Page 68 of Spearcrest Knight

The drink is hot and creamy and sweet, warming me up straight away.

“How is it?” she asks without looking at me.

I cast her a quick grin and start the car. “It’s hot and sweet—like you.”

She laughs almost reluctantly. “Oh wow, how very smooth.”

“I thought so too. Practising for that date of ours.”

“I can already tell it’s going to be life-changing.”

“Really?”

She gives a low, rough laugh. “No.”

We spend the rest of the drive in a sort of amicable silence. When we get to the house, we go around the rooms turning on the Christmas lights. Then Sophie lights candles while I light the fire in the big fireplace. We carry armfuls of food and alcohol into the living room and settle ourselves on the soft rug in front of the fire. I offer to put on some Christmas music on the big speakers, but Sophie grimaces.

“I know you love Christmas, but please. No Christmas music. I’d rather you shoot me between the eyes.”

“It’s because you’ve not had enough alcohol yet,” I tell her, making myself a pile of cushions to lean against as I recline on the rug. “At Knight family Christmases, everyone would be tipsy before nightfall on Christmas Eve.”

She laughs and extends her glass towards me to let me pour her a drink. “My family just play board games and make passive-aggressive comments.”

I fill her cup, put the bottle away and stand. “Hey, we can do that too!”

I rush over to one of my mom’s expensive cabinets and grab a stash of board game boxes. I dump them in front of Sophie and slump back into my mountain of cushions. Sophie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and rifles through the boxes: Scrabble, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Cluedo.

She runs her hand over the glossy, colourful cardboard with a little frown.

“These look brand new,” she says, looking up.

I shrug. “Yeah, my mom wanted to do this family night every weekend where we would all have dinner as a family and play games, but that didn’t last very long.”

“You and your sister weren’t up for it?”

“No, nothing like that. We were all up for it. But Mom and Dad had calls to take, and sometimes they had to work, and Adele sometimes had cello lessons, so in the end, Mom just accepted that family night just would have to wait.”

She’s looking at me with a slight frown that’s not her usual expression of stern disapproval, but more of a look of polite concern. I grin at her and say, a little mischievously, “Don’t give me that look, Sutton. This isn’t exactly a sob story when I live in a million-dollar house, right?”

She rolls her eyes and holds up the pile of games. “You want to play or not?”

We spend the next half hour working out which game to play. Most of them need too many players anyway, so Sophie sets those aside. We agree Monopoly is too much of a time investment and vow to play it tomorrow instead and just start earlier.

I veto Scrabble straightaway.

“Come on, you’re a walking fucking dictionary. I can’t compete.”

“My vocabulary’s the least of your worries,” she says, holding up the box. “Your mum seems to have bought the British version of Scrabble.”

“And?”

“And your spelling is still pretty bloody American, especially given how long you’ve been studying here.”

I give her a dirty look, but can’t really contradict her. In the end, we settle on Trivial Pursuit. I relax back into my cushions, one arm behind my head.

“Feeling confident?” she asks, pausing as she sets up the game.

I grin. “You’ll get stuck on the Sports section for so long it’ll give me plenty of time to catch up, smart-ass.”

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