doors opened immediately, and she stepped in.
    Don’t look , she told herself, staring at the white salt stains on her boots. But as the elevator door started toclose, she looked up and saw her husband, all alone. Nearly naked. Tears in his eyes.
    But he wasn’t fighting. And she knew, right then, that it was over.
    Really over.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    And the doors closed between them.

About the Author
    M OLLY O’K EEFE published her first Harlequin romance at age twenty-five and hasn’t looked back. She loves exploring each character’s road toward happily ever after. She’s won two Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice awards and the RITA for Best Novella in 2010. Originally from a small town outside of Chicago, she now lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband, two kids, and the largest heap of laundry in North America.
    www.molly-okeefe.com