32. Embrace Your Ho-Ho
Chapter 32
Embrace Your Ho-Ho
I t took three full days to regain consciousness. My first blurry glance was sunlight streaking across a cherry-wood ceiling with a super classy fan circulating air down on me.
Sitting up, I looked around the room I didn’t recognize. The smell of the sea was in my nose, and my eyes strayed to a set of patio doors nearby that overlooked a steel-grey sea, its thrashing waters still cast in morning cloud cover. It drew me over to the in-room balcony, and I walked out into the fresh breeze, letting it wake my dulled senses.
The grogginess in my head was whisked away the longer I stood in the morning sun, sprays of sea water coating my face. It was the most relaxed I’d been in a while, and I silently basked in the calm before the storm.
“You’re awake,” someone said from behind me, and I did a full turn because I’d know that voice anywhere.
Her similarly colored eyes were hit by the sun coming through the door, her body cast in shadow, before my grandmother stepped into the light. And the air was sucked right from my lungs. Her tired eyes carried the weight of my fate in them, and her smile couldn’t hide how much our absence from each other had affected her .
Her house slippers shuffled across the carpet as the elderly Hunter made her way over and offered me the steaming cup of coffee she’d brought with her.
“Grams,” I breathed, not sure what to say now that I had her in front of me. “You look old.” I took the hit she landed on my shoulder with a laugh. Inside I was crying though, because Grams had a mean-ass punch and superior senses meant it felt like being plowed by a bus.
Grams grumbled before wrapping her arm around me, her awkwardness matching mine.
I’d missed her autumn scent and comfortable heat. I’d missed the way she squeezed against me, years of wear and tear in her bones but still as sturdy as a goat. I’d missed her chiding breaths and stern but loving eyes.
I’d just really missed her.
“I see your sass hasn’t changed,” she complained with her smiling mouth giving her away. “I worried this world would beat it out of you.”
Grabbing her hand with mine, I took a ginger sip of my warm coffee and stared out at the endless sea. “It tried, but I’m the granddaughter of one badass bitch.”
Grams clicked her tongue, but she beamed with the compliment. She tugged me closer and brought our heads together. It was a moment where we both closed our eyes and simply enjoyed the silence and much-needed embrace.
Then she released me and leaned against the balcony rail, her intelligent eyes breaking apart the secrets I kept hidden in my heart. “I know you’re an adult and full-fledged Hunter now…” I glared, and she smirked. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You’ll always be a Hunter. Those bastards at the Organization can’t take that from you, Vivienne. Remember that. A Hunter isn’t what they made you; a Hunter is what you made yourself, and the code is the same. We still believe in keeping the innocent safe, even if it looks different now.”
Grams always did believe in the code of a Hunter. Even without the Organization, that didn’t change for her. It was the entire reason she pushed me to think for myself, not to simply do what I was told. Not to trust someone else’s version of life. And I was grateful at the very least she encouraged me to use my head instead of blindly following orders. Maybe that was her way of preparing me for this shit-show. Maybe that was the seed of rebellion she’d planted.
“You’ve been lost since…” Grams trailed off, her soft-spoken words dying on the salty wind.
I wasn’t used to the woman being at a loss for words, and I shifted uncomfortably. “I unfairly blamed you, Grams.”
She lifted her hand, lips thinning and eyes watering. I took a step forward, intent on hugging the woman for all she was worth. It was rare for my grandmother to show emotion, and it made my throat constrict so tight I had to swallow several times to soothe the discomfort. But when I tried to get close, Grams shook her head and crossed her arms, rejecting me.
“No, V. This is on me. I was so afraid of what it might do to you, I forgot that life is unfair and ruthless. It comes for you whether or not you’re ready. I was wrong to keep the truth from you. It only made it harder on you. It left you vulnerable and afraid to embrace the greatest parts of life,” she entreated, her tone afflicted with so much regret it was heartbreaking to hear on the normally confident woman.
“Grams… ”
She swallowed visibly, wiping away renegade tears with angry fingers, and set her determined eyes on me. “The days ahead will test you more than the ones of the past, and I know you’re confused and struggling to understand who it is you are and what you want. If it’s one thing I can tell you, love and life are complicated without the struggles you face. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to hurt yourself and others when you do. But it’s in those times of error we truly learn about ourselves, so I don’t want you to be afraid of stumbling.”
Tears tumbled down my face, but I stood strong against the abrupt wind hitting our bodies and the emotion shamelessly burning down my cheeks.
My grandmother finally smiled and reached her hand out to me. Biting my lower lip, I grabbed it and she squeezed once before heading inside. “Oh, and V,” she called out as my gaze followed her into the room.
“Yeah?”
Her eyes trailed over to the door before finding their way back to me. “Sloan’s a good man. Phillip is too, if not a little self-centered. But I think it’s okay for you to spend some time figuring out who makes you the happiest.” My lips twitched into a smile before she added, “You’re young. Explore a little. Kiss a few, or kiss them all. Isn’t that what the kids are doing nowadays, anyway? Hitting it and quitting it?”
Did my grams just say “Hitting it and quitting it?” Who the fuck was this lady? She certainly wasn’t my grams.
I call bullshit.
Words escaped me, and I just stood there like a dumbass, gawking at the woman who’d never talked about sex my entire fucking life.
Grams shrugged with a sneaky grin, her eyes looking off somewhere in the distance, to days long ago. “I loved your Gramps, but I only knew that after I’d gotten into my fair share of beds. At one time, I easily shuffled through four or five.”
My eyes widened, and hers twinkled like that was exactly what she was aiming for.
Sadist.
“We were all consenting adults, V. And busy. Like me, they weren’t terribly concerned with being in a relationship, and it was fun. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
What the actual fuck…
Four or five people ? Grams, the same lady who lived and breathed fighting, had a roster of friends with benefits? Booty calls? Who was this person? Who replaced Grams with this sexy imposter who apparently Marilyn Monroe’d the Hunter world at some point? Forget the fact that she’d gone from talking about regrets to now pushing this extreme narrative of “Love one, love all, embrace your ho-ho, V!” but I couldn’t reconcile the woman standing in front of me with the woman who’d painstakingly raised me over the years.
Maybe nymphomaniacs run in the family.
Before I could demand Grams explain herself, she waved at me and left the room. I was abandoned to my thoughts, blindsided by yet another mind-boggling plot twist. And for some reason, I couldn’t get the theme song from Pokémon out of my head, unintentionally singing “Gotta catch them all” under my breath as I rushed to dress and head downstairs.
“You’re still here?” I asked, flabbergasted by a familiar figure looming in the sitting room.
Phillip was off gathering some much-needed intel on the boyband of evil-doers working under Lux, and Grams had dragged Kris with her to do something she refused to talk about. It was all very James Bond of her as she whispered like I didn’t have the hearing of a goddamn creature of the night, “Don’t say a word to her, you hear?”
Kris only smiled at me apologetically before she was whisked off to a place I wasn’t allowed to know to do something I was also not permitted to know. But Grams never did anything maliciously, and despite the letter I’d pored over for weeks when she first left, I wasn’t concerned she’d never come back.
I wasn’t worried about losing her again.
Jo had a leg crossed over, wearing a pair of casual jeans and a t-shirt that had “Try Me” written across her chest. Her caramel-brown hair was drawn up into a messy bun on top of her head, and I almost didn’t recognize her. The boots she wore were the only thing even remotely similar to the woman I met three days ago. She looked up from the book in her lap, and the way her lips slid up the second our eyes met made my stomach flip-flop.
What the hell is wrong with you, V? Are you really this thirsty?
“Hey there,” she greeted, setting her book aside.
I think I said something, but my words probably sounded like gibberish because her smile only grew with my reply. It was a tongue-tied ridiculousness even I couldn’t excuse. The dangerous vixen stood and peered over at the kitchen where Cassius leaned against a cabinet, grumbling about how he didn’t like over-easy eggs to Sloan, who had somehow been wrangled into cooking for him .
The ice-blue eyes that appeared in so many dreams I’d lost count found their way over to me, and I waved awkwardly when the Brit’s gaze lit up and his mouth tilted into a breathtaking smile. “Hungry?” Sloan asked, turning around in an apron covered in frills.
No lie, he made it work. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but it was a perfect look on the gorgeous Hunter. Pretty sure the beautiful bastard could pull off a trash bag at this rate.
“Uh, yeah. Starving,” I responded slowly.
Cash was in another five-thousand-dollar ensemble when he turned to look at me, cat eyes taking in my lackluster outfit with a disappointed sigh. “I’m taking you shopping. Today. This is an insult to women everywhere. Also, hope you like runny eggs because I think that’s all this brute knows how to make.”
Jo scoffed to herself before leaning into view. “How do you feel?”
It only occurred to me when she said something that I’d passed out in Sloan’s arms after defeating an enemy who’d survived the strongest Hunters in existence.
“Better,” was my incredibly suave reply, and Jo’s laughing eyes told me she also thought it needed work. So, I went on, “You were cool.”
Wow, V. You’re really laying the wit on thick today.
The woman’s hand sparkled with purple light before she brushed hair from my eyes and laid her heated palm over my cheek. The subtle caress of her power always hit me right in the hips, and I couldn’t stop the soft moan leaving my throat if I tried. Her obsidian eyes beamed amber for a breath, a fleeting second where stars lived in her gorgeous gaze, before she withdrew her hand .
“You did good back there. We’ll talk. But for now, I think you deserve a few days of telling the world to get fucked.” Jo winked, the sultry smile signature only to her back before she grabbed Cash by the ear and dragged the squealing Dark Fae out the front door.
I almost didn’t understand what was happening until they were gone and it was just Sloan and I left in the home.
The Brit removed the sauté pan from the stovetop and placed some eggs and toast on a plate, then offered it to me with another one of his heart-stealing smiles. Taking the steaming plate, I slowly moved over to the table and watched the other Hunter follow. He took a seat directly across from me, fingering through dark hair before it fell around his eyes in a I-fuck-like-a-devil sort of way—and I’d know better than anyone that he did.
Christ, I’m so into this dude.
“We didn’t really get much of a chance to chat since I came back,” he started as I tried not to shove food into my mouth. Hunger was a crazy sort of thing when you’d been comatose for days.
But my fork paused, and I lifted my eyes to his. “Sorry about that.”
His all-bad grin made my legs quiver under the table for reasons I’d rather not acknowledge, painfully familiar with his lusty stare and not prepared to feel it when I’d only just been forced to have a random-ass sex talk with Grams.
Talk about a weird fucking morning.
“I adore you,” came his blunt proclamation, and my fork dropped to the plate with a clatter. “I want to know you. I want to be the one you kiss and share moments with. I want to be the one you steal glances at; who you run to when you need comfort. I want to be a person you come to love, and I will do whatever necessary to be by your side.”
Love?
His stare never wavered. The powerful look of him, shoulders back, chest clenched under a thin t-shirt, spoke volumes of how strongly he felt about everything he said to me.
“Phillip and I are mates, and that won’t change, but I’m not convinced he’s the right person for you. He can’t give you everything you need, love. He’ll try, but he’ll come up short. I realize the two of you have only just made things official—”
I coughed after inhaling a wallop of egg, and Sloan stopped talking to see if I was okay. “Wait,” I said, voice strained from choking on eggs—and life, really, “who told you that?”
“He made it abundantly clear when we came here you were his.” Sloan’s jaw clenched. With a stolen look at the door, the Brit stood up from his seat and knelt down in front of me, bringing my hands into his. “You deserve a chance to find out what it is you want, and who. I don’t expect you to decide today, or anytime soon. I only ask that you consider me more than you did before.”
Too shocked to speak, I stared at him.
But he got to his feet and drew me up from my seat with a beckoning smirk. His hands took the shape of my face, blue eyes searching for any sign that I wasn’t okay with it. But I’d never be able to say no to Sloan, not even when it was the shittiest thing I could do.
The side of his lip lifted, my heart thumping once before his mouth came down on mine and he kissed me like he’d spent years dreaming of it. Like my mouth was the breath in his lungs after nearly drowning. And my brain couldn’t cope. It shut down. Traitor. Only my mouth and hands knew what they were doing.
I clutched the front of his apron, bringing his lips impossibly close. Desperate to feel more, I opened my mouth to his seeking tongue. I responded the way my head screamed not to and my ho-ho body fist-pumped. I kissed him back like it wasn’t the worst thing I could do.