Page 35 of Happily Ever After… Again and Again

The following day, Nix loads Doodle into a carrier. He hadn’t forgotten any of the promises he’d made to himself after his adventure. Not one.

He chats to Artem on the drive about his new car, his new sweater, and how he smells a little like black tea, wheatgrass, blueberries, and happiness. By the time they reach Lupine Park, the fall wind haspicked up, but the sun has come out from behind the clouds.

Nix finds a grassy spot on a hill where he can tie Doodle’s leash to a little stake he pushes into the soil. It’s not the same as being on the back of the Ducati going sixty miles an hour, but at least it’s a start. She seems content anyway, or maybe like him, she’s biding her time.

He’s laughing at her antics with a dandelion when his text chime goes off.

Logan Frost?

See me at Sentinel tomorrow, if you’re really serious.

Serious? About what? Ohhhh. Agent training.

The accompanying photos load, making Nix gasp out loud. They’re from traffic cams all over the city.

Crystal-clear images of Nix and Luca on the bright red Ducati, drag racing through the intersection. Dodging red lights. Caught in mid-air, with Doodle’s tail and Luca’s bare ass hanging out.

That he’s sending it to Nix—and not to Jamie or Gideon—is something to be grateful for. The how and why he’s tracking Nix on traffic cams are a conversation for Thursday. Because fuck yes, he’sreally, reallyserious.

VI

All I Want For Christmas

Who doesn’t love a Christmas story? Well, probably Gideon…

I admit this is one of my favorites in this anthology, despite my own Grinchy views on the holiday.

But then again, I love the love, maybe that’s why. It takes place the first Christmas after Tides of Fate and two months before Eternal Light. It’s been rewritten since its first incarnation and gained about two thousand words in the process.

Content Warnings

Mourning lost time

Self-Esteem

Mourning a lost parent

Nix

No matter how long Nix has been away from the bright Florida sun, he never misses it more than December through March in Nashville. Foggy mornings can be beautiful, but they chilled him to the bone. No matter how many fires they lit in the family room or how many pairs of knit wool socks Frankie knitted for him, he couldn’t escape it. Two weeks into December, and the weather was already brutal, damp, and gray. It might even snow, according to the meteorologist.

He imagined it wasn’t just the weather, because, like Scrooge, Nix was visited by ghosts of Christmases past. His mother’s voice, soft under the clatter of spoons in the kitchen. His sister on the floor, tongue between her teeth, scribbling an arm-long Christmas list in candy-cane pen. And his dad, singing theTwelve Days of Christmas, off-key until the fifth day—then booming outfive golden ringslike he’d waited all year to sing that one line.

Harder still might be the years he’d missed with his pack—like last year, when Gideon gifted everyone dildos at the Costases family Christmas, and Lauren choked so hard she blew eggnog out her nose. He knows now that they missed him with an ache that they thought might never go away.

Even the towering pine Leo and Jamie dragged in from the back of the property, still dusted in frost and heavy with pine cones, couldn’t conjure that flicker of childhood wonder. Grayson had turned the top half into a vision straight out of a magazine, Rowan the bottom into what could generously be called maximalist chaos, but not even that could thaw some niggling chill in the pit of Nix’s stomach.

He wishes he knew why.He’s doing the work. He’s trying.But he’s stillmore Grinch than Cindy-Lou.

Since Thanksgiving, he’d promised himself—and his therapist—that he’d try to make some new traditions, and mostly, it was working.

After a restless morning, he’d finally decided on a long nap and a hot bath with Finn, who had warmed him in the best way, after which he’d dressed in layer upon layer of Jamie’s clothing. So much so that he looked like Joey fromFriends—yes, he was going commando in another man’s pants—but still, he could not shake the chill.

Tsuki follows him from Jay’s room. “Come on, girl, what we need is to be on the bottom of a puppy pile with someone hot and burly on top—maybe several someones.”

When she declines, padding back into Finn’s room across the hall, Nix shrugs, snarking quietly under his breath about ungrateful snuggle-buddies and missing out.

Everyone but Finn and Gideon is cuddled in bunches listening to Tom Hanks’ voice ask to punch someone’s ticket for thePolar Express.The film is a non-negotiable, almost daily tradition in the Rhodes pack.