Page 4 of All Foxed Up

“—Christmas!”

I woke with a start to find one surprisingly heavy little boy sitting on my chest, the other starting to clamber onto me to join his brother.

“Aunty Holly, it’s Christmas! It’s Christmas!”

Chapter3

I groaned, blinked and stared out the window, catching the thin grey light of dawn. Jesus, it was Christmas morning, but only just.

“OK, shh… shh…” I struggled to get sound out, to settle the boys down before they woke their parents, but the sound of heavy footsteps down the hallway stopped any attempt I might make to keep the little munchkins under control. Christmas is for kids and they vaulted off me, managing to kick me in the guts in the process, before launching themselves at the door.

“Santa?” they asked as they wrenched it open.

“Daddy,” Alaric corrected, bending down slowly to pick his sons up. “And what did I say about Christmas morning?”

“Not to wake Mummy,” Sven replied solemnly.

“But we didn’t!” Kai pointed a finger my way. “We woke Aunty Hols!”

“OK, I can see my error now,” Alaric replied with a long suffering sigh. “New rule: don’t wake up anyone on Christmas morning. You know how to get yourself some cereal and how to turn the TV on. You could’ve watched cartoons until we all woke up.”

“But Daaaad…” Kai placed his head on his father’s shoulders and fluttered thick eyelashes any girl would’ve been jealous of.

“Too late now.” Thorn emerged with a yawn, scratching at his chest before stepping forward and collecting Sven. “Your evil plan worked, tin lids. Everyone’s awake so it’s present time!”

“You’re just reinforcing bad behaviour,” Lars growled, scrubbing at his stubble. “My dads would’ve made me wait.”

“Your dads put half the presents under the tree,” Nat corrected, then pressed a kiss to her mate’s cheek, right as we heard the doorbell. “And that will be them now.”

Which meant it was go time. They say Christmas is a time for giving and family but for so many women it seemed to be stress and meal prepping and making sure everything was perfect, and it was my job to try and take some of that pressure off Nat.

“I’ll be down in a tick,” I told Nat. “Get things started without me. I’ll just have a shower, throw on my beach stuff and start packing the car.”

“You’re amazing,” she told me, sweeping in to give me a hug.

“I’m even better with a mimosa in my hand,” I said, giving her a long look. “You might be too.”

And for a minute I saw my bestie there, ready to race downstairs and pour the champagne to get this party started. That was the old Nat, the one that was left to rattle around in that big house she and Fuckface had built, but this Nat? She had a whole arse family to look after and love now.

“Muuum…!”

Voices, so many voices downstairs alerted me to the fact the whole bear community was filing into the lounge room for the privilege of watching the kids unwrap their presents.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said, that line between her brows deepening. “But take your time. This is your Christmas too, y’know.”

It wasn’t really. The magic of Christmas? We lost it at some point between twelve and eighteen. First when we realised Father Christmas wasn’t real. Secondly when we stopped being children and started being expected to shoulder the burdens of preparing for the big day. At Nanna Madden’s place she’d have had us girls up before dawn, washing and chopping and wrapping and prepping. It’s half the reason why I jumped at the chance of coming up to see Nat, because my bestie was nowhere near as harsh a task master.

“And this is my Christmas present to you,” I told her. “I mean there was that double ended bear dildo from the weird shop that makes anthropomorphic peen.”

“What?”

“I figure if you had four mates, at least one of them would be open to being pegged.”

“What? Oh my god…” Nat went white. “Tell me you didn’t…” Her eyes stared down the stairwell. “Holly—!”

“Muuum, are you coming? We’re about to open the presents.”

Nat moved like the speed of light then and I just cackled. It was low key evil, leaving her to think that there were weird sex toys wrapped up under the tree, but a girl’s gotta take her pleasures where she finds them. I had a shower, washed my hair and dragged a comb through it before putting on my bikini and light cotton coverup I’d gotten from this amazing importer of handmade Indian clothing before running downstairs.

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