The confusion on his face was so hard to look at, and I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. He smelled like spilled beer, and since he had ripped his shirt, he was wearing one of the shirts the North Pole sold from behind the bar. It saidi got blitzed by donner at the north pole.
He was about to speak when Sunny and Bee trooped onto the bus, followed by Teddy and Steph. They stopped by our seat.
“You don’t have to—” I started. “I mean, I don’t want anyone to miss their night of fun—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Steph said crisply. “You are more important than discounted appetizers. We’re going to make sure you’re okay.”
And then more people crowded onto the trolley. Nolan. Luca and Jack Hart. Gretchen and Pearl.
“You guys,” I said. “Please don’t miss the party just because of this. It’s so silly, and it’s probably nothing...”
“You need to be surrounded by good energy and loving kindness,” Pearl said seriously. “And western medicine—”
“—is great for emergencies,” Gretchen cut in. “We’re here for moral support.”
“You want me to call your parents, Mrs.Claus?” Jack Hart asked. He didn’t have MissCrumpets with him and was wearing a mesh shirt under a button-down with a few of the buttons undone. He also had red lipstick all over his neck.
“Your parents are in town?” Kallum asked, confused.
I flushed a little. I hadn’t told him, and I’d rationalized it to myself by saying that we were about to leave Christmas Notch anyway, so there was no point in trying to arrange a meeting between him and the baby’s other grandparents. And if I madeus take the stairs up to his room, if I scouted out the hotel lobby before we walked inside, that was just a knee-jerk reaction.
It wasn’t because I was terrified of the potential fallout of my parents meeting him.
“Yes,” I told Jack, and then I handed him my phone. “My mom is underIn Case of Emergency: Jessica Baker.”
“Taking no chances, huh?”
“And you should text rather than call,” I said suddenly. The trolley was already getting rowdy behind us, with Luca kicking up a fuss about sitting next to Nolan and Pearl loudly humming a tone that was supposed to settle my sacral chakra. “I don’t think you’d be able to explain this trolley to my parents.”
“Oh honey, I can explain anything if you give me an hour, a dark room, and a fully charged Hitachi,” said Jack. “But texting it is. Kallum, you’re bleeding again.”
Kallum looked down and then up and then finally thought to pull his hand away from his mouth, where blood had started dripping from the inside of his lip down the mojito packet to his knuckles. “Shitballs,” he mumbled, and Jack sighed.
“There’s a light above my seat,” Jack said. “Come back with me and I’ll see if I can get a look at where you’re bleeding from now.”
“I don’t want to leave Winnie,” protested Kallum at the same time I grabbed onto his arm.
“I’ll sit with her,” Gretchen said from behind us, standing up as the trolley rumbled to life. At my pathetic expression, she gave me a warm smile. “I’m very good at cuddling, I promise. At least as good as Kallum.”
I looked up at Kallum, at where blood was running over his chin like he was a vegetarian vampire who’d just finished eating a fawn. “You should go with Jack,” I whispered, even though I wanted him close. But it was also hard to relax against him when he was bleeding from the mouth and sticky with spilled beer and sweat.
He gave a pained groan, like it hurt him to move away from me. “Okay, babe, but I’ll be back on this bench the moment Jack doctors me up.”
I gave him a wan smile, and then he and Gretchen swapped seats as the trolley lurched forward.
Gretchen settled close and took my hand. “Are you doing okay?”
The problem with breaking theI’m okayseal was that once it was broken, it was hard to go back. “No,” I admitted. “I’m scared. I want the baby to be okay. And I wish...”
I trailed off as I looked out the window. It was dark outside, save for the occasional house set between the trees, sitting in a small pool of yellow porchlight.
“Wish what?” Gretchen prompted gently.
“It’s stupid,” I said. “But I’d kind of wanted to leave earlier, and if I had, maybe I would have been back at the inn when this happened. With my parents, and not—”
I stopped. I didn’t even want to say it out loud.
