But I know how this works. Colbert is all smiles and cowboy polite when you are toeing whatever line he’s drawn, but as soon as you cross it, especially to take the side of someone against him, well… Let’s just say I’d be on a bus with an unpaid tuition bill and nowhere to live before you could sayblack gold.
Cutter’s eyes turn on mine, as one corner of his mouth tilts upward just a bit. Then he laughs, tips his hat my way, and my insides tumble and twist as he leaves my father standing there with the unaccepted envelope hovering in midair.
Cutter crosses, nearly getting hit this time from both directions, but miraculously, the cars go around him like he’s emanating an invisible force field.
He swings around a lamp post, ripping down the wrapped garland and flinging it into the muck at the curb, then disappears into the open doorway of the bus just as it hisses and the doors clunk closed.
It lurches out from the curb and down the street, as my lower lids burn and anger bubbles up from my belly.
“How? Why—?” I stutter as Colbert turns our way.
“I told you to stay inside.” His voice is hard and flat as my mother comes drifting out of the front door, a practiced smile on her lips, hugging the Burberry cashmere around her.
“I wanted to say welcome home to my brother,” I snap, and I catch the way Colbert’s pupils dilate. I back off, a gust of wind throwing my hair into my mouth.
My skin prickles with irrational heat as Mom drags Isabel away from me.
“Taking a hard line with your children is the greatest gift a parent can give,” Colbert growls, adjusting his hat before flicking his fingers for the valet to bring his truck around then points to my mother indicting to bring hers as well. “That applies to your brotherandto you, young lady. Thanks to some decisions made by his mother, it was too late for Cutter to take a different path by the time I came into his life. But I will not make the same mistake with you. If I seem harsh, I’m not sorry. Someday, you’ll thank me.”
Some decisions made by his mother.
Yes, like raising him on her own until he was fifteen. She didn’t want or need Colbert in her life, and it drove him crazy. Then her car was t-boned by a semi, and everything changed. A weekend once a month turned into Colbert being a full-time single parent, and apparently, he took the job seriously.
Too seriously, if you ask me. But again, no one asks me anything.
After a tense standoff that feels like it lasts forever, the rumble of Colbert’s truck’s diesel engine breaks the silence, and my mother steps in front of me.
“We love you, dear. We do, that’s why we are doing this. You take the week to study and reflect. With this weather, we should get on to the airport sooner than we thought.”
“No!” Isabel cries on a pout. “I barely got to see her. You said we could go to Martin’s Candy Shoppe and ride the Merry Go Round at the Christmas carnival!”
“Sorry, baby.” Colbert rests his hand on her shoulder as she stomps her feet, but when my stepfather thinks he’s right about something, not even God could change his mind. “Your mother is right. We should be off in case the roads get worse. And you,” He takes a long inhale through his nose, then exhales as the snowflakes melt on his ruddy cheeks. “You get back to the ranch. Be good. There’s plenty of food and whatever you need at the house. We’ll see you after the new year.”
And with that, a fluttery kiss from my mother on my cheek, and a sobbing hug with Isabel, I’m behind the wheel of my mother’s car, inching my way back out of Bremmer, an eerie silence falling with the snow as I re-evaluate my priorities.
CHAPTER 3
Christmas Eve with a bowl of popcorn, a bottle of sparkling apple cider, and my laptop open to the edits on my next chapter of the Wattpad book I’ve been releasing over the last month or so is actually pretty damn nice.
Equally surprising, my little filthy holiday serial is become one of the best-selling Christmas erotica stories on the platform.
The keys click, and I smile as the ending of the last chapter comes out of me like warm honey into tea. Only, this honey is depraved and twisted, in a way no one would understand or expect from a curvy, mousy girl with a four-point GPA in pre-law at Montana State University.
Seems Christmas brings out the slut in me, and as if I needed more proof of my less-than-mainstream proclivities, my panties are a wreck. Some self-care time is badly needed in this house devoid of any Christmas cheer.
Good thing I brought my own.
The hair on my arms stands up as I close my laptop and leave it on the table next to the leather sofa giving my tummy a quickrub. The secret I’ve been hiding for months kicking at my liver behind my XXL Montana State U t-shirt but that’s more than I want to face right now.
Apparently, I’m excel at pretending problems don’t exist they become too big to ignore.
The prickly feeling returns and the sensation that’s been niggling at me all night that someone else is in the house with me comes back. The alarm is set, and besides the clicking of my keyboard and the occasional scrape of branches on the windows as the storm kicks around outside, there has been no other sound in the massive, cavernous log structure.
Maybe I’ll hear Santa’s reindeer on the roof later, but for now, all seems calm.
I check my phone for a Merry Christmas or a message from Mom to say they miss me, but all that’s there are a few group chat messages from friends at school, happily tipsy and celebrating with their families. I tell them I’m not feeling great, and I’m going to bed, because as tough as I’m trying to be, there’s a knot in my chest when I think about sitting here on Christmas morning, alone, without a gift, or a tree, or any acknowledgment that it’s unlike any other day of the year.
I pad in my fuzzy green socks, oversized t-shirt and super stretch boy shorts across the great room to the grand winding stairs, taking a quick look into the kitchen to see the time on the digital clock on the oven. Ten fifty-four.
