Page 100 of Scrooged for the Holidays
“It’s not because of who you are.”
“Really? Because you said Elysian Pines brought me here because I needed help. You’ve seen my past and present. I’m not exactly liked or a good person.”
“What are you saying?”
“You have every right to not want me for me. I’m not exactly the kind of woman men desire long term nor the type they bring home for Christmas.”
The memory of James breaking up with me sends pain lancing through my lungs, my heart feeling as if someone has it in their palm and is squeezing it hard.
“Emotions are a liability,” I say under my breath. “Control is—”
“Greer.” Sam speaks to me in a steady timbre, cutting off my mantra. My eyes sting, and I hate it. I hate not feeling in control.
The tentacle-like shadow wraps around my ankle, and this time, I feel a heated warmth coming from it. The sensation is grounding, soothing somehow, like whatever this aura is creates energy to ease my mind.
I shut my eyes to get rid of the sting. When I open them, Sam is close enough that I feel the heat of his body.
“You’re wrong,” he says. “Emotions arenota liability—they are power. Control.”
I stare into his eyes for a long beat. “Then why are you afraid of yours, too?”
He blinks as if I’ve stunned him, jolted a brand-new idea into his head that was never there before.
“You wouldn’t touch me yesterday. You were watching me at the rink then left. Nowyoutried to leave. You’re running from whatever it is you’re feeling, or am I wrong?”
My gut flips and tingles, my sadness turning into something else. The hunger of lust and desire returns along with the knowing that I’m right about him. Samael is similar to me.
He told me he came to Elysian Pines because his own mother feared what he is, that people don’t understand Nephilim. I know that feeling. I’ve known it most of my life, been misunderstood and judged.
So I stopped fighting it. I let people believe what they wanted, building my walls higher and stronger until even I couldn’t see over them. Until I was an Ice Queen.
Until now.
I might feel like a thawing mess, but the only reason I’m not in a puddle on the floor is because of three Nephilim who, somehow, I was meant to find. All because of a magical town that shouldn’t exist. It sounds impossible—it should be impossible—but I can’t deny it anymore. The evidence is too great, and the way I feel in my body is too real.
Everythingis real, as real as Sam’s breath brushing my skin. As real as the shadow wrapped around my ankle, holding me here, refusing to let me run.
“You’re not wrong.” Sam’s solemn admission eases a bit of the swirling emotions in my gut.
I swallow. “I expected you to argue.”
“I don’t lie.”
I observe him. His shoulders are still tense, and I’m more positive now that he’s holding back, especially since he realized he’s been cutting off his emotions from me, from himself, like he’s been holding it all in for too long.
I study the high planes of his cheekbones and the strain of his facial muscles. I reach one of my hands up to try to touch part of the shadows, but I stop when Sam flinches.
I press my lips together and shift my weight from side to side, the tentacle on my ankle growing tighter like it’s afraid I’ll leave. More pieces fit together, and a question formulates in my mind.
“Are you afraid you’ll hurt me?” I glance at the building darkness around his being, the size growing until I can hardly see the store behind him. I feel another shadow tentacle slinking near my foot, and my nipples tighten painfully as my breath grows shorter.
His voice drops low. “Yes.”
A small part of my brain says I should be afraid, but I’m not. I don’t know why, but I know he won’t hurt me. It’s similar to how I knew I could give my body to Remi and Kai last night, why I let Remi have any kind of dominance over me at all while being intimate.
The image of Sam standing at the side of the rink tense and brooding comes to me like the flash of a camera. He looked similar to how he looks now: strained and holding himself back.
“Did you think you were responsible for me falling at the rink?”
