Page 146 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
I sweep her into a bear hug. “Look at you, rebel princess. How’d that feel?”
“Blasphemous.” She squeezes me. “But… freeing.”
I pull away to meet her eyes again and let some of my humor slip. “What finally spurred this miraculous change?”
She hesitates. Chews the inside of her cheek.
Then answers with, “Do you want to tell Hex?”
I solidify in place.
“No.” It shocks even me, but it hangs in the air, and Iris frowns.
“No? Why? This is what he wanted you to do.”
I back up, turn away, trying to hold on to this agitated hope. “No, Iris. Just drop it.”
“This is what he wanted you to do,” she tries again.
“Iris—”
“You can’t give up on your happy ending, Coal.”
I don’t turn. My shoulders go rigid.
“You can’t give up.” Her voice is small and careful. “You started to make me believe that we could change things. That the dreams I had might be alive. And now you have a way to fix what happened with him, and you’re not taking it?Why—”
I spin on her. “Because hebroke my heart,Iris!”
She flinches, lips snapping shut, eyes wide and inert.
The weight’s still on my thumb. Hex’s ring. I feel the band with my finger, and I do not think about what it means to touch it, how I kept something of his but he has something of me too, and I’m not sure he believes he has it.
“He broke my heart,” I say again, feeling the words, their burden in my chest. “He didn’t choose me.Iknow we’re more than our rolesand I don’t regret choosing him, buthe didn’t choose me.Even if I told him I’m going through with the collective, that wouldn’t change the fact that he was always going to break things off with me.”
Iris huffs a breath. “Coal—”
“But he was right.” It reopens the wounds from last night so they bleed internally all over again. “The first sign of a threat to him, and I caved to my dad without hesitating, no conviction in my position. Maybe if I’d paused for like asecondlast night, I would have realized Dad’s bluff in that moment and prevented this. But I didn’t, because Hex was right about me. I not only put him first, but Christmas wasn’t anywhere near the top of my list. It was him and Kris and you and everyone I care about, and I lost sight of what was at stake. I haven’t taken my role seriously. I’ve toyed with it this month, but I haven’tcommitted.”
Kris punches me in the arm. “Youhavecommitted. You’ve done amazing things and if he made you feel like you haven’t, then fuck him.”
My jaw clamps.
Kris sighs. “I’m not going to apologize for saying that. He hurt my brother.”
“I hurt him too.”
“Good.”
“Kris!” Iris smacks his shoulder. “God, none of this is good.”
He crosses his arms and mumbles, “Alittlepain for him is good.”
Iris’s expression is all sorrow and heartache and I want to promise her that we will get our happy endings, that there is hope for us.
But honestly?
I don’t know how it’ll end. I’d been so certain when I sent those gifts to New Koah that I was doing the right thing; and I’d been so certain days ago that I was doing the right thing here too. My chest twinges, dread wanting me to recoil, to take back all this and crawl into bed in defeat.
