Chapter 56
Haven
My eyes snap open at the trill of a magpie outside the window.
Usually, this is the part where I snag my earplugs off the nightstand, shove them in my ears, and carry on sleeping.
It’s Christmas morning, and I’ve never been more awake in my entire fucking life.
I lie perfectly still, taking little sips of air. Kai’s arm is draped over my belly, his breath slow against the back of my neck. Bastian’s on his back in front of me, one hand loosely tangled in my hair.
They’re dead to the world.
I’m vibrating out of my skin.
It’s tempting as hell to wake them up the fun way. Sliding my hand down Kai’s abs until he groans, then pressing my ass into his lap. Bastian waking up and watching us with those dark, predatory eyes of his until he decides to join.
We’ve perfected that morning routine over the past three weeks.
But this isn’t any other morning.
It’s fucking Christmas.
I extract myself from my men’s arms and legs with the precision of a bomb technician. Kai mumbles something and rolls into the warm spot I’ve vacated, immediately snuggling against Bastian’s side. Our professor—though I guess I can’t call him that anymore—doesn’t wake, but he pulls Kai closer.
God, they’re handsome.
I stare at the two of them with their perfect muscles and their perfect fucking faces, and it takes every bit of willpower I have to walk away.
Not today, Lucifer.
I grab Bastian’s Henley off the floor and slip it on before padding barefoot to the door.
The white shirt hits me mid-thigh, and soaks me in the pines-dusted-with-snow scent.
The cabin’s hardwood floor is cold, but I don’t care.
I don’t care about anything except what’s waiting for me in the living room.
The main room is still dark, lit only by the soft gray light of pre-dawn filtering through the windows. Outside, Montana stretches endless and white in every direction, a postcard of a life I never thought I’d get to live.
But I’m not looking at the view.
I’m looking at the tree.
It’s hardly five feet tall. Some kind of pine Bastian and Kai cut down while I watched from the porch with a mug of hot chocolate.
We decorated it with whatever we had at hand, which wasn’t much.
Pinecones, ribbons from a chocolate box.
I cut out some crude paper snowflakes—sticking my tongue out at Kai when he mocked my spectacular creations.
This tree is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And beneath it, wrapped in actual wrapping paper with actual bows, are presents.
Presents.
My throat closes up.
I sink onto the shag rug near the tree, pulling my knees to my chest, and just…stare.
This is stupid. I’m being stupid.
I’m not five years old anymore. I shouldn’t be sitting here in the dark getting emotional over some boxes wrapped in shiny paper, like a kid who still believes in Santa.
Especially since kids like me never believed in Santa.
Our ‘Christmases’ were indistinguishable from any other day—except your dad’s either tweaking so hard he’s been awake for three days straight and keeps talking to people who aren’t there, or he’s crashing so hard he can’t get off the couch and screams at you if you breathe too loud.
I always wondered why other kids at school had new shoes and backpacks in January while I wore the same too-tight sneakers with holes in the toes.
I got used to it. I stopped expecting anything. I told myself holidays were just some capitalist bullshit designed to make poor people feel worse about being poor.
And then I fell in love with two broken men who look at me like I’m the present.
Coincidentally, one of them is rich as fuck and apparently takes gift-giving very seriously.
Now, here I am. Christmas morning with wrapped gifts under a real pine tree in a cabin in Montana.
I can’t believe this is actually happening.
That I actually have people who love me, and they bought me things, and wrapped them, and put them under a tree we decorated together while drinking eggnog and laughing at Kai’s truly terrible attempt at carol singing.
“Merry fucking Christmas,” I whisper to the empty room, my voice cracking on the last word.
I swipe at my stinging eyes, and pull Bastian’s shirt tighter around my body. The fabric is soft, like he’s worn it in just right. It’s one of my favorite things to steal from him.
The floorboards creak behind me.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
I don’t turn around. “Didn’t want to.”
Kai appears, sleep-rumpled and squinting, his hair a disaster of dirty blond tangles. He’s wearing only his boxer briefs, because Kai’s internal thermostat is broken.
“S’too early,” he mumbles, flopping down beside me on the rug and drawing his knees up.
We stare at the tree for a bit, his hand finding mine, squeezing. “Want some coffee?”
I can’t speak, or I’ll start crying, so I just shake my head.
He gives me a sleepy frown. “Hey! What’s wrong, Heavenly?”
“Nothing.” I scrub at my cheeks. “Nothing, I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not—“ Fuck. More tears. “It’s stupid,” I mutter.
Kai shifts closer, pulling me against his side, his skin warm even in the chill of the unheated room.
“I get it,” he murmurs.
“Get what?” I snap, grumpy that he caught me being such a fucking girl about this shit.
“I remember my first real Christmas.” He’s not looking at me—he’s looking at the tree and the presents, his expression unreadable in the low light.
“The first one after my dad finally got a decent fucking job, and we moved out of that shithole trailer park. I mean, we’d always celebrated, but it was—you know—dollar store shit.
Whatever Mom—whatever Sharon could scrape together. ”
I remember him showing me his presents some years when he came to the woods on Christmas afternoon. A pack of gum and some socks. A second-hand comic book. Cheap plastic action figures with their seams sticking out.
“The first year we had money, there was so much stuff under the tree I didn’t know where to start.
I just sat there staring at it for like an hour.
” He laughs, but it’s hollow. “Made me happy for like, I dunno, five minutes. Then Mom came in and started ordering us around, saying Dad was still sleeping so we couldn’t open presents yet. ”
His arm tightens around me. “We only got to open them that night, and Dad had such a bad hangover, he yanked the Christmas lights out of the socket and nearly toppled the tree.”
I turn my face into his shoulder, breathing him in. “Want me to push over the tree?”
He chuckles, squeezing me even tighter against him.
We sit there in the slowly brightening room, wrapped around each other, watching the tree. Outside, more birds join the first. Their songs are bright and cheery now, and remind me how far we are from anything resembling civilization.
Good.
I don’t want civilization.
I want this. Just this. Forever.
“Should we wake Bastian?” Kai asks, eventually.
“Let him sleep.” I hesitate. “He was up late with the presents.”
“How do you know?”
“I was watching him for a bit. He’s super finicky about the corners.”
Kai snorts. “Stalker.”
We lapse back into comfortable silence. The light’s shifting now—pale gold creeping across the floor, more reflecting off the frost on the windows, like something out of a fairy tale.
A dark fairy tale. One where the princess is a killer and her princes are monsters and they all lived bloodily ever after.
I love that for us.
“I would have been happy with anything at all,” I murmur. “But this?” I sweep out an arm. “Totally exceeded my expectations. Ten out of ten, highly recommend.”
“I didn’t want anything fancy,” Kai says quietly, as if speaking to himself. “This is…this is so fucking perfect. Better than anything Sharon and Dick could ever have pulled off.”
“Can we not talk about dead parents on Christmas?” I say. “It’s kind of killing my festive mood.”
“Sorry.” Kai presses a kiss to my temple. “How about I make us some coffee instead?”
“God, yes.”
He stands with a groan. “Fuck, my leg’s asleep,” he mutters.
“Wait!” When he glances down at me, I widen my eyes at him. “Bastian’s gift. Have you put it under the tree yet?”
Kai shakes his head, limping over to his backpack near the front door. He rummages inside and comes back with a brown-paper package clumsily tied with a white ribbon. Compared to Bastian’s neatly wrapped gifts, it looks like a toddler’s handiwork. “Wanna do the honors?”
I nod, taking it from him and setting it down on top of a stack of gifts on the right.
“Think he’ll like it?” I ask.
“He’d better.” Kai scoffs. “All the effort we went to?”
I smile, turning to watch him limp toward the kitchen, my chest feeling both tight and warm—scared of the intense flash of happiness.
Three weeks ago, that leg took a bullet meant for me.
Three weeks ago, I drove an electric knife into his brother’s stomach and didn’t stop until his intestines came out.
Three weeks ago, we ran.
And now we’re here.
Safe.
Together.
It feels like a miracle. Like the universe finally decided to stop shitting on us long enough to hand out some grace.
I don’t trust it, not entirely.
People like me don’t get happy endings. We get cautionary tales and body counts and restraining orders.
But maybe—just fucking maybe—we get this too.
Maybe we’ve earned it.
Several clanks later, the coffee machine gurgles to life in the kitchen. Kai curses softly as something clatters to the floor. Turns out he’s not great with appliances.
I smile into the sleeve of Bastian’s shirt.
Footsteps sound out behind me.
“You’d better not have started without me.”
When I turn to look at Bastian, my mouth goes dry.
He’s leaning against the doorframe of the bedroom, wearing nothing but low-slung pajama pants, his dark hair mussed and his jaw shadowed with stubble. There’s a mark on his collarbone—I bit him when I came last night—and he’s making no effort to hide it.
“Good timing,” I say. “Couple more minutes, and you’d have missed everything.”