Page 23 of Oh Holy Knight

His gaze cuts to me and the smile falls.

“You’re not really canceling it are you?” he asks.

“Since when do you have the Christmas spirit?” Riggs questions. “You’re usually the Grinch.”

Keeping his eyes pinned to mine, Blackie shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” he says, smoothing a hand over Dominique’s head. “Shit changes when you have kids, I guess.”

Ain’t that a fact.

“I love watching the girls on Christmas morning, seeing the joy on their faces—nothing else compares,” he continues.

Another fact.

All I wanted was to bring the magic of Christmas back to my family. Back to my brothers, their wives and their kids.

“Plus, I was really looking forward to sampling Wolf’s feast of the seven fishes,” Blackie admits.

Yeah, well, we only have five.

“You don’t like my turkey?” Riggs questions, sounding slightly offended.

“Man, you’d have to actually kill the turkey and cook it for it to even be considered part of the menu. You capture those damn things and let them run around your yard. It’s fucking weird,” Blackie tells him.

“I pardon them!”

They continue to duke it out over the infamous wild turkey shenanigans, and I take a moment to glance around the bar. Even if I went through with it, none of us have the space to accommodate everyone. I suppose I could get one of those tents, but the couch is already on the front lawn and since I put a pool in the backyard last summer for Anna, there isn’t enough room for a swing set let alone a fucking tent with fifty some odd people.

The only place we all fit is here at the bar and while there is plenty of room in the kitchen to throw down a feast and the outside looks like Luna Park, there is no Christmas tree. No fucking stockings. And no nativity.

But that can be fixed.

“Christmas isn’t canceled,” I say.

“Dad,” Enzo argues. “There is no way the house is going to be ready.”

“Fuck the house,” I reply. “Bash!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need a tree.”

“Come again?”

“A Christmas tree,” I clarify. “Ten feet.” I glance up at the rafters.

Go big or go home, Scotto.

“Make it twelve.”

“He’s got that crazy look in his eyes,” Nico points out. “Pop, I think you should sit down. Maybe take an aspirin or something.”

“I don’t need an aspirin, I need a Christmas tree,” I growl. “And lights, lots of lights. Ornaments too. Oh, and stockings. We’ll hang them on the bar.” I reach into my back pocket and pull out my pad, jotting down everything I’m going to need to turn this place into the North-fucking-Pole.

“He’s lost his fucking mind,” Parrish mutters.

“Grandpa you said the f-word.”

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