Chapter 30
Christmas Eve
’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring—except for the Husky who might die if he didn’t get any pizza.
I’d just woken up from a mid-afternoon nap, and followed the sounds of voices and the song of Carlos’s people to the kitchen where he was in an all-out fight with James over the box on the table. Hannah sat there, happily eating her slice and watching in amusement.
I winced when Carlos’s pitch notched even higher. How it wasn’t hurting James’s sensitive ears, I had no idea. “I don’t think this is a fight you’ll win, babe.”
James threw me a scowl, then turned to hide the grin on his face. “Cujo didn’t wake you, did he?”
I shrugged and joined Hannah. “I’m awake regardless. Now give me that,” I said, making grabby hands at the food. “I’m starving.”
Hannah slid the box my way and I grabbed a piece from it .
“I’ll get you a plate, you heathen.”
“I don’t need a plate!” I garbled around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni.
One was placed in front of me anyway.
It had been almost two months since our latest vampire-related adventure. My concussion faded rather quickly, save for the tiny pink scar that hid perfectly behind my hairline. My nose healed and thankfully, the snoring that came with it hadn’t stuck around. My car was totaled. Obviously the whole thing had been a trap, but for insurance purposes, the other driver ran a red light and insurance paid out for it.
Kian was in the hospital for four weeks, but was eventually released with a clean bill of health. He was still recovering, and sported a few new scars on his back and stomach. Gabriel was right not to let me remove the stake, otherwise Kian would have bled to death. He left his job at the restaurant after tensions arose when he couldn’t do much of the physical work he’d done before the… “accident,” as we were calling it. We’d told Hannah he’d gotten hurt in a second car accident that day. It sounded a lot better than “your boyfriend got involved with a clan of vampire hunters and got stabbed by a wooden stake. James made sure that Hannah forgot about the events leading up. We hated keeping the truth from her—especially with Kian knowing all the nasty parts of the supernatural—but I wanted to protect Hannah from it all as much as possible.
Luke surprised us all by stepping up to help, sitting with Kian when Hannah couldn’t and even going so far as to cover Kian’s bills while he was recovering. James, the saint that he was, agreed to protect Luke without hesitation—so long as he proved himself to both of us.
Hannah’s voice brought me back to my thoughts—and James, who was walking back into the room after answering the front door. “Hey, you,” Hannah said, accepting a kiss from Kian who’ d appeared over her shoulder. He was getting better, but I noticed his slight wince when he straightened again.
“You couldn’t convince Luke to join us?” I asked, stealing a second slice of pizza. I knew he’d dropped Kian off, since Kian hadn’t yet been cleared to drive.
Kian shook his head. “I tried. He said it still doesn’t feel right.”
James saved the situation from getting awkward. “Is Shiloh coming?”
I shook my head. “They’re spending Christmas in Houston with their family.”
James smiled. I was thrilled for Shiloh. Despite loving it in Salem, they missed their family. It was without a doubt the Christmas bonus James gave them that paid for their trip.
I peeked inside one of the grocery bags sitting on the table. “What kind of cookies are we bak—ow!”
“Knock it off,” Hannah scolded me. “Your Christmas present is in there.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault you waited until the last minute to wrap it?”
“I’m sure it is somehow,” James muttered.
“Hey!”
Hannah laughed, and the knowing look that James threw me across the table told me that was his intention all along. He stood, unpacking the cookie ingredients from the bag. Hannah snuck away to finish her wrapping, and Kian and I finished our dinner.
Though it was something I never knew I wanted to see, the image of James and Hannah smiling and laughing together made my heart swell. Instead of the butterflies I’d grown accustomed to, a warmth started in my chest and spread throughout my body.
Occasionally, I snuck licks from a spoon or some dough from the bo wl before it went into the oven. Once the cookies were cooling on wire racks, we all convened at the table with tubes of icing and sprinkles. Hannah sat between me and Kian, while James sat across from us.
When Hannah handed over a bag of green icing, a sinister idea formed in my mind. “Hey, Han, you’ve got something on your face.”
“What? Where?’
I intercepted before she could scrub at her cheeks, smearing a glob of green icing across her skin. “Right about there.”
“Ah, Ryder !” she squealed at an inhuman pitch, immediately retaliating.
Kian joined in, and chaos ensued. James dodged flying decorating accouterments and Carlos reaped the benefits. I just knew I’d find him chasing sprinkles across the linoleum for days. We only stopped once we were all breathless.
“Thanks for your help, loving boyfriend of mine!” I said to James, who was laughing in his seat.
“You got yourself into this mess, love. You forget that child is half you.”
I joined Hannah at the sink, and together we shook the sprinkles from our hair. She wetted a paper towel to wipe the icing from her face, but after only smearing it around, she announced she was taking a shower.
“Goodnight,” she told us both, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and giving me a squeeze.
I opened my mouth to respond but wound up with a mouthful of icing as she squeezed from the wrong end of the bag, coating my entire face.
Something told me it wasn’t an accident, and Kian’s snickering as he followed behind her confirmed it.
I cleared the sugary paste from my eyes while James found another wet cloth. My eyes darted down to his mouth. “I know a better way for you to do that,” I whispered, not waiting for an answer before I leaned in and captured his lips—and smeared his face with icing in the process.
James nipped my lip to break the kiss. “We have guests who might not want to overhear us. Go put yourself in the shower, sticky.” At my salacious look, he added, “ Alone . I’ll start cleaning this up.”
I relented, but not without a pout and an extra sway to my hips.
James groaned, and I smirked knowing that while he would stick to his guns, his pants would be a little more uncomfortable while he did it.
After my shower, James was nowhere to be found, but Hannah was finishing up in the kitchen.
“Better get to bed or Santa won’t come,” I teased.
She continued rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the drainer. “I’m a little old for that, don’t you think?”
“I’ve got eighteen Christmases to make up for.”
She crooked a brow over her shoulder. “Are you going to put on a red suit and hand out presents tomorrow?”
“Hell yeah, just you wait.”
The conversation lulled briefly, and I was the one to break it. “You doing okay, Hannah? For real. You can tell me.”
She’d hardly stopped to breathe since everything happened. Between finishing her first semester, working weekends at the pet store, and taking care of Kian, I couldn’t imagine where she’d have time.
She sighed, drying her hands and turning to rest against the counter. “It was hard to get that phone call.”
At the sound of her voice breaking, I pulled her into a hug. “I know it was scary,” I whispered into her hair. “But he’s okay.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “He’s better than ever and I’m being ridicu lous.”
“You’re not ridiculous. Believe me, I know what it’s like to see the person you love get hurt.” I held her until she stopped crying, and waited for her to be the one to pull away. Carlos announced James’s arrival, and that was when Hannah picked her head up. “You should get to sleep,” I told her.
“If you want us to disappear so you two can?—”
“Hannah Kinsley, don’t you dare finish that sentence. Now brush your teeth and get to bed.”
“Damn,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You got the ‘dad’ voice down.”
“Goodnight, Hannah,” I said sternly, committing to the bit. Though deep down, I was proud of myself. That was the second time she’d ever referred to me as “Dad” in any sense.
Before I could dwell on it further, James appeared and offered me a hand. “She’s right, you know.” He followed me down the hall to the bedroom and waited until I slipped under the covers. “That was impressive.”
He slid in behind me. Like a magnet, I curled into his touch, relaxing as I felt his arm close over me. “You think I could really do this?”
“Do what?”
“This whole… domestic thing. Settling down?”
With his lips against my ear, James chuckled. “I hate to break it to you, love, but you’ve been doing that for over a year now.”
Had I? I supposed I hadn’t let my brain slow down enough to think about it—which was shocking considering how much of an overthinker I’d been lately. Panic threatened to rise in my chest, but I leaned back into James and let him chase it away with the whisper of his lips over my skin and the brush of his fingers through my hair.
And with that, I closed my eyes. Because I finally realized that maybe settling down wasn’t so bad after all.
It no longer surprised me to wake up in an empty bed. It was Christmas morning, damn it. So I flipped onto my stomach, starfishing across the bed and closing my eyes again. Noises from the rest of the house reached me: the sounds of Hannah’s shower, Carlos’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor as he did whatever it was that he did in the mornings before I got up to feed him. I listened for the telltale rustling that meant James was in the kitchen.
I rolled out of bed and padded down the hallway, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Carlos was sitting calmly behind the baby gate for a change, trying like hell to peer around the corner to see into the living room where Kian — still in his pajamas—nestled into the corner of the couch. Carlos had developed a soft spot for the boy over the last couple months and tended to settle whenever he entered a room.
I tried not to take it personally.
Food was the last thing on Carlos’s mind with his friends in the room, so I freed him to join Kian while I helped James in the kitchen with breakfast.
James gave me the hard job—scrambling the eggs. That’s apparently the only thing I was trusted enough to do.
I admit, I was starting to get used to having a full house. I thought back to my studio apartment in Vegas and found myself wondering why the hell I ever lived alone. Well, I had Raleigh, who sometimes treated my apartment as his personal man cave, but even he had someone to go home to at night.
I could no longer imagine a world where I wanted those things for myself: work, an apartment that was more shelter than home, and meaningless hookups in between. I was much happier with where my life was at now .
Someone called my name from the other room, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Hannah, who was glued to Kian’s side, held a small white box in her hand. It was covered in silver snowflakes and secured with a red ribbon. “I want to give you your present.”
“I’m not going to get slapped in the face with frosting again, am I?” I took the box and sat next to the two of them.
“You started that! Open it, already! That thing took me days to get right.”
I tugged on the bow, and the velvet ribbon fell away with barely any effort. James stepped up behind me as I lifted the lid and pulled the tissue aside, removing a palm-sized disc from the box. It was one of those plaster ornaments you crafted in school with a mold of your handprint and the year printed or stamped into it. This one was bigger—much bigger—than the one I created when I was six.
Hannah was scrawled across the bottom. “It’s got last year on it,” I noted, twisting the green and red tartan ribbon between my fingers.
Hannah leaned farther into Kian’s grip, eyes shimmering. “That’s the year you became a dad.”
I gasped, like actually gasped. The box fell to the floor, but I kept a tight grip on the ornament, holding it close to my chest. I wasn’t letting it go for the world. My throat was tight and my eyes burned. I blinked, pressing my fingers into my eyes.
James’s hand rubbed my back. “Are you okay, love?”
“Give her our gift,” I said, closer to tears than I liked to admit.
While James retrieved the gift, I collected myself and carefully placed the ornament back in its box, tucking it in tight with the sparkly tissue paper. I stood and set it on a high shelf where Carlos couldn’t knock it over and break it .
“I love it,” I whispered, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Thank you.”
“Aw!” she chuckled. “I made the big, bad Ryder Clark cry!”
“Watch it, kid. You’re next.”
James returned, handing Hannah the… horribly wrapped gift. I cringed. “Why’d you let me butcher the wrap job like that?”
It was my turn for a kiss. “So I could say it was from both of us,” he whispered low enough that Hannah wouldn’t hear. “She’s only going to rip the paper anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
Just as he predicted, Hannah tore the paper off without even commenting on the wrapping. When she realized what was beneath the paper, she sat up, cradling the book in her hands as if it would fall apart—and it likely would if handled carelessly. But James and I knew she would treasure it like it deserved.
I’d known about the book for months. James asked me if he could give it to her as a gift when he learned she was studying classic literature. Even I couldn’t believe my eyes, so we knew Hannah would throw a complete fit over it.
As she took in the words on the cover, James reached over the back of the couch. His hand absently rubbed the back of my neck, but his eyes were glued to Hannah.
“Poems; Emily Dickinson,” Hannah read aloud, looking up in disbelief. Emily Dickinson was her favorite poet, and a large reason why she decided to major in literature.
“Open it,” I told her, my heart beginning to race.
“Boston, Roberts Brothers… 1890. This is an original ?”
“It is,” James confirmed. “Damn near impossible to get your hands on. Some day I’ll tell you how I did it.”
I already knew the full story. James had found it while he was rearranging his shelf one day. Turned out that he knew Emily’s cousin and he’d won the book in a bet.
According to him, Emily’s sister had been pissed when she found out .
Hannah carefully handed the book to Kian and extracted herself from his arms, scrambling over to us. She grabbed James by the collar of his sweater and jerked him over the back of the couch into a crushing hug—even by supernatural standards. And with that, my heart… well, frankly I don’t know what the thing was doing, but it wasn’t functioning as it should, stammering and stuttering in my chest like it was about to short circuit.
The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
The credits rolled.
A new chapter began.
However you wanted to say it, this was where I belonged. James was right: I left my bachelor life behind when I moved to Salem, even though it took me over a year to realize it.
Kian handed the book over to James, and he and Hannah flipped through it, picking out poems and discussing their favorites.
I stood and rounded the couch, standing next to my vampire. My hand came out of its own volition and rubbed across his back, and the grin he flashed over his shoulder made my heart soar. With the image in front of me, I paused and waited for that annoying little voice to pop up. I waited for the doubt to creep in again. When it didn’t, I let out a sigh of relief. The curse was well and truly behind us—as was my own self-doubt.
My gaze slid to the Christmas Tree, where a small box waited with James’s name on it. Considering that he sacrificed his home to keep my family safe, a key to my place was the least I could do. It was the spare since I hadn’t had time to get a copy made, but it was more symbolic than anything else; James already came and went as he pleased. But suddenly, it didn’t seem like enough. A house wasn’t good enough. He deserved the world .
The room started to spin, and I didn’t realize I’d stumbled in place until James’s arm caught me.
“Ryder, are you okay?” Kian asked. His voice was warped, like my head was underwater.
But his question was enough to get Hannah’s attention, and I was vaguely aware of Carlos nudging my leg with his nose. I shook my head to clear it, and everything came back into focus. Especially James, who was looking at me in concern.
“Huh?” I said.
James frowned, pulling me close. “He asked if you were okay, and I’m wondering the same. You look like you’re about to pass out. What’s going on?”
I opened my mouth, floundering for words. I intended to say, “I love you.” Or maybe something about what he meant to me, or what that gift meant to Hannah. I should have grabbed the box under the tree for him, or maybe I should have told him how much it meant to me that he loved my daughter as much as he loved me.
My arm was wrapped around his waist, hand on the small of his back while my thumb brushed the skin through his sweater. I counted each stroke, one, two, three… hoping the bubble in my throat would go away. No, not a bubble. Words. I’d swallowed them down before, but this time, I let them spill.
Those two words hung in the living room. Hannah dropped her book into her lap, her hands covering her mouth. Every sound in the room seemed magnified. Hannah’s gasp. My heartbeat in my ears. My stomach churned. I couldn’t breathe.
James looked at me, eyes swirling that gorgeous red—a shade inked into my memory forever. They searched mine for any indication that I wanted to take my words back. Instead, I tightened my hold on him. It was the only thing keeping me upright in that moment.
“What did you say?” he finally gasped. When I didn ’t speak, James cupped my cheeks in his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Ryder, I need to hear you say it again. Please.”
I didn’t think I had it in me. Once seemed like enough, but everyone in the room was staring at me. So I took a deep breath and tried like hell to steel myself.
Nope, there was no steel to be found. My legs had turned to goo. But I did it.
“Marry me.”