Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
But it was my first chance to start new traditions for myself. Make a life that was mine. Where I belonged. Where I didn’t feel unwanted. Instead, I was up well past midnight, thinking about Kash and his simple text.
I had blocked his number because I didn’t trust myself not to break down and answer him this week. After two glasses of wine, while watching The Holiday, I unblocked him. His Merry Christmas text came less than an hour later. Which had kept the wine from helping me sleep.
My brain would not shut off, and every memory, good or bad, I had with Kash had decided to replay for me. Remembering the Christmases I’d spent with him. The last holidays I’d had that were happy. He had made them magical. Just being with him. A simple Merry Christmas text had broken open the floodgates of the memories I’d tried to repress. Kept locked away. Because they broke me.
The lock sliding open on my door, however, ended my melancholy trip down memory lane. I stared in horror, wondering if I’d imagined it when the handled began to turn. Reaching for my phone to call 911, I jumped up, frantically trying to think of somewhere to hide. But I had nowhere between where I was and the door. I’d have to run toward it to pass it, and there was no time.
The floor lamp that sat to the right of the sofa, I unplugged it and grabbed it to pick up just as the door slowly eased open. Was it someone breaking in, or did they know about me texting Kash? What if this was Bane coming to evict me or … worse?
I had been sitting in the darkness so as to see the Christmas lights outside the window better, so when the form in the darkness moved, I couldn’t make out a face until they stepped into the room.
The lamp I had been gripping slid to the floor with a hard thump as Kash’s face was illuminated. I stared in disbelief, now wondering if I had, in fact, fallen asleep after all.
He closed the door behind him, not taking his eyes off me. How was he here? He’d said he didn’t know where I was. Had that been a lie?
“You’re still awake.” His voice filled the silence and sent a shiver of pleasure over me.
“Wh-what …” I trailed off, setting the lamp back beside me and stepping around it.
“Santa came early to my house,” he replied.
I shook my head, confused. What was he talking about?
He held up a key card, like the one I had for my apartment. “She brought an address and a key to the only thing I wanted.”
He wasn’t making sense. Who was she?
“I don’t … am I dreaming?” I asked, then shook my head. “It’s the wine, isn’t it?”
The smirk on his face became a chuckle. “No, Songbird, you’re not dreaming. But I thought for a moment, I was earlier. Because this was not something I’d imagined getting for Christmas.”
I didn’t move as Kash walked toward me. He was in my apartment. How? This was bad, wasn’t it? If they found out … what would happen to us?
“Kash, you need to leave. If Bane finds out—”
“Fuck Bane. He’s on my shit list.”
“But he can punish us both for this.”
Although, right now, I was thinking it might be worth it. Just to have Kash one more time. Create one last memory. Have one more Christmas that I wanted to remember.
“No, he can’t.” Kash was still grinning as he reached me. His finger ran down my bare arm, and he looked from where he touched me, then back to meet my gaze. “Like I said, Santa came early, and she trumps them all.”
She again.
I shook my head. “Who is she?”
He kept calling Santa she, and that was confusing. Which made me think I was, in fact, asleep.
“My mom.” His voice went thick, almost as if he was choking up. “In our house, we always knew that the magic-maker and giver of gifts was my mother. We referred to her as Santa.”
Oh. That made sense. There had been a time when my mother was the same.
“Your mom is why you’re here?”
He nodded, closing the little space that had been between us. “Yeah,” he replied as he cupped the side of my face and began to run the tip of his thumb over my mouth. “She brought me a gift—your address and a key to the apartment—and told me to go get my happy.” The corner of his lips quirked then. “So I came to get her.”
His happy? I blinked, still not sure how his mother could override the Mafia boss or whoever was making the decisions on keeping us apart.
“She … she can do that?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t going to get in trouble for this.