My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories _1.jpg

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

FOR JARROD, BEST FRIEND AND TRUE LOVE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was birthed over crème brûlée lattes in Charleston, South Carolina, with my dear friend, and fellow secret Hallmark Christmas movies enthusiast, Myra McEntire.

Thank you to Kate Schafer Testerman for making it happen. Thank you to Sara Goodman for understanding it completely. Thank you to Alicia Adkins, Angela Craft, Stephanie Davis, Olga Grlic, Bridget Hartzler, and Jeanne-Marie Hudson for additional help and support. Thank you to Jim Tierney for the perfect illustrations. And thank you, especially, to the authors for trusting me and for being crazy, incredible, talented, and kindhearted: Ally, David, Gayle, Holly, Jenny, Kelly, Kiersten, Laini, Matt, Myra, and Rainbow.

Thank you to my family. Always.

And thank you to Jarrod Perkins. Always + always x always.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MIDNIGHTS

BY RAINBOW ROWELL

THE LADY AND THE FOX

BY KELLY LINK

ANGELS IN THE SNOW

BY MATT DE LA PEÑA

POLARIS IS WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME

BY JENNY HAN

IT’S A YULETIDE MIRACLE, CHARLIE BROWN

BY STEPHANIE PERKINS

YOUR TEMPORARY SANTA

BY DAVID LEVITHAN

KRAMPUSLAUF

BY HOLLY BLACK

WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE, SOPHIE ROTH?

BY GAYLE FORMAN

BEER BUCKETS AND BABY JESUS

BY MYRA MCENTIRE

WELCOME TO CHRISTMAS, CA

BY KIERSTEN WHITE

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

BY ALLY CARTER

THE GIRL WHO WOKE THE DREAMER

BY LAINI TAYLOR

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

COPYRIGHT

My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories _2.jpg

Dec. 31, 2014, almost midnight

It was cold out on the patio, under the deck. Frigid. Dark.

Dark because Mags was outside at midnight, and dark because she was in the shadows.

This was the last place anyone would look for her—anyone, and especially Noel. She’d miss all the excitement.

Thank God. Mags should have thought of this years ago.

She leaned back against Alicia’s house and started eating the Chex mix she’d brought out with her. (Alicia’s mom made the best Chex mix.) Mags could hear the music playing inside, and then she couldn’t—and that was a good sign. It meant that the countdown was starting.

“Ten!” she heard someone shout.

“Nine!” more people joined in.

“Eight!”

Mags was going to miss the whole thing.

Perfect.

Dec. 31, 2011, almost midnight

“Are there nuts in that?” the boy asked.

Mags paused, holding a cracker piled with pesto and cream cheese in front of her mouth. “I think there are pine nuts…” she said, crossing her eyes to look at it.

“Are pine nuts tree nuts?”

“I have no idea,” Mags said. “I don’t think pine nuts grow on pine trees, do they?”

The boy shrugged. He had shaggy brown hair and wide-open blue eyes. He was wearing a Pokémon T-shirt.

“I’m not much of a tree-nut expert,” Mags said.

“Me neither,” he said. “You’d think I would be—if I accidentally eat one, it could kill me. If there were something out there that could kill you, wouldn’t you try to be an expert on it?”

“I don’t know.…” Mags shoved the cracker in her mouth and started chewing. “I don’t know very much about cancer. Or car accidents.”

“Yeah…” the boy said, looking sadly at the buffet table. He was skinny. And pale. “But tree nuts specifically have it out for me, for me personally. They’re more like assassins than, like, possible dangers.”

“Damn,” Mags said, “what’d you ever do to tree nuts?”

The boy laughed. “Ate them, I guess.”

The music, which had been really loud, stopped. “It’s almost midnight!” somebody shouted.

They both looked around. Mags’s friend Alicia, from homeroom, was standing on the couch. It was Alicia’s party—the first New Year’s Eve party that Mags, at fifteen, had ever been invited to.

“Nine!” Alicia yelled.

“Eight!” There were a few dozen people in the basement, and they were all shouting now.

“Seven!”

“I’m Noel,” the boy said, holding out his hand.

Mags brushed all the pesto and traces of nuts off her hand and shook his. “Mags.”

“Four!”

“Three!”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mags.”

“You, too, Noel. Congratulations on evading the tree nuts for another year.”

“They almost had me with that pesto dip.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “It was a close call.”

Dec. 31, 2012, almost midnight

Noel fell against the wall and slid down next to Mags, then bumped his shoulder against hers. He blew a paper party horn in her direction. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She smiled at him. He was wearing a plaid jacket, and his white shirt was open at the collar. Noel was pale and flushed easily. Right now he was pink from the top of his forehead to the second button of his shirt. “You’re a dancing machine,” she said.

“I like to dance, Mags.”

“I know you do.”

“And I only get so many opportunities.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I like to dance in public,” Noel said. “With other people. It’s a communal experience.”

“I kept your tie safe,” she said, and held out a red silk necktie. He’d been dancing on the coffee table when he threw it at her.

“Thank you,” he said, taking it and slinging it around his neck. “That was a good catch—but I was actually trying to lure you out onto the dance floor.”

“That was a coffee table, Noel.”

“There was room for two, Margaret.”

Mags wrinkled her nose, considering. “I don’t think there was.”

“There’s always room for you with me, on every coffee table,” he said. “Because you are my best friend.”

“Pony is your best friend.”

Noel ran his fingers through his hair. It was sweaty and curly and fell past his ears. “Pony is also my best friend. And also Frankie. And Connor.”

“And your mom,” Mags said.

Noel turned his grin on her. “But especially you. It’s our anniversary. I can’t believe you wouldn’t dance with me on our anniversary.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. (She knew exactly what he was talking about.)

“It happened right there.” Noel pointed at the buffet table where Alicia’s mom always laid out snacks. “I was having an allergic reaction, and you saved my life. You stuck an epinephrine pen into my heart.”

“I ate some pesto,” Mags said.


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