Page 54 of Beautiful Forever
Syn rubs her stomach. “Hesays yes.”
“It’s going to be a girl,” Hendrix quips as he disappears into the kitchen.
“You wouldn’t be able to handle a girl, Hendrix Knight!” Dierdre shouts after him, somehow magically producing a set of reindeer antlers from thin air and practically trying to climb me to put them on my head.
Syn snatches them away and tosses them to Tristan as he comes around the corner. “She’s on her fourth cup of eggnog and a bit touchy-feely. You’ve been warned,” he says.
I’m amused when Dierdre sticks her tongue out at him. “Don’t be a bah-humbug.” Looking up, she flashes a toothy grin at Syn and me. “You’re standing under the mistletoe.”
Syn glances up, then at me, one eyebrow arched in interest, but it’s the wicked smile that appears on her lips that makes my throat go Sahara dry and my heart to literally stop beating.
“I don’t fucking think so.” Tristan shoves between us and kisses Syn in the most inappropriate way, considering I’mright fucking there. He could have just pissed on her leg to mark his territory. It would have had the same effect.
When they come up for air, Syn blinks up at him dreamily and licks her lips, then darts her gaze toward me. “I’ll go see…if…uh…if Hendrix needs any help,” she finishes and dashes off, taking Dierdre with her.
Tristan manhandles me the rest of the way inside the house and kicks the door closed. “Do we need to be worried about another unwanted visit tonight?” he asks, physically dragging me into the living room.
A nine-foot balsam fir, with an antique angel sitting on top instead of a star, stands adjacent to the fireplace—a real one with actual wood crackling in the fire, not one of the gas fireplaces everyone seems to have these days.
“No.” In an hour, the property and the house will be surrounded with men, who won’t hesitate to kill on sight anyone who tries to get within a mile of this place.
Constantine turns from his view of the window where he’s standing. “We need to send a message.”
“I agree,” Tristan replies.
Walking over to the tree, I touch one of the handmade ornaments. A pine cone reindeer with brown pipe straws for antlers, tiny gold jingle bells for eyes, and a larger red jingle bell for a nose. “I’ve got it handled.”
“You’re not making a move without us. They came afterour wifeandour child,” Tristan emphasizes, making sure to put me in my place and remind me that Syn’s not mine, no matter what a piece of paper says.
I don’t try to argue what’s really going to happen, whether they agree with it or not. I’ll do what I have to do in order to keep Syn safe. Fuck them and what they want. It’s my family, my bratva brotherhood and their connections who are jumping in to help. They are putting their lives on the line for me because Pyotr and Drako will always have my back, no questions asked.
Tristan is your family, too, my subconscious tries to remind me.
Sitting on the couch, one ankle crossed over my knee and my fingers curled around a full glass of eggnog I won’t drink because eggnog is utterly disgusting, Bing Crosby’s crooning voice sings about a white Christmas as the snow quietly drifts down in fat flakes outside the window. The living room, warmed by the crackling fire and the press of body heat, glows brighter than the twinkling tree lights with Syn’s happy laughter and Dierdre’s drunken joy. My half sister gets very loud and, just like Tristan said, very touchy-feely when she’s under the influence. I’ve never gotten so many hugs in my life as I have within the last hour.
My attention returns to Syn. Always to Syn. The gravitational force of her beauty,of her, are too strong to escape. I take in every nuance, memorize every detail, like how her eyes deepen to a sapphire blue when she laughs, or how she absentmindedly tucks wisps of her hair behind her ear as she talks, or the way her entire countenance lights up every time the guys show her even the smallest of affection—a light touch to her neck, a gentle kiss to her temple, a hand brushing over her pregnant belly that’s barely a bump yet.
Every so often, she looks my way and smiles. I live for her smiles. They help fill those gaps in my heart that my unrequited love for her have carved out and left hollow.
Seeing her happiness sustains me. Just to be near her. Witness her joy. It’s enough. Because sometimes, being near something so beautiful, even when I know it can never truly be mine, is a gift in itself.
Syn erupts into breath-stealing laughter at something Constantine whispers in her ear.
“I won’t know until I open it,” she replies, ripping off the wrapping paper to the first Secret Santa gift—apparently a new tradition she insisted on starting this Christmas.
Her face turns redder than her hair when she peeks inside the box. “As a medical student, I can assure you that this size is anatomically impossible,” she says while giggling, holding up a lightsaber-sized, purple dildo.
Good god. How does that even fit…anywhere?
“You know for a fact that it is, baby girl,” Hendrix says with a wink that makes her blush even harder.
Bullshit, I want to say. The only thing bigger than the enormous dildo is his ego.
Dierdre snatches it right out of Syn’s grasp. “That’s mine.”
“Mom!” Syn yells in mortification.
It’s surreal to hear her still call Dierdre that. But that’s who Dierdre was to her for years, in every true sense of the word. Syn lost one mother but was lucky enough to have found another. Mama Petrov was like that for Aleksei and me, but it wasn’t the same. Mama loved me in a special way that no other person ever could. The loss of her,missing her, hits me the hardest on holidays. I don’t think that kind of pain will ever fade, no matter how many years pass. My heartache is still as sharp as the night I found her.
