The staircase was dark, only the dull moon spilling through the skylight to guide my path down the polished steps. I gripped onto the wooden banister as I navigated each one, though I'd navigated each of them countless times since I was a child. But there was something different about this wintry night. Something almost magical, causing excitement and anticipation to bundle in my stomach.

My house was as quiet as the evening outside, and I couldn't quite remember why I'd ventured out from the warmth of my bed. But something was propelling me down that staircase. Something that I couldn't for the life of me figure out.

My fuzzy socks hit the floorboards, my instincts telling me where to go. To the tree, they reminded me. See if you can catch him.

I clasped my sheer gown, wrapping it tighter around my body. That's it; I'd heard the jingle of bells as something flew past my bedroom window. I'd heard jingling and then a thud coming from the lounge downstairs.

I passed my mother's wall calendar, confirming my hypothesis.

It was Christmas Eve, and I'd vowed to catch Santa Claus.

It was strange, of course. I hadn't stayed up for Father Christmas since I was six. But I was sure that it was my desire to catch him that had motivated me to get up while everyone else was sound asleep. I was going to see him, because I think there was something that I needed to say.

I edged toward the lounge. I heard him before I saw him. His movements were quick and practiced, but tiny golden bells rang in his wake.

He was unloading gifts by the tree, the glimmering fairy lights projecting flickering patterns onto his cherry-red suit. In his big black boots and his fur-trimmed hat, he certainly resembled the man of Christmas at first glance. But the closer and longer that I dared to look, the more that I noticed discrepancies from the stories I'd heard and read.

Santa was a lot leaner than I'd thought he'd be. He was muscular and tall, without a single strand of grey decorating his full head of hair. In fact, while the only source of light came from those twinkling on the tree, I could see quite clearly that this Santa was a blonde.

When he turned, my heart skipped a beat. No, the stranger in my house wasn't Santa Claus, after all.

But I think some part of me already knew that.

His chest was bare underneath his red coat, the dull moonlight bouncing off every defined line of familiar muscle. James knew that I was appraising him. He seemed to revel in it, and he was assessing me just as closely. His gaze swept over me before becoming dark, his smile replaced by something far more devilish. I looked down to follow his eye line, trying to find the source of his pleasure.

That's when I realized that I wasn't in my nightgown anymore.

Actually, I was barely wearing anything at all.

But I wasn't unnerved.

Because I think I'd planned it this way.

Adrenaline propelled me forward. James dropped the gifts in his arms without thinking twice. We edged across the floorboards to meet in the middle of the room, fire and electricity pooling in an intense concoction that we'd waited too long to consume.

Face to face. Mouth to mouth. We were inches from one another, hot breath mixing with cold evening air. And from that burning look in his familiar blue gaze, I knew that retreating to his sleigh was the last thing on his mind. Retreating to my room was the last thing on mine. We'd both waited far too long to be this close again.

James inched closer. He reached out to move a loose curl from over my face.

I frowned.

It didn't sound quite right.

In fact, the sound of our shallow breath dimmed entirely, a loud, obnoxious rustling becoming the only thing I could hear. The crease in my brow deepened. I opened my mouth to speak. But before I could probe him for an answer, he was gone.

The twinkling tree was gone.

The moon and the stairway and the pile of presents were gone.

My eyelids fluttered open, and I wasn't at home at all.

"Give it to me," a hushed voice whispered. The rustling intensified, followed by the sound of a quick tear.

I blinked a few times to gather my bearings. Darkness greeted me, only a few streams of artificial light assisting my search for clarity.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy my head felt. A dull, stiff aching had settled along the base of my neck. I turned it slowly, trying to find the sound that'd transported me from wherever the hell I'd been seconds before to wherever the hell I was now.

It was plastic—the noise. A boy was sitting in the aisle across from me, his tired mother handing him a packet of potato chips before rustling was replaced with crunching.

My heart deflated at the realization of where I was. Of where I really was.

I wasn't at home. I wasn't in the lounge. I certainly wasn't seconds away from rolling around with James under my mother's tree.

Rather, I was on a bus in the middle of the night, accompanied by a sleeping Dex on one side and a noisy snack fiend on the other.

The memory of what happened earlier that night came back to me in flashes. Two other cars had lit up that barren backroad. Both were overloaded with kids our age. Both rocketed toward us. But only one was in its designated lane. The other was in ours, trying to overtake the other.

We'd been seconds away from a collision. Seconds away from ... hell, I didn't even want to think about it. But if James hadn't pulled into the emergency lane in time, there would have been more than just dirt and asphalt caking that narrow, deserted road.

Thank god for James. Calm, collected, level-headed James. He always knew what to do. He always knew how to keep the people that he cared about safe. Even to the detriment of his baby—his car.

I don't know whether it was from the jerking of the wheel or the force of his foot on the accelerator, but for one reason or another, his beloved Range Rover conked out. Within half an hour, the four of us were crouching by the side of the road with our luggage, watching a blue tow drive off with his car in the dead of night.

And, then, we'd been crammed into the very back of some tourist bus that was heading up into snow territory. Somehow, Dex had wielded his Van Der Yates connections, pulled some strings, and scored us a literal last-minute ride.

Not for the first time since I'd know him, I found myself incredibly grateful for his old-money privilege.

The sound of low, deep breathing pricked my ears, cutting through the flashing images in my mind and turning them to static. I squinted through the mellow lighting, searching for the source of the sleepy sound.

James was sitting—or sleeping—across the aisle from Dex and me, wrapped up in his denim jacket with his head perched back against his seat. Half of his face was illuminated by a strobe of light, his striking profile on display for every one of the travelers on my side of the bus to admire.

God, he was perfect. His perfectly carved nose, his perfectly chiseled jaw. His perfectly curled lashes—dark and thick in a way that my expensive mascara couldn't dream of replicating. The perfect rise and fall of his perfectly sculpted chest. A chest covered by a jacket that he'd once thrown over me.

A chest which now haunted my subconscious, apparently.

I blushed at the thought. Had I dreamt about James before? Sure. Often. Had I dreamt about him while he was sleeping an arm's length away from me? No. Never.

I was disgusting.

And he looked so innocent, too. All fair-haired and sleepy and angelic, the lights on the roof shining down to cast an aura of purity around him like a halo. My subconscious mind, on the other hand, was filled with actual dirt.

I peeled my eyes from his face to trace over the checked pattern on the seat in front of mine instead. I hated that just looking at him made me feel guilty. But James and I were friends—friends—and I had no right to pine over him, let alone to fixate on dreams like the one I just had. Even if I did momentarily buy into the illusion that Holly sold me. Even if I did buy him that very questionable gift that was practically burning a hole through my unassuming suitcase.

A moment of weakness. Of delusion. And there was no one to blame for it but me.

"Are you awake?"

I flinched at Dex's very poor attempt at a whisper. Dex was a terrible whisperer.

"I am now," I grinned weakly, turning to face him.

He was sitting upright next to me, his eyes wide and alert in a way that suggested that he, like Chip Kid, hadn't indulged in a wink of sleep. Sure enough, he had his headphones plugged into his laptop, the latter paused on an episode of some historical drama I didn't recognize.

"You can't sleep?" I guessed, shifting my body so that I was angled toward him.

He shook his head. "I can't sleep on buses."

"How's it any different to sleeping in a car?"

"Don't try to make sense of it, Mads. My therapist couldn't."

I stifled a laugh, wondering what on earth had motivated him to see a therapist about that.

But then I realized that even rich people have to find a way to spend their money.

"I'll leave you alone if you want to go back to sleep," he said.

"I'm fine. I'm not tired." A lie. The truth went a little more like: I'm terrified that if I go back to sleep, I'll be right back at home. Right back to torturing myself with the image of James' bare chest under my fingertips and the feeling of his lips toying with mine.

Also, I never knew that I had a Santa fetish.

So that was an interesting development.

In all fairness, my Daddy Christmas episode was likely brought on by the fact that only hours earlier, I'd used my mere one sip of alcohol as an excuse to plant myself on my best friend's lap. How could I resist? He looked so handsome and bewitching under the flickering, mellow tea lights, and seeing him flirting with Mila only spurred my desire to make him mine.

But alcohol was both my blessing and a curse. It gave me the courage to unleash my deepest fantasies, sure. But I knew that James would never touch me if he thought I was under any kind of influence that wasn't simply him.

God, I knew.

I blinked hard, forcing my mind far (far, far, far) away from the living masterpiece sleeping opposite me.

But that only caused my mind to wander to Blair.

I still didn't know who the hell she was, and all attempts at probing Noah and Dex had fallen flat. If I had to guess, I'd say that she was a brunette. A tall, curvy, toned brunette. Probably a D cup. And probably a bitch.

Why? Why would she be a bitch?

Because. Because it was my hypothetical, and the thought of Blair with the Purple Heart Emoji being a bitch somehow made the thought of her existing more palatable.

But it didn't stop my stomach from churning until I felt like I'd throw the whole thing up.

Distraction. I needed a distraction.

"Can I watch with you?" I asked Dex, my question coming out as more of a hurried, hushed demand.

His eyes, beaming with curiosity, swung back to mine. But he didn't hesitate to remove one of his headphones and shove it in my ear. "I'm watching a Christmas episode. Noah would be proud."

"He would be," I groaned. "I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to do anything on this trip that isn't somehow Christmas related."

Apparently, that now applied to dreaming, too.

Dex smiled, but his eyes flashed with something other than amusement. Something that confirmed what I'd always thought about Noah's Christmas-slash-road-trip bucket list.

There was a lot more to it than any of them were letting on.

But whether it was the fact that Noah was sleeping just behind us, or the fact that having a private conversation on that cramped bus was as futile as trying to un-ring a sleigh bell, I had a feeling that it wouldn't be Dex filling me in on the truth behind the list.

We lulled into silence for a moment or two, my groggy head and droopy eyelids struggling to make sense of what we were watching. I was so, so tired. It would be so easy to give into temptation.

In more ways than one.

"It was good to see you two tonight," Dex murmured suddenly, causing my eyes to spring open with a start. "You and Holly, I mean. To see you actually talking to each other."

I swallowed a bitter smile. "I don't know if we'll ever be friends, Dex."

"I'm not asking you to be. I just want you to be okay with the idea of me and her being friends."

"You can do whatever you want."

"I know that." He looked down to pull at some red thread from his sweater. "But believe it or not, I care about what you think."

I turned from the laptop to meet his eye line, an odd sort of energy creeping into the usually playful air between us. Dex and I were rarely serious or vulnerable with each other. That was more of a Madi and Noah or Madi and James kind of thing. But in the dead of night, with only the sound of sleeping travelers snoring around us and the spotlights illuminating our faces, everything suddenly felt unavoidably deep.

"I support you, Dex. I trust you. I always will." I shuffled closer to him, keeping my voice low and light and as non-judgemental as I could muster. "But I have to ask—is there a chance that you two are becoming, you know ..." I resisted the urge to make a face, "more than friends?"

Dex didn't make the same effort that I had.

He rolled his eyes at me, just like I used to roll mine at my older sister before she ran away to Europe. "No, Madison. I meant what I said at the diner." He drew out his hands as if to emphasize his statement. "We're friends. Just friends."

Just friends.

Could a guy and a girl ever really be just friends? After the way that being friends with James had only heightened my attraction to him, I wasn't quite sure anymore.

Then again, Dex and I were just friends.

I shook my head as if shaking the question away, far too sleepy to start pondering the nature of male and female relationships. "Okay, but if you happen to change your mind—"

"I won't," he affirmed with as much sternness as he could conjure. It didn't last long, and he cracked a gentle grin. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"I appreciate the sentiment," I repeated, lifting a hand to ruffle his auburn hair.

He laughed loudly, and I pressed a finger to my lips to remind him to keep his voice down.

Lord forbid we interrupt someone else's sweet dreams like Chip Kid interrupted mine.

After five hours of fading in and out of consciousness, my body felt as stiff as a block of ice. Everything was swiftly becoming too much or too little; too much noise, too little room, too much snoring from Dex who suddenly had no trouble at all sleeping on a bus.

I gently rolled his head off my shoulder, unbuckling my seatbelt and standing to stretch out the muscles that were screaming to be stretched.

Somehow, that just made them ache more.

"Hey," James murmured from across the aisle, his voice low and strained as it left his lips. I turned to see him peering back at me over his beloved (and tattered) copy of In Cold Blood, his eyes still soft and droopy from his nap.

"Hi," I mouthed back. God, I forgot how adorable he looked first thing in the morning. All squinty-eyed and handsomely disheveled with that sultry, lopsided smirk. I couldn't help but smile, blushing for the second time that morning as my eyes dropped to the floor.

"Are you hungry?" He rummaged around in his backpack for something, emerging victorious with a KitKat and a grin.

"No, thanks. You enjoy it."

But he'd already ripped the wrapper off and split the bar in two. He extended his arm across the aisle to hand me my intended half. I smiled gratefully, reaching out to grab it.

Just as my fingers were mere centimeters away from (not-so-accidentally) grazing his, the delectable piece of candy was snatched from his grasp.

"Thanks, bro," Noah exclaimed, already mid-bite.

James threw him a displeased glare. "Not cool."

"But very tasty."

I pouted dramatically, waving James off when he offered me his piece instead.

"You have to eat," he reasoned.

"So do you," I reasoned right back. "I'm not the little matchgirl, you know. I can feed myself."

He poked out his tongue before taking an exaggerated mouthful. "Mmm," he moaned, clearly trying to get a rise out of me.

He couldn't have known that I couldn't have cared less.

I was too distracted by the urge to lick the melted chocolate from his lips.

Ugh. I literally wanted to punch myself in the face. I couldn't stop thinking about him, about his body or his smile or the way both felt and tasted. About him in that stupid, sexy Santa suit.

And being crammed in that tiny bus with him was not helping.

"Oh my god!" Noah squealed, peering over James' head and out the window behind him. "Look!"

The bus was making its first stop of the morning. Some travelers were stepping out into the cozy country town we'd arrived in, while new ones stepped on and bought tickets up the front.

"What?" Dex asked, roused from his light slumber.

I broke off a piece of the muesli bar I'd found in my handbag and offered it to him, just as James had offered his snack to me seconds before.

Unlike me, Dex didn't object.

"Look, look, look!" Noah ordered again.

He pointed out the window, directing our attention to a farm across the way. It seemed to stretch on for miles, the back end of the property lost to the early morning fog. I could just make out the rows of green pines and firs and the little red truck weaving in and out.

Suddenly, Noah wedged his phone between my eyes and the view. His infamous list was pulled up on the screen, and he scrolled right to the top so that Dex and I could read it.

One: get a tree.

"Noah, we can't get a tree! We don't even have a car!" Dex laughed, motioning around the bus comically. "Besides, the resort has more than enough to spare."

"But it's not really about that, is it?" the desperate Hufflepuff declared. "It's about the experience. It's about Christmas spirit. It's about my theory—"

"It's about there not being another bus for an hour," James said dryly.

"That's fine," Noah reasoned, nodding his head up and down like the Santa bobble-head on the bus's dash. "One hour. That's plenty of time. Come on, guys. Liven up! It's the holidays."

I didn't know why Noah was so eager to check off every bullet point on that list of his. I knew for sure that it had to be about more than just him loving Christmas, or even about him trying to prove his ridiculous theory to us.

But Noah didn't ask for much. In fact, besides James, he was the most low maintenance person I knew. He always concerned himself with the wants and needs of everybody around him. He always put them above his own. Clearly, that list was important to him. I may not have known why, but the why didn't really matter.

"Let's do it." I nodded, rising to my feet. "One hour."

He didn't need to be told twice.

He stood quickly, grabbing just about all of our things in his hands before rushing ahead. I trailed him and Dex to the door, trying to absorb the warmth of the bus before I even contemplated stepping outside.

"Madi."

James' smooth voice pulled me back from the door. When I pivoted around to face him, he was extending his jacket into the tight space between us. With a shrug that was criminally casual, he said, "It's cold."

I startled the slightest bit. My eyes flickered between him and the garment—the same one that had been cloaking his body like a blanket through the night.

"You'll freeze," he clarified again.

But I didn't need clarification. I knew very well what he was offering. My heart knew it, too, and it was quite literally flipping at the idea.

I tried to mirror his nonchalance with a shrug of my own. "I'm fine."

"A summer girl like you?" He scoffed. "You'll be a sheet of ice in twenty seconds flat."

I'd never told James how much I hated the cold. As it turned out, I'd never needed to. Somehow, he just knew.

"What's the hold up?" Noah's head popped through the door, his eyes alight with both excitement and impatience. "Nuh-uh. You're not cutting into my hour. Not on my watch." Just as quickly as he'd reappeared, he was gone—lost to the festive atmosphere radiating from the farm across the way.

This whole trip was turning him into Dex. I was absolutely sure of it.

James took advantage of the distraction, wreathing me in his jacket from behind before I had a chance to protest. His breath hit my neck as he mumbled in my ear, and I had to fight through the sensations dancing over my skin just to register what he said.

"You have no idea what you've done," he murmured in reference to our overzealous friend. I could practically hear his infamous smirk in his voice.

But I did know. I knew exactly what I was doing. The shivers caused by his touch were a very fitting reminder.

I was putting some distance between the intoxicating blonde and me.

That way, maybe my mind could stop undressing him every time he looked my way.

If you don't think this is Madi to Chip Kid after he had the AUDACITY to wake her from that dream, then you're simply ✨wrong✨

Since your Christmas gift ideas were so revealing, I wanted to play another character game with you! For those of you who are into astrology, what do you think the main characters' star signs are? For those of you who aren't, I'll also accept their Hogwarts house -->

Shoutout to @bianca_ib13 for the inspiration💓

This kind of feedback actually goes a long way in helping me understand how readers see my characters!