Page 24 of Christmas with a Chimera (Claw Haven)

E mma woke up to the annoying and beloved jingle her parents used to wake her up for every teenage Christmas she ever had.

“That was terrible,” she said as she answered the call. “Shouldn’t have let you talk me into that. I almost threw my pillow at it on instinct.”

Her parents laughed. They had gotten good at ducking the pillows Emma would throw upon being woken up by their very loud and deliberately bad singing.

“Time for you to wake up,” they chorused in creepy parental unison.

Emma shuffled up against the bedframe, smiling sleepily. Her parents were still in their pj’s in their hotel room with the light on, which told her absolutely nothing about what time it was there.

“How was your night?” Bitsey asked.

“It was…” Emma stopped, her heart squeezing in her chest as she thought back to Arthur’s lost gaze on her as she turned to leave.

He hadn’t chased after her. She was relieved and so goddamn disappointed.

If he’d tried to ask her to come to LA again, or even just asked for one more tryst, it would’ve made things so much harder.

Emma cleared her throat. She didn’t want to think about that.

“You guys want to hear something really stupid?” she asked. “They took The Harpy’s Holiday off Netflix.”

Bitsey groaned. “What are we going to watch on New Year’s?”

“Right?” Emma said. “It’s so dumb! Let us have this one thing!”

Her parents laughed. Then they both sat there, waiting. Shooting each other not-so-subtle looks. Trying to get the other one to ask.

Emma sighed. “The party was fine , okay? I left pretty fast.”

“At least you went,” Glen said immediately.

“Right,” Bitsey agreed. “There’s never any harm in showing up.”

Emma chewed her lip. She wanted to argue there had been harm in showing up, that she would’ve been better off staying home.

That last conversation with Arthur had been awful, all longing and desperation from both sides.

She felt like she’d been pried open with a can opener.

She felt exposed , like a raw nerve, liable to flinch at the lightest touch.

There was a reason why she’d gone with anger for so long.

It was easier. Dealing with this crap was messy and complicated, and it hurt .

“Emma?” Bitsey asked. “Are you okay?”

Emma opened her mouth to say she was fine, shut up, and move on to presents now.

Instead, she swallowed and said, “I think so. I don’t know if I ever, like, mourned him properly. I just got mad and didn’t process any of the shit under it. Turns out I’m really fucking sad! I feel so stupid . I really thought we were gonna—”

Her voice broke. She put the phone down, giving her parents a lovely view of the blank ceiling.

“It’s so stupid,” she croaked. “We broke up when we were kids! I can’t believe I’m still so screwed up over him! He swans into town and talks to me a few times, and I’m just—I’m gone . It’s so easy with him. I hate how easy he makes it.”

She sniffed, wiping her face on her sleeve.

Bitsey’s throat cleared uncomfortably. “You can keep going, hon. We’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”

Emma rolled her wet eyes and picked the phone back up. “No, I refuse to do this right now. I’ll talk about it later. Right now I just wanna have a good time opening gifts with my parents. Where’s the gift I gave you before you got on the ship?”

“Right,” Glen said. “About that…”

“We didn’t want to say,” Bitsey said over him. “But it seems to have gotten lost in transit.”

“We bought ourselves something to make up for it,” Glen added. “You can pay us back.”

Emma laughed wetly. “Shit! How much was it?”

“ So expensive,” they said as one.

Emma’s next laugh was cut short by a knock on the front door.

She frowned. “One second, someone’s at the door. Probably the neighbor needing a snow shovel again. I don’t know how she keeps losing it. Don’t open anything.”

She set her phone on her pillow and headed for the front door.

“If you want the shovel,” she said as she opened it, “you’ll have to get it yourself. I’m not putting shoes…”

She trailed off.

Arthur waved. He was wearing a scarf and a deeply ugly Christmas sweater, and he was very notably not in LA like he should’ve been.

“What are you doing here?” Emma whispered.

Arthur pulled at his awful Christmas sweater. He was so close Emma could reach out and touch him. Here , her mind kept screaming. He was here in Claw Haven, standing on her ramp with his wings pulled tight and his tail swishing harder than she’d ever seen it.

“I was kind of hoping to start with Merry Christmas.” Arthur smiled rakishly. It lasted maybe a second before fading into something so real and nervous that Emma’s heart skipped a beat.

“I want to show you something,” he continued. “Come with me.”

“What?” Emma stumbled back, unable to stop an incredulous laugh. “No! Why are you here?”

His wings twitched. His tail wound around his own leg like he was a little kid. Then his tail jerked away and his wings loosened. Emma watched him try to pull the mask back up and then…stop. His wings stayed tense. His tail kept fidgeting.

“I didn’t want you to spend Christmas alone,” he said in a rush.

Emma’s throat tightened. She swallowed hard. “I’m… I’m going to the Musgrove Inn later. You didn’t—I—what about your flight?”

He shrugged. “Missed it.”

“When’s your new one?”

“Haven’t booked one,” Arthur said simply. “Can I please show you something?”

Do not read into this , Emma told herself. But it was pretty hard not to read too much into your movie star ex missing his flight back home to show up on Christmas Day. Hope was filling her to her fingertips even as she stubbornly fought it back.

He gazed down at her, eyes so soft and golden she had to stop herself from swaying forward into his arms and his truly godawful sweater. It had baubles .

“Give me a second,” she said. “I have to go hang up on my parents.”

“Oh,” Arthur said. “Damn. I didn’t mean to—”

Emma closed the door and ran back to her room, where her parents were arguing idly about who would win in a fight, cavemen or astronauts, an argument that had started when Emma was twelve and had never been won.

“Gotta go, sorry, love you, talk later,” she hissed, ending the call.

She got dressed in a hurry and ran back to the door, throwing it open to find Arthur pulling up another hasty smile.

“You can keep talking to them if you want,” he said.

She shook her head. “Do you remember calling them a few years ago on New Year’s?”

He blinked at her, baffled. “Did I?”

“Tell you later.” She stepped out onto the ramp. “Are we walking?”

He paused. Then he held out his arms. He didn’t look smug and expectant like last time. His open arms were a question rather than a statement.

Emma wound her arms around his neck. He slid one arm under her knee and the other behind her shoulders. There was an incredible, heart-wrenching moment where she was just lying there in his warm grip, his wings shielding her from the snow. Then his wings flared open, and they took off.

* * *

The wind was freezing. Emma barely felt it.

She buried her face in Arthur’s fur, inhaling his heady scent.

Less fur cream, more plain Arthur. He’d even let his mane get a little frizzy, she noticed as he flew them toward the middle of town.

She toyed with the strands, marveling. What the hell had changed last night to make him ditch his flight?

He landed in the middle of a snowy street.

“It’s not perfect,” he said. “But it’s a start.”

Emma stared. She stepped onto the icy concrete, eyes filling as she took it in.

It was the house. Their house, the snow piled prettily over the porch railing, which was painted the exact shade of white that they’d agreed on when they were teenagers. The walls of the actual house were still chipped and the yard would need a freshening-up. But it was recognizably theirs.

Emma turned to him. “ How? ”

“Jackson helped.” Arthur laughed nervously. “I paid him a lot . Good ol’ birdhouse guy. Luckily, dragons can see in the dark. I had to get a flashlight.”

Emma gaped at him. “Arthur. What the hell ?”

She didn’t mean for it to come out as pissed off. But she was so dazed with shock, a hundred possibilities running through her mind at once.

“I bought it,” Arthur said. “Last night. The mayor was happy to let me take it off his hands and start fixing it up for real.”

“Why?” Emma whispered.

“Because—” Arthur started. His tail swished anxiously. “Because I’ve never been so complete until I saw you again. LA is bright, it’s fun, I still want to visit for work! But no one sees me there. Not like you do.”

Emma felt a tear spill down her cheek. She scrubbed at it, fighting against a sob and a cheek-burning smile.

“How many visits are we talking, Mr. Movie Star?”

“Not many,” he replied immediately. “Maybe three months a year, at most.”

“And the rest of the time?’

“I’d learn how to make coffee,” Arthur tried. “I’d carry drinks, work in sales.”

“ You want to work in sales?”

Arthur grinned, his smile wobbling. “Sure. I’ve heard I can be very convincing.”

Emma shivered. She’d only grabbed two layers on her way out.

Arthur hesitated. Then he wrapped her up in his wings, pulling her devastatingly close.

“I love you,” he said. “I never stopped. You didn’t hold me back, you just—you held me, and I’m sorry I didn’t realize that’s what I needed before I ruined everything. I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life making it up to you if you let me.”

Emma heard herself giggle, another tear dripping down her cheek. “I feel like I’m in a movie.”

His wings tightened, pressing them tighter together.

“You’re not. This isn’t—” Arthur growled. “I’m not bullshitting, Emma. There’s no script. Just me.”

He stopped, panting. Gone was the movie star who had swaggered into town two weeks before Christmas. His ears were flat against his head, his wings stiff, and his blunt claws dug into his hands. His mane was scruffy and he didn’t smell like anything but himself.

“Emma,” he said again.

She reached up. There was something wet on his furry cheek.

“I’ve never seen you cry before,” Emma said. “Not for real.”

He huffed a wet laugh. “I can do it on command! Want to know how?”

She nodded.

“I think about you,” he confessed. “Walking away from you. The only time I ever let myself properly think about you was during a scene. That look I’m so well known for, the one that gets me all the romantic leading roles, it’s because I’m thinking about you.”

It was the kind of line that would come at the end of a movie.

The kind that would make Emma swoon, despite all her cynical trappings.

But she looked up at him and knew it wasn’t an act.

This was Arthur. Her Arthur, no act involved.

He’d come back to her, older and wiser, hoping for something to change him.

Just like she’d been waiting for something to change her.

She gripped his terrible Christmas sweater. “Buying me a house is going to be really hard to top.”

“What?”

“Next Christmas,” she explained. “It’s going to be pretty impossible to top this.”

He stared at her, a slow smile spreading over his face.

“We can brainstorm,” he said.

She dragged him down by his Christmas sweater baubles.

His mouth opened with a grateful groan. His wings tightened around her until all she could see were feathers. Feathers and him, looking down at her with that soft, impossible expression that always belonged to her.

* * * * *