“Wait!” When he glances down at me, I widen my eyes at him. “Bastian’s gift. Have you put it under the tree yet?”
Kai shakes his head, limping over to his backpack near the front door. He rummages inside and comes back with a brown-paper package clumsily tied with a white ribbon. Compared to Bastian’s neatly wrapped gifts, it looks like a toddler’s handiwork. “Wanna do the honors?”
I nod, taking it from him and setting it down on top of a stack of gifts on the right.
“Think he’ll like it?” I ask.
“He’d better.” Kai scoffs. “All the effort we went to?”
I smile, turning to watch him limp toward the kitchen, my chest feeling both tight and warm—scared of the intense flash of happiness.
Three weeks ago, that leg took a bullet meant for me.
Three weeks ago, I drove an electric knife into his brother’s stomach and didn’t stop until his intestines came out.
Three weeks ago, we ran.
And now we’re here.
Safe.
Together.
It feels like a miracle. Like the universe finally decided to stop shitting on us long enough to hand out some grace.
I don’t trust it, not entirely.
People like me don’t get happy endings. We get cautionary tales and body counts and restraining orders.
But maybe—just fuckingmaybe—we get this too.
Maybe we’ve earned it.
Several clanks later, the coffee machine gurgles to life in the kitchen. Kai curses softly as something clatters to the floor. Turns out he’s not great with appliances.
I smile into the sleeve of Bastian’s shirt.
Footsteps sound out behind me.
“You’d better not have started without me.”
When I turn to look at Bastian, my mouth goes dry.
He’s leaning against the doorframe of the bedroom, wearing nothing but low-slung pajama pants, his dark hair mussed and his jaw shadowed with stubble. There’s a mark on his collarbone—I bit him when I came last night—and he’s making no effort to hide it.
“Good timing,” I say. “Couple more minutes, and you’d have missed everything.”
“Hmm.” He pushes off the frame and ambles toward me. “Excited about your presents, sweet girl?”
My cheeks heat. “A little.”
I take the hand he holds out for me, squealing when he scoops me up, and again when he drops me on the worn-in leather couch facing the fireplace. He leaves me there, ducking down to rekindle the fire he left banked overnight.
The ease with which he does everything around this place makes me think he spent a lot of time on his own.
Some would say he liked to vacation.
We know now he was hiding out. Letting the heat die down before he moved to a new town and new…toys.
