• • •

The second the clock strikes six, silently ticking from one hour to the next, I hear the creak of a floorboard and the sigh of a door sweeping over carpet. Then a quiet tap on my door, before it slowly opens. Gray slips into my room in his pyjamas and in the hazy morning glow, the sun still sleeping, I can make out the snowman emblazoned on his stomach and printed on his fleecy pants.

"Happy Christmas," he whispers with the grin of ... well, of a child on Christmas morning. He bounds across my room with far too much energy for pre-dawn, clearly oblivious to the fact that I'm hardly awake. There was a time that I'd wake up at five on Christmas Day but the older I get, the more I value my sleep, especially when I've missed so much of it recently.

With a yawn so wide it aches my jaw, I drop my head back on my pillow and give Gray a tired smile. "Merry Christmas, Gray," I say, another yawn sneaking out when I speak. "How long have you been up?"

"Like, an hour," he says. "I may have outgrown running into my parents' room at the crack of dawn but I'll never be too old to wake up way too early and force my sister to suffer with me." He launches himself onto my bed, bouncing on the mattress, and rolls onto his stomach.

"What if I want to sleep?"

"How can you sleep when it's Christmas?" He gasps and props himself up on his elbows, and I make a point of closing my eyes and letting myself sink into my pillow. I am excited for today, but I know Mom won't be up for at least a couple more hours.

Ever since she found a doctor who'd listen and got on the right meds, her sleeping has been a million times better. I never find her awake and worrying at one in the morning anymore, nor do I hear her padding around at six. She hasn't fainted once in months, and she looks the best she ever has: a new haircut and an extra twenty pounds have done wonders.

She's happy, and she looks it. Especially when she's with Tad. He brings out the brightness in her eyes and the glow in her cheeks. Sometimes, when I'm in my room, I hear her laugh when they're talking, and it's music to my ears.

"Ugh," Gray harrumphs, poking me. "Fine. Be boring and well-rested." He tuts. I smile, and I drift off with him lying next to me.

• • •

The sun is out when Gray shakes me. Pale winter light seeps into my bedroom, sending a strip of light streaking across Gray's cheek. He grins down at me, his hair a wild mess and his glasses askew on his nose.

"She wakes!" he cries, his face coming into focus when I blink a few times. He's still in those pajamas, and now he's added a wonky Santa hat. "Are you gonna join us, lazybutt? Your mom has made the most incredible cinnamon buns and you need to come eat one before I finish them all."

"Mom's up?" I sit, arranging my nightie to avoid flashing Gray, and adjust my pants when I stand. It started snowing two days ago, and layers have become necessary in bed.

"Yup. She and Dad made breakfast and I figured it'd be nice of us not to eat without you. But you can't come down looking like that." He grimaces at my old, worn nightie. "Christmas PJs only. No exceptions."

He passes me a bag and leaves. I tip it out on my bed and a smile sneaks onto my lips when I pull on the reindeer pajamas. They fit perfectly, soft and warm, the thick material much appreciated when it's barely twenty degrees outside.

Downstairs is like a scene out of a dream. Our Christmas tree is dripping with lights and tinsel, glowing from the flicker of the log fire in the hearth. Perfectly-wrapped presents – Tad's enviable precision – are stacked beneath it. Warmth fills me, my heart swelling with the kind of love reserved for Christmas morning.

My nose drags me to the kitchen on an intoxicating trail and the second my toe crosses the threshold, Mom throws her arms around me and I'm swallowed up by her height and her hug. She grips me for a long time, as though I'm trying to get away, but I hold her just as tightly.

"Happy Christmas, baby," she whispers. Her lips brush my cheek. I inhale her Mom smell, tinged with coffee and cinnamon and baking bread. I wish I could bottle that scent. There's nothing more comforting. "Goodness knows you deserve it," she says, her cheek pressed to mine. Her skin is warm and soft, her hug less angular than I've grown used to. Every day, I see more and more of old Mom. I owe Tad the world.

"Thanks, Mom. Merry Christmas," I say, and I pull away smiling. Her beam is full and her eyes are sparkling. She looks like a million bucks, even in a onesie with a streak of flour across her forehead.

"Do you like my pajamas?" She steps back with a laugh and shows off her outfit, a red onesie with a printed belt and a white fur trim. "I'm Mrs Claus!"

Tad comes in from the dining room in a matching outfit, looking ridiculous, and he slips his arm around Mom's waist. "And what a beautiful Mrs Claus you are." He kisses her cheek; she turns her head to meet his lips.

They're not married yet, but they've set a date. The end of March, a cool spring wedding. It'll be a small affair: the four of us and Kris, and a handful of Mom's and Tad's friends from work and town. I can't wait.

When Gray comes over to me, I nod at Mom and Tad's matching look and say, "We should have had elf pajamas."

He frowns. "Are you suggesting that the elves are Santa's children? You think he and Mrs Claus had thousands of genetically mutated elf babies to enslave as toymakers?"

Tad rolls his eyes and ruffles Gray's hair, knocking his hat even more askew. "You're overthinking it a bit, I think. And anyway, you make a very dashing snowman."

Gray does a twirl and a bow, and he grins when Kris comes in dressed like a Christmas tree in a green onesie, with pompoms dangling like ornaments and a star bobbing on a headband. He pulls me to him, though the pompoms make it slightly uncomfortable, and he hugs me like it's the first time he's seen me in weeks.

He's been here for two days now, and he's staying until the new year, and I don't want him to leave. When he arrived with the snow, I was determined not to ruin the holiday with what happened between Liam and me, but I couldn't hide it when he asked. He took me to my room and I told him every little thing. Every tiny detail. I didn't cry until I caught the quiver of his bottom lip. He tried to hide it by hugging me, but that too was more than enough to set me off.

He didn't hide his anger. But it didn't tarnish his advice. Talking to him helped more than I thought it could, untangling some of the knotted threads in my mind.

"Now that we're all here," Gray says, pulling Mom's attention away from Tad and mine from Kris, "can we eat? I've been up for hours."

• • •

The thirty-first becomes the first in the blink of an eye. One moment, it's the tail end of December and then January crashes into me. Or rather, Gray. He throws his arms around me and holds me in a hug so tight it chokes the air out of me. He smells like cinnamon and beer, a little of which is staining my top after it sloshed out of his bottle.

"Happy New Year!" he cries, loud and tipsy and adorably Gray. He pulls away and gives me a loose, dorky grin that tells me this beer should be his last. He's the loudest thing about tonight's celebrations, his voice drowning out the madness on the TV when the ball drops in Times Square.

His arm around my shoulders, he presses his lips to my forehead and regards me with a serious stare. "This is your year," he says, both hands now on my shoulders, his eyes boring a hole into me. "This is the year of Storie, I can feel it in my bones. A year of good things for my favorite person."

"I like the sound of that," I say, my own smile a little easier than usual. I've had two flutes of prosecco, the third half-drunk in my hand, and it's gone straight to my head. Mom seems tipsy, but she hasn't touched a drop, not for as long as my memory serves me: she's just drunk on love.

She and Tad celebrate quietly, wrapped in a tender embrace to ring in the new year with a kiss. Kris is pouting in the corner, no-one to hug as we bid farewell to 2018, but the expression vanishes when I pull him over. I clink my glass against his, and sink against him. He rests his chin on top of my head.

"Happy New Year, húg," he says, his hands warm on my back. "I'm with Gray. This is the year of you. The year of good decisions."

I know what he means by that.

When I told him that Liam wants to meet in the new year, and that I'd said yes, he told me to make the right decision. The decision to put myself first, however I decided to interpret that. He was a little more forgiving than Gray, who has sworn more about Liam than every other time I've heard him swear.

Kris squeezes me and lets go, and he wraps his arms around Gray, patting his back. He may technically be Gray's future step-uncle, but in the eight days that he's been staying with us, they've acted more like best friends. I love seeing them get on so well, the seamless gelling of my old family and my new one.

"Time for a top-up," Kris says when I finish my glass, and he disappears to pop the cork of a new bottle. Gray's attention turns to his phone, tipsily texting Navya. She's with family in Chicago and it baffles me that she's only an hour's flight away but she's in a different time zone: 2019 is still almost an hour away for her.

Mom slinks over to my side and drapes her arms around me, her hug warm and soft and inviting. She strokes my hair and sways me, and I feel her breath on my earlobe when she whispers, "We made it."

In that moment, it's just Mom and me. We're a team, the two of us, and we have made it. Another year. It strikes me with the force of a tidal wave and I almost lose my balance when my knees wobble. Mom's arms around me are strong. She tightens her hug. Her hair tickles my nose.

We've been through a lot. More than our fair share, I think, but we're still standing. We're still here.

"I love you so much, baby," Mom says. When she pulls away, her eyes are glistening, an even brighter blue that usual. She grazes my cheeks with her thumbs and pulls me into her embrace again, even tighter than before. Tad meets my eye over Mom's shoulder and he grins, tilting his glass at me before he comes over and rests his hand on her waist when she lets me go.

"Can you still breathe?" he asks me with a laugh. Mom chuckles and leans against him, resting her head against his temple. She's not wearing shoes, so he just barely has a height advantage over her but ordinarily, they're eye to eye when she draws herself to her full height.

I can't help but compare Tad to Dad. I know I shouldn't, but I can't notice it in all the little things. Dad was crazy tall and even Mom, all 5'10" of her, could stand with the top of her head tucked under his chin. When she wore his shirts, they fitted like a dress. But now, I notice she's wearing one of Tad's shirts, and it's only a little loose on her; when they hug, they stand cheek to cheek.

It doesn't mean anything. It's just strange to see. I may have lived without Dad for more than two years, but I lived with him for seventeen. It's going to take a lot longer to get used to Mom with a new husband, but that doesn't stop me from being happy for her. Her joy is evident in her eyes and her smile, the easy way she stands with him.

"Ready for a whole new year?" Tad asks me. I press my lips together and slowly nod, contemplating the question. I am ready for a new year, but there are things I wish I had left behind. When Tad asks me that, I realize that there's one thing I'm not ready for: I'm dreading seeing Liam again. The meeting is hanging over my head and I wish I had just talked when he wanted to. I wish I hadn't dragged it out like this because now I've had three weeks to overthink it.

"Are you ok?" he asks. Mom's smile drops away at the lack of my own.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm great," I say, and I hold up my glass right as Kris comes back with a new bottle. "I think I've just had a bit too much of this." I stop him from refilling my glass and while he sees to Tad's and hesitates before topping up Gray's, I slip out of the room.

I don't understand the feeling lodged in the pit of my stomach at the thought of seeing Liam again. I don't know how to describe it, except uncomfortable nervousness. I can't stand how nervous I am to see the guy I loved for three months. The guy I still love. That kind of feeling doesn't just disappear and I feel so weak for missing him, pathetic for still loving him.

The crisp, cold night air helps. The breeze makes me shudder, the wind's icy tendrils wrapping themselves around me, but it clears my head. I put down my glass and sit on the cold stone doorstep, my elbows on my knees, and I breathe in the night. It sinks into my bones like an old friend. I feel like I'm resetting myself, sitting out here in the freezing first minutes of the new year. Perhaps the cold will jumpstart my thoughts. I could do with a fresh perspective, something other than the same words that have been crashing through my head for weeks,

"Mind if I sit?"

I jump at the sound of a voice when I heard no footsteps and tip my head back to see Tad hovering behind me, his eyebrows high. I nod and scoot over and he sits with a smile, glass in hand. He slowly takes a sip, sucks in a deep breath, and lets it out in a long sigh.

"Your mom was going to come out but I wanted to talk. Is that ok?"

"Sure," I say, and I give him my most convincing smile. The prosecco helps. I'm not even sad. I just have a lot on my mind. As if that's ever not true.

Tad mimics my position, his elbows resting on his knees with his glass in both hands. We both stare straight ahead, at an empty field engulfed by the darkness. "I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how you feel," he says after a moment, "but I've been in a similar position. I know what it's like to be hurt by someone and still love them."

"Gray's mom?" I ask. He nods and gives me a small smile.

"I know it doesn't compare to how Liam hurt you, but I still loved Lauren after she cheated on me. We'd been together for ten years; we'd been through a lot together. I was still in college when Graham was born, you know," he says. "I was twenty-one; his mom was twenty-three. I was besotted."

I'm not sure I ever realized how young Tad is – he must only just be forty. He's closer in age to Kris than I am. That seems strange somehow, though I'm not sure why. It just is.

"Love doesn't just go away," he says. "I know you really loved Liam, didn't you?"

I nod, picking at a hole in the hem of my sweater. "Yeah," I murmur.

"It's normal to still have those feelings. You can't just let go of love like that in a moment. It took me a couple of years to let go of Lauren, even after she'd broken up our family, but that was just time I needed to get over our relationship."

He meets my eye, sincerity in his dark irises. "Liam hurt you, and you still love him. And that's ok," he says, his voice quiet, "but you don't owe love anything, and you don't owe him anything. Just because you still love someone who hurt you doesn't mean that they didn't hurt you enough or that you owe them a second chance."

He puts his hand on my knee. It's a welcome warmth. He presses his lips together and stands, pausing a moment to say, "What happens next is on your terms, Storie. It's no-one else's decision but yours. You just need to make sure you come at it from the right place, and that's what we're all here for."

His hand rests on my shoulder for a second before he heads back inside, leaving me on the step with an aching lump in my throat. I follow him inside, where he's talking to Mom, and I hug him. He almost stumbles back, taken by surprise, before his arms loosen and he hugs me back.

"Thank you," I say when I release him. He's wearing a broad beam. It makes him look even more like Gray. "I'm really glad we get to start this year with you, and I can't think of anyone who'd make a better stepdad."

"Thank you, Storie," he says. Next to him, Mom is teary-eyed. "There's nowhere I'd rather be, and no-one I'd rather call my stepdaughter."

Gray leaps over, abandoning his phone for a moment. "Am I missing an emotional family moment?" he asks, his eyes flitting between the three of us. "Kris! Get over here! They're trying to exclude us." He pouts and Kris comes over laughing.

The five of us are standing in a circle, ten minutes into 2019. Mom and Tad are tucked together, his arm around her waist to hold her close. Kris rests his arm on Gray's shoulder, a full glass in his hand. Gray's arms are around me, his awkwardly-angled embrace a comfort. I meet Mom's gaze and she wears the softest smile, and I realize she's mirroring mine.

I have my whole family right here. I don't want anyone else. I don't need anyone else.

• • •