Chapter 38
Artemis
Casa Martinez smells like cinnamon, a wood burning fire, and something sweet frying in oil.
It hit me the second I stepped past the threshold, and for one unbalanced, not-thought-out moment, I considered turning around and driving the seventeen hours back home.
Not because it’s bad, because it’s… warm. Too warm.
And I don’t just mean the temperature, though I fucking love an open fire. I need to get one installed in the apartment.
In the kitchen, the twins look up from their icing duties, and I freeze like a deer on the highway in Iowa, while Christmas explodes around me. Even in the kitchen that opens into a dining room, there’s a giant tree covered in mismatched ornaments that should be ugly but somehow isn’t.
A kid’s construction paper angel hangs crooked on a branch near the top. It contrasts so well with the perfect tree and decorations in the living room. But in here, there are stockings that don’t match, strings of lights that flicker unevenly, and kid’s handmade decorations everywhere I look.
It’s chaos. Cozy, borderline feral, Christmas chaos.
I fucking love it. My family home hasn’t felt like this in…
well… maybe never. The edges of my vision are too bright, my chest tightens.
Xavier squeezes my hand once on his way to the fridge—it’s quiet reassurance, exactly what I need—and the knot under my ribs loosens just enough to let oxygen slide into my lungs.
Valentina’s smile is a warm hurricane. “Okay, mijo.”
I nearly flinch at the term of affection. She’s talking to me.
“Tell me where your talents lie.”
“On the ice,” Xavier mutters from behind the fridge door.
“At least he didn’t say in the bedroom.” Tasha, one of the twins pokes her head up and gives me a grin. “Hola, Hermano. Bienvenido. We’ve been expecting you.” She winks.
Kique gives me a firm nod but doesn’t take his eyes off his frosting for very long.
Xavier said he’ll be a freshman next year in Wisconsin.
Tasha too. She got offers all over the country but is going where her hot-shot hockey player brother is going because, and Xavier quoted this to me, he needs adult supervision. And she’d miss him too much.
If that’s not a recipe for a brother’s teammate hockey romance novel I don’t know what is. She’s considering doing a creative writing degree, too, so she could literally write the book.
Valentina waves her hand at Xavier. “Ignore him. You’re not that bad, right?” She offers me an apron. “Right?”
I shrug, my face and neck heating. “My siblings seem to have gotten all the cooking skills. I usually order from apps. Abuela isn’t thrilled I haven’t taken up the family talent. Oh!”
Everyone looks at me.
“One thing I can make almost as good as my Abuela? Her tres leches cake. It’s famous in Iowa.”
“And out of Iowa.” Roman enters the kitchen with Sofia in tow, and somehow the fairly small kitchen still feels spacious. “Fucking love Guac ‘n Roll’s tres leches.”
Xavier hands me a beer and the doorbell chimes. Everyone in the room looks at everyone else.
“Mom?” Xavier spears her with a questioning look. “Did you tell anyone we had company?” His voice is laced with a fear I hate that I’ve put there, but I know deep down it’s for the best.
Then the front door bangs open. Before I can process it, a familiar voice from the hallway calls “Where is everyone?”
Xavier looks at me. “Is that…?”
My brother Ares? Yes. I nod and mouth I’m so sorry to his mother.
“Follow your nose, Hermano.” Apollo’s voice is next. “Kitchen.”
“Did you two Mamagüevos not even wait for someone to open the door? Ay, díos. Mamá will murder you both.” My sister’s stern voice carries too.
My heart drops to my feet, right along with my jaw. Valentina bursts into melodic laughter. “We’re in here.”
I look at her like she’s betrayed me. And she winks at me. “Mi casa es su casa.”
Xavier gives me a confused look. I frown back.
Ares steps inside with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, hands full of bags, and wearing plaid Christmas pajamas under his coat like he rolled out of a holiday catalog. Snow clings to his hair, and he’s out of breath.
“Jesus fuck, it is freezing out there.” Ares at least had the good sense to kick his shoes off at the door. He drops the duffel and lifts a plaid gift bag like he’s Santa’s feral intern. “Xavier, your boyfriend forgot something.” He grins at me. “A few somethings.”
I choke on oxygen.
Xavier’s eyebrows shoot up. “You drove all the way here?”
Ares shakes his head. “We flew. We couldn’t let Arte storm out of the house in a storm cloud without bringing...” He lifts his hands. “Anything.”
"?Apúrate!" Athena makes her way in behind our brothers, slips her arm around me and pecks me on the cheek. “Apologies, Mrs. Martinez, for breaking into your house. But we couldn’t let our brother show up empty handed.”
She ruffles my hair like she’s been dying to embarrass me all day.
“We didn’t realize how serious things were between him and Xavier, or we’d have invited you all up for Christmas.
” Her words hit their target as they get spat into my ear.
“You should have fucking said something, Hermano.” She growls in my ear before turning a smile to Xavier’s mom. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
Valentina’s face falls like Athena just announced the family pet had been killed. “Out of my… qué? Absolutely not, you’ll stay and have dinner with us.”
Ares nudges Apollo and hisses a ‘Yesssssss’ not so quietly which makes Valentina smile even more.
“But Mamá is outside waiting for us.”
Valentina gasps so loudly everyone looks at her. She doesn’t say another word but pushes her way through the now growing crowd in her kitchen to presumably go talk to Mamá.
This isn’t what I meant by keeping things quiet. As if he can read my thoughts, Apollo saunters over to me. “Don’t worry, Papá doesn’t know where we are. Mamá lost her shit at his drunk ass and told him to find somewhere else to spend Christmas, that she was taking us to her friend’s house.”
I blink, like that might make what he just said make more sense. “And Abuela?”
“Last minute Christmas cruise with her Canasta friends.” Ares is opening the bag and placing pans of food on the counter.
I don’t believe what’s happening. Is my family really gatecrashing my tantrum escape to my boyfriend’s house for Christmas Eve?
Mamá joins the melee as Valentina leads her inside. They’re talking in rapid Spanish, and pause for no one, while Mamá produces a big enough bag of limes to beat someone to death with. “?Dónde está el tequila?”
Fuck. This is going to be messy. I don’t do messy. Within minutes, Ares has passed out matching pajamas. Not the same ones that match our team’s, but different ones, family ones, and it’s not something Xavier misses.
“Are these the team pjs this year?” Roman scrunches his nose up. “Because I’m not sure I can support the Raccoons when my brother is a Wolf.” He shrugs at me. “Sorry.”
Xavier throws a Santa hat at his brother. “These aren’t the ones I saw on social media. They’re different.” His eyes search my face as I give him a nod to confirm.
“They’re family pjs.” Ares throws it out there like it’s no big deal, but from the way Xavier’s gaze intensifies, it’s a big fucking deal.
Kique looks around the room. “How did y’all know where he was going?”
Athena shakes her head, like Kique is too innocent for his own good.
“On the Find My Dumbass Hermano app.” Ares wiggles his phone.
“GPS on his SUV,” Apollo chimes in.
“I had a tracker injected into his neck while he was sleeping.” Athena’s deadpan is so serious that no one really knows if she’s serious or not. Including me.
While Mamá and Valentina organize a margarita production line, and Valentina oohs and ahhs at the variety of food my family brought down with them, I stare in awe and try not to draw attention to the fact that I’m a fish out of water.
Of course our mothers are instant soulmates. Because why wouldn’t the universe take the most dangerous women in my life and fuse them into a single unstoppable force? Sofia and Hen are next, mark my words.
What kills me is how fast my siblings sink into the room like they’ve been here a thousand times—Ares is helping Roman with a tray of food, Apollo is already arguing with Sofia about hockey, Athena’s flirting shamelessly with Valentina’s spice rack.
They belong everywhere while I’ve never belonged anywhere.
Ares holds out a plaid gift bag. “You left this next to the tree. I figured it meant something. But because you peeled out of the driveway like you were being chased by the FBI, I didn’t have time to ask.”
I take it. The weight hits me like a punch so I place it on the floor next to my feet because I’m definitely not ready to face that bag, especially in front of everyone.
I packed this bag at two in the morning three nights ago when I still thought I’d spend Christmas at my parents, or in my silent, cavernous penthouse pretending not to exist. I was contemplating mailing it.
Inside? A book Xavier mentioned offhand during one of our late-night chats.
A pair of absurdly soft socks he once said he’d steal off me someday—I got him his own pair, I didn’t regift him mine.
And a framed picture of the two of us—Ares secretly took it because he said my face looked “almost human.”
Ares leans in, low voice. “I wasn’t letting this rot under your damn tree.”
I swallow hard. “Thank you.” I chickened out of sending it in time for the holiday.
He bumps his shoulder against mine. “Buy me tamales and we’re even.”
The kitchen erupts with some kind of joyful yelling at that word—tamales—and suddenly the entire Martinez household becomes even more animated.
Roman shouts something about steamers and “don’t you dare lift the lid.
” Sofia is threatening someone in Spanish, possibly Xavier, and Valentina is cackling like a holiday witch surrounded by sparkly, colorful anarchy.
Xavier grabs my wrist. “You okay?”
Am I? No. Not even slightly. But I really want to be. I can’t figure out how to get this tightness out of my chest so I can breathe properly.
His fingers anchor me again, steady and sure, and I let out the smallest hiss of a breath. “It’s… a lot,” I admit. I glance around the kitchen where multiple generations of Martinez and de la Pena chaos are vibrating at a perilous frequency. What happens when the families collide?
He bites back a smile. “They like you.”
The way they look at him—soft, proud, utterly certain—hits at that place I don’t let anyone see. I’ve spent my whole life being tolerated by my father. But Xavier? He is… loved.
“They’re terrifying.”
He squeezes my hand. “Come on. You’ve survived mergers and playoff hockey. You can survive our collective mothers on Christmas Eve.”
I let him tug me forward, and something stupidly fragile cracks inside me—this tiny, impossible thought: If life looked like this every night, I don’t think I’d mind.
My laugh comes out thin and a little unhinged despite the hope planting seeds in my chest. “Yeah. Sure. Mothers. Easy.” Easy.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Inside, every alarm in my body is screaming run, and I’m trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person does when they aren’t one bad thought away from bolting out into the cold.
Okay, Texas isn’t all that cold, but bolting nonetheless. And as the noise swells again—my family, his family, everyone talking over everyone—the ground shifts under my feet. Again.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t want this.
I shouldn’t be leaning into it like this; it’ll only make it harder when things don’t go how the blooming hope in my chest wants it to.
But Xavier’s hand is still wrapped around mine, and so the knot under my ribs loosens one impossible inch.
So maybe just for tonight… I can pretend I’m someone who gets to have a Christmas like this.