Chapter 10 Talbot
TALBOT
“You were the one who wanted me to get rid of him in the first place. Why do you want to invite him to get the Christmas trees?”
Misty is arguing with her parents when I cut off the engine to the pickup truck I borrowed-slash-stole from Hudson. I was going to steal Anderson’s, but he threatened to take a finger if I touched his truck, and I need my trigger finger in working order.
“This is actually a family event.” Misty hurries over to me. “Why don’t you meet me at the Tinsel he was in the Marines.”
Too bad Misty didn’t hire me as a fake boyfriend for real. I’d have Brielle on her back in Misty’s parents’ living room and the wedding called off by dinnertime.
Misty’s little sister, Lucy, is bouncing excitedly. “Dad, can Talbot come? He was in foster care. He’s never had a real Christmas. He should come! Right, Misty?”
Misty is subtly shaking her head at her little sister. Lucy ignores her. “That’s the charitable thing to do,” Lucy says brightly.
“I’m so excited to go Christmas tree picking, Mrs. West.” I heft the chainsaw over my shoulder and adjust the cross strap.
“It’s cutting, moron,” Misty mutters.
“Misty, he’s been in foster care. He’s never had a Cwistmas twee,” her littlest brother, Billy, says in a sweet voice. “He doesn’t know.”
Misty scoops up the kid when he topples over into a pile of snow.
Yes, I have been in foster care; that wasn’t a lie. The rest of it? True love and coming home for Christmas? I don’t do relationships. Especially not with Misty. If I had a type, she would be the exact opposite of it.
I needed an in. This is more than I usually do for a job. I like to get in, paint the walls red, and get out.
Meet the family and pretend to be the perfect boyfriend? I don’t want to do it, but I will if I have to. I will close out this contract by the end of the week. I already lost my lift times. I’m not losing any more.
Misty stomps next to me in the snow. She’s got her dog in a backpack.
Cocoa is wearing a lopsided hat and a matching scarf. She is not happy to be in the cold, she is not happy to be in a sweater, and she is not happy to be in a backpack. She is, however, happy to see me and whines, begging me to save her.
“She wants me to carry her.”
“Don’t touch my dog,” Misty snaps.
“When this is over, you and I are going to have a nasty custody battle for my beloved Cocoa Puff, aren’t we, sweetheart?” I coo to the dog.
She licks my face and chews on the sweater.
“Did Misty make this?” I scratch under the dog’s hat. “She seems like the type to give people handmade stuff they didn’t ask for and don’t want for Christmas.”
“You have a chest full of dog sweaters, don’t you?”
She ignores me.
“And baby clothes, Misty,” I breathily say into her ear.
She swats at me.
“Be nice. You’re supposed to be my girlfriend, remember?” I grin down at her.
“I would never date someone like you.”
“Right. I forgot your type is guys who are out of your league.”
She pulls at a branch, and I duck as snow flies everywhere.
“You can be nice, orrrr I draw it out, tell your whole family about how you hired a prostitute.”
“Fake boyfriend,” she hisses back. “And you’re not going to tell people you’re a-a—” She stumbles on the word.
“Male whore? Gumdrop, I kill people for a living. What’s a little lying about performing sex work for a fee? And believe me. Pretending to care about you? That is definitely work.”
Cocoa pants at me.
Misty tucks her chin down and plows doggedly through the snow.
Cocoa howls as snow from a branch lands on her black nose.
I wrestle her out of the dog backpack. “I can’t watch you abuse this helpless, defenseless pile of floof. Is my poor little baby being neglected by her mean dog mommy?” I smooch kisses on the adorable corgi’s snout as she snuggles against me.
“She loves me.” I grin at Misty.
She glares murder at me.
“Now you—”
“I paid you to be my fake boyfriend, not my therapist,” Misty snaps.
“You don’t know what I was about to say, Gumdrop. I could be commentating about all the snow we’re having this year.”
“No, you weren’t.”
I wait a beat. “I’m just wondering—”
“Yup. Knew it!” She throws up her hands.
“Why are you picking out a tree for your stepfather’s house?”
“Trees,” Misty mumbles.
“Multiple trees for a house you could be evicted from at any time.” I tap my chin.
“I’m trying to make it homey for Christmas. Some of us want the people we love to enjoy the holidays.” She glares when my grin splits my face.
“You gave me so much shit about the feet pictures with my cousin, and yet you’re playing housewife to your stepfather.”
Misty yelps.
“Wait a minute… is that what this is, with Austen? You’re trying to get over the fact that you have the hots for your stepdaddy? Have you slept with Ryan West yet?”
“I hate you,” she hisses.
“No shade.” I bounce Cocoa on my hip. “If I were his sexually stunted stepdaughter, I’d lust after him too. The man is a god amongst men. Aside from Austen, you have good taste, Gumdrop.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Better than Misty. Besides”—I point to her chest area—“Gumdrops.”
“You can’t see anything.” She shoves me hard, like hockey-player hard, making me stumble in the snow and Cocoa growl.
“Fine. Mystique.”
“What?”
“Misty can’t be your real name.”
“It is.” Her head whips forward.
“You’re lying. Trust me, I can tell. Millicent, Artemis...”
“Mistletoe.”
“I’m sorry, speak up! I can’t hear you over the sound of the secondhand embarrassment.” I laugh. “Your parents named you Mistletoe?”
“Just my mom.”
“Were you born on Christmas Eve?”
“Christmas.” She sighs.
“And you didn’t want to change your name? I’m frankly not shocked you’re unemployed. Name like that, you can’t even be a stripper. Well, maybe at a Christmas-themed bar.”
“My mom had me when she was fifteen. She thought it was cute.”
“Shit, Gumdrop.” I pat her hat. “No wonder your life is a disaster. You were set up to fail from day one.”
She turns away from me. Her parents are staring.
“You guys are so cute together.” Ryan smiles at us.
I blow Misty a kiss. “And we’ll be even cuter dressed in all black at Austen’s funeral,” I whisper to her.
The Christmas trees around us are bigger now and won’t be dwarfed by the tall ceiling of Ryan West’s mansion.
Misty drifts between the trees.
I’m neutral about my clients; I really am. They pay. I do the job. We go our separate ways, unless they’re repeat clients. But those guys are even more cold-blooded than I am—billionaires, where human life is just a number in their ledger.
Not like Misty.
She’s a romantic. She’s almost dreamy as she crunches in the snow through the trees, dusting the powder off the dark-green branches.
I don’t do relationships. Certainly not with girls like her. If I make it to the end of this week, this fake relationship will officially be the longest relationship of my entire life.
The end of this week? This relationship ends today.
Austen is slowly sawing through the base of one of the Christmas trees. Misty is taking photos of Austen with her phone.
“I want the dog in my photo.” Brielle’s voice is sharp. “Everyone likes corgis.”
“Cocoa Puff, are you going to be a model?” the little kids coo.
Lucy runs up, waggles her eyebrows at me, and looks exaggeratingly from me to Misty as she takes the grumbly corgi from me.
Misty’s younger siblings all produce treats for the dog.
“Ugh, stop feeding her. Now her fur’s all dirty. Misty!” Brielle complains.
“Then get your own corgi,” Sienna snaps.
“It’s okay,” Misty tells her, pulling a wet wipe from somewhere in all the pockets on her vest.
Austen’s still sawing away at that tree.
I should squash him just for being a spoiled little rich boy.
I know the type. When the rest of us kids from the wrong side of town were playing hockey on the pond with oven mitts for gloves and pads made from duct tape and cardboard, he was playing in a fancy rink with brand-new equipment.
His parents paid for the best skills coaches money could buy and sent him to Toronto for extra training.
“Austen, can you sort of look at the camera a little bit just so—”
“Jesus Christ, Misty,” he explodes, “just take the fucking picture. I’m going to ruin my shoulder, and I have a game tomorrow.”
“Okay, okay, I’m just trying to get a good photo of you for your social media.” Her voice sounds meek and plaintive.
Silently, I swing the chainsaw off my shoulder.
There’s a big Douglas fir diagonally from where Austen crouches. It’s a huge tree, too tall for anyone’s house. Maybe it would be trucked into Manhattan for one of those big skyscraper lobbies.
Misty seems frazzled. Her mom’s trying to corral all the kids for a family photo. Austen’s snapping at her to just “Put the dog down and take a video because that’s what gets likes and he wants that Gatorade endorsement.”
I rev the chainsaw.
No one’s paying me any mind.
Often for a contract, I have to blend into the background by being a maintenance worker, a landscaper, or a janitor. No one ever notices the hired help.
Mentally calculating the distance and angle I need, I chew a notch in the tree.
The tree wobbles.
A few feet away, Austen pulls at the handsaw with both hands.
My tree cracks and slowly falls forward. I wait to kick it and give it that final push until I’m sure Austen will be right in the path.
I’ll be on the plane to Colorado tonight.
Misty’s reflexes are unexpected. She sees the tree tilt, hears the wood crack then split. Then she pounces, crying, “Austen!” and pushes him out of the way.
He lands sputtering and cursing in a snowbank.
The branches from the felled tree scrape her face, trailing sticky lines of sharp-smelling sap down her jacket. The snow from the needles showers her and Austen with cold ice.
“Timberrrr!” I rock on my heels.
“Sorry!” She’s pushing herself up, twigs in her hair. “Sorry, Austen.”
“Dumb Bi—” He bites back the swear word as he seems to remember he’s around kids and, more importantly, Ryan West. “My shoulder, Misty.”
“But the tree,” she stammers, backing away from her angry ex.
I try to keep the murder out of my eyes as I watch her comfort him.
“Austen, oh no, Austen, are you okay?” Brielle hurries over.
“Did you see him?” Austen hollers. “He tried to kill me. That maniac you brought here tried to kill me.”
Misty’s eyes flash as she turns on me.
“And they say women are hysterical,” Granny Keagan snorts. “He didn’t try to kill you. He’s the only one here trying to cut down these dang trees so the rest of us don’t freeze our taints off.”
“So, I miscalculated with the tree.” I grin at Misty when she drags me away from the group where they’re fawning all over Austen, Ryan asking him if he’s okay, how’s his shooting arm, how are his ankles?
“You could have hurt him. You could have killed him.” She’s practically sobbing.
“Yeah, I mean… that’s kinda the point here.”
“Poor Austen.” Something in the way her lower lip trembles…
I peer at her, grab her chin, and force her head up so I can stare into her eyes shining with tears.
“My god, Gumdrop.”
She slaps at my hand.
“You’re still in love with him, aren’t you? Don’t try to deny it. You are. Madly in love. What do you have, a shrine to him in your bedroom?”
“Just a digital scrapbook.”
“So you have a papier-maché sex doll of him under your bed. Got it.”
She’s crying now. “I know he really does love me. He just needs a push to see that he made a mistake. We’re meant to be together. I just know it. I have our house picked out and our children’s names, and I have matching Christmas ornaments.”
“Wow, so this isn’t just love. It’s unhealthy obsession. Does he have a restraining order?”
“It is love. I wouldn’t expect a man like you to know what true love is.” She wipes at her face. “I think deep down he’s still a little in love with me too.”
She looks crazy. She’s unhinged.
“I just have to show him what he’s missing. I just have to make him fall in love with me again. That’s what you were supposed to do, make him jealous. Rekindle the spark so that he and I can live happily ever after.”
My glove scrapes along my jaw.
“Gumdrop, give me your hand.”
“No.”
I snatch it from her. “I say this with all the love and kindness that I don’t hold in my heart for you, but Austen doesn’t love you.
He doesn’t like you. He doesn’t want to marry you or move in with you, and probably at this point doesn’t even want to fuck you.
And trust me, it’s not him, it’s definitely you.
No man in their right mind would fall in love with you.
Desperate and crazy just oozes out of you. ”
She jerks her hand away.
I grab her before she can turn away from me.
“Why was he with you? I don’t know if it’s because you gave great blow jobs or let him take you up the ass, and I really don’t care, because I’d rather fuck GrandPam than let you anywhere near my dick. You’re insane. Austen sees it. I see it. Cocoa sees it.”
The corgi munches on snow.
“I’m not the one who dumped a tree on another human being.”
“Now you’re making me wish I’d just let it fall on you.” I flick her ear.
“You’re wrong, you’ll see. He’s going to marry me.”
“Austen literally had to dump you for your stepsister at your wedding to get rid of you. That’s how much he can’t stand you,” I snarl in her face.
“Okay, so he’ll marry me again.” She glares up at me, jaw set.
“That is not the point I was trying to make, Gumdrop…”
Her bottom lip pokes out stubbornly. It would be cute if there wasn’t that slight flash of crazy in her hazel eyes. “You’ll see.”
I look up at the sky. “I am never getting out of here before Christmas.”