“What are you doing here on Christmas Day?” she asks suddenly, looking straight at me. “Don’t you have family to celebrate with?”
For a moment, the kitchen disappears.
“Do it.”
The voice is vile. “Do it now, you useless piece of shit, good for nothing.”
“Kill her. Or fuck her!”
There’s laughter somewhere, but it barely registers.
The gunshot goes off.
A touch pulls me back into the present. It takes a moment for my focus to return before I register Octavia’s fingers brushing against my knuckles.
I go still.
I glance down at our hands before lifting my eyes to hers.
I can’t believe this just happened.
Right now.
Here.
She’s watching me with concern on her face.
Concern… for me.
That earns a smirk.
Fuck yes.
I knew she’d accept us. That she’d start caring about me. That, in time, she would love me too.
I give her the simplest answer to the question she asked, the smile slipping from my face as I do.
“My family’s old school,” I say. “Most people in Russia celebrate Christmas on the seventh of January.”
She accepts it without pressing, and I don’t tell her the rest.
That I’ve spent most of my life away from my homeland. That being here, where people celebrate Christmas on the twenty-fifth, made me do the same.
And that for me,celebratinghas always meant being alone in a room, whether at boarding school or the academy, with a microwaved Christmas dessert from the canteen.
I turn my attention back to her, pushing the darkness aside.
It doesn’t matter.
Now I have her.
I’m not alone in the world anymore.
I smirk, putting the mask back in place. “Show me your room.”
A hint of suspicion appears on her face. “Why would I do that?”
I stand from the island and close the distance between us, stopping just short of touching.
