Page 4 of Her Christmas Beast

“Angel.” His voice is tight, like he’s in pain. I reach up to cup his cheek gently.

“Billy, I’m getting some really mixed signals here. Talk me down before I have to throw the second tantrum of my life.”

At that, something loosens and he grins briefly. “Part of me wants to see that process from the beginning. I’m not a fit mate for any woman, Angel. Least of all a sweetheart like you.” Hesighs heavily, but I wait him out. I don’t know what new garbage has gotten into his head, but I’m good with a broom.

When he’s still silent trying to find the words, I prompt him, “Start at the beginning or where we left off. What happened after you took the test? I know you aced it.”

He nods stiffly. “I did. And they didn’t believe you hadn’t somehow cheated for me.”

I gasp in outrage, but he places one scarred finger over my lips. “So they made me take it again, a different version. And I did even better that time because I wasn’t worried about you.” I smile and relax at that, ready to hear the rest of his story.

“A few days later, a man from Harvard came to visit me… and… the people I was living with. I’m not obligated to call them parents.” Billy gives me a warning sign when I open my mouth to start asking questions. I roll my eyes and close my lips firmly making an exaggerated zipping motion with my finger.

“He came with an offer of a full-ride, tutored graduate program that combined mathematics with engineering. The Chamberlains were completely silent throughout until he got to the offer to fly us all back for the weekend to meet with the math department. That’s when they said he was free to take me, but they wouldn’t be going and then added the special cherry, ‘Igor, you might as well pack your things. There’s no need to come back here ever again.’”

“What! But how could they… Billy!” I’m outraged and discover my hands have balled into fists. I’d like to punch those people. They’d no right to treat Billy with such carelessness.

Billy smiles sadly at me. “They wanted me to be a functioning idiot, Angel. That was the only way I was of use to them.” His voice rises in mimicry, “‘I don’t know how you do it, Valerie. You’re a saint. An absolute saint!’ Having your adopted Russian son going to Harvard to study engineering and math doesn’t exactly require much sympathy or sainthood, does it?”

I gape at him, the horror of that scenario playing out in my mind. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Angel, you were twelve. There wasn’t anything you could do about it and you didn’t need that kind of burden. You’d already saved my future. I wasn’t that torn up about losing my past.”

“Keep going. Before I bawl my eyes out.” I wipe the gathering moisture from my eyes for the second time this morning.

“Well… the trajectory of my life from there on was actually pretty good. I had surgeries.” He waggles his fingers in front of my face, and I grab them to inspect more closely. His thick fingers are crisscrossed by really old scars and over them are straight ridges of newer scar tissue.

“Do they still hurt?”

“No,” he responds softly. “I still don’t have minute motor skills, but I can manage a mouse and peck at a keyboard without pain. Still can’t do buttons, though.” He glances down at the front of his white button-down dress shirt.

“So who does…?” I’m suddenly irrationally jealous, picturing some woman smoothing her hands down his chest with pride. That should be my job, my heart says.

Billy lowers his hands to my ass, his nails almost pricking my skin through my jeans as he brings me tighter against his chest. “I have a butler. Valet? Not sure what to call him, but his name is Tom. He does the buttons when required and some of the cooking, opens the mail, all the things I make a mess of. I ordered him to go home last night to see his parents for Christmas.”

“So what do you do with these when he’s not around?” I ask curiously, fingering the small flat shirt buttons.

Billy blushes slightly, something I’ve not seen before. “I uh, rip them off.”

“Wow.” I start slipping the little white disks out of their fabric prisons.

Billy regards me quizzically. “What are you doing?”

“Saving this custom-made shirt. I like it.”

“It would be a tent on you,” he mutters dryly.

“And maybe I want to see what’s underneath it,” I admit, keeping my eyes downcast.

“I haven’t finished my story yet.”

I shrug playfully. “I’m not stopping you. I’ve got…” I count up. “six more buttons to go. Guess you’d better talk fast.”

He drops a kiss on my forehead. “I… Oh, fuck. Anyway, this is the not so good part. When they were assessing my hands, they ran some DNA tests to see if there were any explanation there about how to treat it. And um, a committee showed up to discuss the results with me a few weeks later. It seems I’m not entirely human.”

I stop fussing with his shirt. This is serious. “What do you mean?”

“I learned more much later, but at the time all they could tell me was about two percent of my genes aren’t human or even hominid. They weren’t sure what they were but probably from a bunch of different things.” He peers down at me cautiously. “That’s when I asked to change my name. I always knew I wasn’t Igor, and the Chamberlains had made it clear I wasn’t one of them, either. So I became William Zver. Zver means beast in Russian.”

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