Page 16 of Christmas with Saint

That stupid fucking promise rang in my ears. Davey had been dead serious when he asked me to make it, and in one night, I’d blown the entire thing to bits. There was a high probability that he’d never forgive me, and I had no idea how we’d continue working together if that happened.

Could I lose half my family and still live happily with the other?

That was my dilemma.

“What’s eating you? You have that look on your face,” Davey said, bringing me back to the present.

“What look?” I asked, wondering what he’d say.

“The look where you’re keeping something from me,” he pushed, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat.

“No, I don’t.”

“What’d you say you did last night?”

That was twice now that he’d asked that particular question.

“I told you already. Nothing.”

He pushed back from his chair and stood up, and I instinctively did the same. Davey definitely knew more than he’d let on earlier.

“The kind of nothing that involves your car being parked at my sister’s house all night?”

I gasped, almost choking on the intake of air. I felt like I was suffocating.?”

“The least you could do is be a fucking man and admit it to my face,” he growled, and we both stood tall, our shoulders back, our chests puffed out.

“I was going to tell you,” I tried to say, but he put a hand up.

He didn’t want to hear my bullshit excuses, and I wasn’t sure I blamed him, but it was all out in the open now.

There was no going back from here. And honestly, I’d needed it there because I felt more in control than I had thirty seconds ago.

“You promised.”

“I was seventeen!” I shouted back because I was starting to get pissed off. This was fucking stupid.

“You. Made. Me. A. Promise.” He enunciated each word as I watched his hand ball into a fist.

I braced myself for the punch he was about to deliver. I’d give him just this one before I started hitting back.

MONSTER PANTS

IVY

Iwalked into the salon an hour before my first client was set to arrive. There were things to prep and get ready for, but mostly, it was so that I could fill Cori in on my evening with Saint without any prying ears.

“Here are the costumes,” I shouted into the void.

I wasn’t sure if she’d run them out to her car or not, so I didn’t put them at her station, instead tossing them on top of the check-in counter. I dropped my purse into one of the drawers at my station and pocketed my phone. Hair stations were cramped enough already without adding anything extra to the space. Santa’s coat alone was a giant mass of material that stood about two feet tall, even when folded.

Cori wandered around the corner from the supply closet in the back, a knowing grin on her face before she literally started squealing like we were back in the old high-school hallways. She ran up to me and gave me a hug.

“Do you feel different?” she asked, her brown eyes inquisitive.

“It’s not like the guy took my virginity.” Although he had done things that I’d never had done to me before.

“I can’t believe this finally happened. We’ve been pining over him for years.”

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