We’re staying in Springfield for Christmas this year. I’d spent the last two holidays at the chalet, and Patrick had offered to bring me back so we could celebrate it together in the same cabin where he first told me that I was his. I liked the idea, but I pointed out that I’d only gone to the chalet because I was trying to escape the events of what happened that fateful night at the holiday party.
I don’t have to do that anymore. The five men involved in my assault are dead, and as a pièce de résistance, Patrick used his influence as a retired Dragonfly to shut down Evergreen & Co. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how he accomplished it. I’ve learned that he works best when he works alone and behind the scenes. Regardless, one day, my old company had a firm holding in Springfield. The next? The offices were emptied, most of my old coworkers had their resumésup on LinkedIn, and Patrick just gave me that knowing look of his when I asked if he had anything to do with it.
He did, and I loved him for it. Even more because he agreed that he might be retired, but I didn’t want to be, and he—and Cody—helped me find a position at another branding agency with a much better reputation than my old one ever had. Instead of being a brand strategy coordinator, though, I applied to work in human resources on his advice—and I actually got the job.
So many of these agencies forget the ‘human’ part of human resources. I won’t. If there’s ever someone who ends up in a situation similar to what I went through, I want to be there to support them instead of throwing them away as if they don’t matter.
I mattered. I needed someone to help me, and I ended up getting that in a man known as Saint who wears a poinsettia on his back for me, and a delicate starling tattooed on his inner thigh. A man who loved me before I knew his name, who killed for me, and who will stop at nothing to keep me, even when all I wanted was to fly away and be free of him.
My husband nicknamed me well. He called me his ‘Starling’, and though he gave me his reasons why, the fact that starlings have amazing spatial awareness, returning to the same place again and again… I will always return to him, and maybe it took me a minute to realize that he’s right, the truth is that he doesn’t have to worry about where I’ll go because I’m right fucking here.
So why not host our first holiday together as a committed couple here in Springfield? After he slipped that ring on my finger, I’d waited for the moment to take it off again. It never came. We stayed in the chalet together through the new year, long after I could reasonably use the excuse of the snow keeping us trapped together. I took my car, he drove right behind me in his, and he followed me all the way from the mountains back to the city only to wait until I parked so that he could join me in my apartment with my permission for the first time.
It was the last before I knew it. Patrick rubbed the underside of the ring, reminded me that that meantforever, and I was watching him walk away, heading to my closet where I kept my larger pieces of luggage, packing enough clothes and toiletries to keep me dressed for another week before he whisked me away to his place.
I don’t know why he bothered. Once Patrick had me in his domain, clothes became optional for both of us, and maybe I went into this relationship drunk on lust and the high that such a man wantedme… that hekilledfor me… but I stayed.
Well, no. I didn’t just stay. I moved in, andforeverbecame final when he brought me in front of a white-haired judge and had him marry us a month later.
I gave up the apartment that held such trauma and shitty memories for me. I have a new job that I enjoy going to. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to taste anything cranberry without wanting to hurl, but Christmas… after last year, I have a new fondness for the holiday.
I want it all. The tree, the lights, and the ornaments that my husband and I have been picking out to begin our own family traditions. I want eggnog and stockings hung up over his—our—fireplace, cheesy claymation movies from two generations ago, and a Grinch inflatable on the perfectly manicured lawn. I got him to wear matching buffalo plaid pajamas with me the first Saturday in December. Sure, he had more fun peeling me out of them so that he could bend me over the kitchen table, but after we curled up on the couch, snuggling in our rumpled flannel, watchingDie Hard.
Because, yes, it’s a Christmas movie, and one of Patrick’s favorites. That, plus an old cartoon movie he had a DVD of that told the story of a cow named Annabelle who made her own wish for Christmas.
I don’t know why I was so surprised that he had a soft spot for an emotional Christmas movie from his childhood. After all, he has this need to see justice served in a way that makes sense to his brain, but he also proved that he will grant wishes, too.
No. That’s not quite right, either.
Patrick doesn’t just grant wishes. Heexecutesthem.
Just like he executed the men who hurt me…
And that’s why I stayed. It’s why I fell in love with him. It’s why I’m sitting here now, taking a breather with my husband before we continue on with our Christmas preparations… because he won’t hurt me. He also won’t let anyone else hurt me, and he has the poinsettia with the five leaves on his back to prove it.
Lifting my chin from my palm, I sit up, bringing my cup to my lips. I take a swallow, the peppermint mocha as good as it can be, and smile at him. There’s life in my eyes again, no sign of the countless tears I shed in the wake of my assault, and I have this man to thank for so much of that.
His dark blue eyes light up as he tracks the motion of my throat. Patrick… he’s so down bad that he gets hard just watching me drink my coffee. Of course, considering how hot it gets him when I swallowhim… yeah. I first thought he had a throat kink. Nope. He has aNoellekink, and I’m okay with that.
I’ve never been so desired, so wanted, soloved, and it’s by a killer who won’t hesitate to add more leaves to his delectable body if I ask him to.
There isn’t anything he won’t give me. Well, except for my freedom, but I don’t want that anymore.
I just wanthim.
Patrick clears his throat. I can hear the lust—thearousal—in the sound, and I hide my smile behind my cup as I lift my eyebrows. “Mm?”
He knows better than to suggest we return home for an afternoon quickie. He promised me a Christmas tree today so we’ll be going to get a Christmas tree, even though it started to snow when we left the house, but when he leans in again, I’ll admit that I didn’t quite expect him to ask me what he does—though, considering how we first met two Christmases ago, I probably should have.
“So… did you make a list yet?”
A Christmas wish list.
Two years ago, I wrote a wish list on a laptop in this very coffeehouse. I typed the five names that had haunted me since the holiday party the previous Christmas, then went back and added a poinsettia because I needed something to soften the reminder of the horrible, ugly act. Back then, I was consumed by a pain and a rage I didn’t know how to carry without completely falling apart. I needed an outlet. I needed some release after I smelled cranberry on the breeze just outside of the coffeehouse, floating to me from the bakery next door and twisting my guts as the memory of what happened slammed into me… lost and alone, Iwished. So I told myself they were only words. Just a desire for revenge that I’d never have. After all, I never meant for anyone tobleed.
But then my very own Santa Claus turned that violent night into a holy one over a year-long rampage,culminating with a Christmas memory to replace the one from two years before.
And, sure, maybe I’m still broken. I might always be. Replacing one trauma-filled Christmas with another can’t be a healthy coping mechanism. I went from being roofied and assaulted by five of my co-workers to taken captive by my stalker. That would shatter most people, but I don’t think there was much left of me to obliterate by the time Patrick found me.
