“Skyla.” Gage leans in with that toxic cologne of his. I know the exact one, the blue water that sits in a bottle above his old desk in his old room. Gage’s bedroom at his parents’ house is untouched even though he’s lived with me for the last year and a half. Last night was our first night apart, and tonight will mark the second. I hope he’s ready to have the bed to himself for a good long while because I’m about to rain down a hailstorm of long and lonely nights. “It’s Christmas.” His brows plead as only they know how. “Let me stay. We can work this out later. I just want to be close to the boys.” He cradles the back of Barron’s head with his hand so tenderly my bones ache straight to themarrow.
Emily comes over with that dead expression she wears like a haunted mask. Her midnight hair sits in a tumble of curls knotted at the top of her head. Over the years, Emily and I have established a friendship of sorts. Kindof.
“I have a vision for you,” she says, depleted of anyenthusiasm.
“No,” both Gage and I say in unison with the matching fervor required to reject whatever horror awaits us on the other side of that twisted prophecy. Em’s visions never bode well for me ingeneral.
She cracks the hint of a smile. “That was good.” She starts back toward the living room. “Doesn’t matter. It’ll happenanyway.”
The boys begin to squirm, and I start in on a slow bounce before heading for the stairs. The medics wheel a howling Tad out the door, and my mother runs screaming afterthem.
“Skyla”—Gage slices my name out sharp as a razor, and I catch both Logan and Liam glancing over from the living room—“you will be there tomorrow. I want a family picture next to thetree.”
I will be there? Iwill? Who is this dominating man barking out orders as if I were actually inclined to follow them. An incredulous huff gets locked in my throat at this familial command that involves a half-deadevergreen.
“Is that so?” My eyes round out with fury. “I want things, too, Gage.” I lean in, seething with a fury I can no longer contain. “I want a husband who would never dream of betraying me, who would never nail the coffin shut on our marriage without even telling me.” A rush of adrenaline takes over as I struggle to catch my breath, and the boys suddenly feel heavy as iron. “Don’t you tell me what to do and when to do it. That will never fly.” A part of me feels victorious for getting all those venomous words out sans the use of a single expletive. Now that the boys are here, I’m changing all of my corrosive ways, sharpening my honor, spit-shining my soul just to be the best person I can for them—unlike some people. I glare openly at the man I love. “I took my beating heart and sewed it onto yours. You had me. You had all of me. And what did you do? You vomited us up at Demetri’s feet. The very idea makes my head spin with rage. Don’t you think you’re getting away with this. Don’t think for a minute you will ever be the victor. Try anything and I will cut the ground from underneathyou.”
The air stiffens between us. An uncomfortable fury snakes around us like anoose.
“You will be there tomorrow.” His eyes widen with something just this side of anger. “We will take a family picture.” His voice is stern, commanding. This is a new side of Gage that I have never seen before, expectant, demeaning, and as much as I hate it, that sweet spot between my thighs starts toquiver.
I speed my way up the stairs with the boys in tow as they writhe—their anxious whimpers turning into a full throttle cry as if they hated what’s happened just as much as I do. No sooner do I get into my bedroom than I slam the door behind me and bolt each and everylock.
The boys wail away, on this, their very first Christmas Eve, and tears stream down my face right along withthem.
No, there will be nothing silent about this holynight.
Gage
There have beentwo nights in my life that I have treasured equally above and beyond any other. The first, my wedding night with Skyla. I had dreamed of what it would be like, holding her, making her mine—body and soul, and that night surpassed every dream I knit in my imagination. The second was the birth of my boys, twins—one arrived on Skyla’s birthday, and the other just a few minutes later on my own birthday. Skyla, Nathan, and Barron are my world, my universe, my life. So when it came down to brass tacks and I needed to either pass down a curse to one of my children—Barron I suspected for reasons that revolved around his birth in particular—or keep the curse for myself, I did the only thing a true father would do—I sacrificed my life so that my sons, my wife, could live in peace. But in doing so, I’ve unleashed a fresh hell that will ensure none of us will truly live in unity. The curse is harrowing any way you slice it, and right about now it’s slicing my heart into a million irreparableslivers.
This would have been the third greatest night of my life, the first Christmas with my boys. Yes, I will see them in the morning, but what I wanted, what I needed deep down inside was to be in that bed with Skyla when the clock struck twelve. We would hold the boys between us, safe in our holy huddle. But Demetri had cast a pall on me—or rather I had cast it on myself. The curse in its entirety was made possible by my own decision to break faith with the Barricade—the very shit sandwich that I will root for, run, and enjoy posthumously. Yes, I have drunk the blood of a Celestra—my Celestra, Skyla—and entered into a covenant with my own demented lineage. I am a Fem. I am the sole—soul—proprietor of the curse I have brought upon myself. And in effect, I have become Skyla’s enemy. Or at least that’s Demetri’s hopeful trajectory of things to come. I have plans of my own, and none of them involve hurting my wife or her people. I’m holding onto hope like the slippery string of a helium balloon. And God Almighty help me, I will fight this curse tooth and nail. I will buck against destiny and fate and claw my way through life to remain loyal and loving toward the woman I married. Her people are my people. Her cause is my cause. Celestra must remain in power. The Countenance and their vindictive ploys for domination are vile and wicked, and I could never succumb to those evil ideals. They are not mine. I do not holdthem.
I watch the gaping hole at the top of the stairs, hoping that Skyla will have a change of heart—that she’ll reappear and welcome me back to our bed, our life, but no such luck. Instead, I turn to find Demetri with his cool as a rotten to the core cucumber ever-passivegrin.
“I’ll be accompanying Lizbeth to the hospital. Should I message you with your father-in-law’s prognosis regardless of thehour?”
“Yes.” It comes out terse without meaning to. I have a feeling it will be that way for a very long time to come with this father of mine. I’m nothing more than a means to an end to him. It’s Barron, the father who raised me, who shows me what true unconditional love is. Barron was just as pleased with me when I was a do-nothing Levatio without clout or standing in any of the Factions, let alone the Fems. And now that he knows I’m wrought from pure evil, he loves me just the same. “Text me regardless. Tell Lizbeth if she needs anything, I’m here.” Lizbeth loves me. She adores me. And she might just be my way back into Skyla’sheart.
Demetri leans in with those dark, empty eyes, and I can feel his mind taking ahold of my own like an iron hand. “You are loved, Gage Edinger. You are my prized creation, and you are most adored—and soon, you will be worshiped as well.” He stalks off into the night and bursts into a vaporous fog before his feet ever hit theporch.
Logan nods to me from the living room, and I head over to say goodnight.
“I’m taking off.” I give a quick glance around. “Where’sWes?”
“It’s just me—unless they have a bed in the place everyone else is gone. Wes practically took Chloe by the ear. He’s demanding to know what has Skyla acting so strange. She gave Chloe agift.” He cocks his head as if waiting for me to somehow quantifythat.
“Dude, I do not know what the hell is going on.” My heart thumps out an unnatural rhythm as if speaking to me in Morse code. “See if you can get close.” I tick my head toward the charred stairs. “She loves you. She needs someone to lean on right now.” A knot the size of that crooked Christmas tree builds in my throat, and it’s painful as hell to get the next few words out. “Until she will hear me out—until she opens her heart back up to me, be a friend.” There. I said friend. Logan has never been good at being just a friend to Skyla, and if he were to cross that line again—albeit the last time he crossed that line it was with Chloe pretending to be Skyla—I wouldn’t interfere. In my mind and heart, I’m already as good as dead. What I did last night was throw dirt on my own coffin. Skyla knows it. I know it. And Logan knows it, too. It’s his time to shine, and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter where I point the damn finger anymore. It seems as if this train of destruction I’m on cannot and will not bestopped.
Logan pushes out a dry smile that dissipates faster than it stays. “I’m a friend to you both.” His eyes darken as he presses into me with his gaze. “You are both more than my friends. You are both my family. I will andhavedied for you. I’m not some replacement of yours waiting in line, Gage. I don’t want you weeping into your pillow, lamenting all that could have been with the woman you love—the woman who bore your children. She is yourwife, Gage.” He sayswifeso caustic and fast it sounds likeknife. Right now, knife feels a bit more accurate—the blade protruding from my aching, bleeding, weeping heart is indeed Skyla. But I’m the one that planted her there. I take full responsibility for this fiasco. “Do not give up.” He softens. “Do you hear me? Or does that thick head of hair prevent you from listening to the truth? Fight.” He smacks me hard on thearm.
A ripe anger burns through me like a flash fire. “Iamfighting.” It takes everything in me to grit the words out. “I’m fucking fighting with more than I have to offer. Yes, I’m fighting for my wife. But I’m fighting for my boys, too. She has to understandthat.”
“And she will. You and I will work hard to make sure she hears the truth and understands that your arms weretied.”
A dull huff of laughter pinches through the pain. “I sound like apussy.”
“A pussy would have let his own kid take the fall.” He slaps me over the back as Mia and Melissa come screaming in with excitement, shouting something about it being midnight and that all presents from Santa are fair game. “Let’s get out of here,dude.”
