Page 57 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
“You threw me off the sleigh.”
“I did not! That’s the risk of sleigh racing!”
“You promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“I distinctly didnotmake that promise—Irismade that promise, and I agreed with Kris, that there’s a chance of it happening!” All the adrenaline crashes over me, breaks apart in a listing wave of relief. I can’t stop myself—I pat up his arm. “You’re all right?”
Hex heaves a sigh. “Pride, wounded.Freezing.But fine.” He bats snow off his sleeve. “If this is how you treat people to whom you offer support, remind me not to become your enemy.”
My hand gets to his shoulder. “But—you’re okay?”
Hex tips his head. His hair has broken out of its tie, falling around him in tangles of inky black. “I told you.”
“Say it.” I don’t mean to be demanding, I really don’t. I don’t mean to feel this way, this uncappable welling of protection, realizing how alone he is in the North Pole, how all the strain and stress in his life right now is totally out of my control to fix. All this magic, and I can’t stop what’s happening to him.
Hex leans forward, and the angle puts him so close that I can feel the heat of his exhale on my lips, a violent contrast to the cold air. It curls over my tongue, a diaphanous cloud, and even this subtle there-then-gone sizzle of his taste makes my eyelashes flutter.
“I’m all right,” he whispers. His gaze shifts through mine, rapid, rattled flickers of those black-lined depths, like he’s trying to read me but can’t, can’t make sense of something.
His eyes. Those eyes. They drop to my lips.
A lightning-fast bounce, then they’re up again, and I hadn’t known the limits of my own restraint until this moment.
A clatter of hooves breaks us apart. It breakshimapart—Hex shoves back and spins a flustered glance at the track.
I’m in a fog. My hand is on his shoulder. We’re in a snowbank but my body is all liquid fire. And it’s Kris approaching—just Kris, just my brother—but if it’d been anyone else, this position, the energy coming off us in waves, would have been hard to ignore.
Stumbling in the snow, I wobble to my feet and put a full yard between me and Hex.
Kris reins his sleigh up sharp, coasting down the turn before he looks back. “You all right?” he shouts.
I wave him off. “Yeah. Tumbled out. We’re good.”
Hex digs himself out of the snowbank. I should help him. I can’t bring myself to touch him. My hands clench and unclench uselessly at my sides, but Hex doesn’t make eye contact, and that drop of awareness feels like a reprimand.
I shouldn’t have let it go so far.Idid that, touched him, hovered, breathing him in—
But he looked at my lips.
You weren’t the one who initiated it.
Hex and I claw our way down the snowbank as Kris smacks his reins and bolts off, dipping around our discarded sleigh. Two other riders fly past us before Hex and I are back in, kicking snow off our boots, but I feel the chill of it deep in my bones now.
Neither of us says anything the rest of the ride, and Iris is right; I do drive sedately.
Kris takes the win. I come in second to last. We all clap for Kris and I smile as he gets his photos, and then Dad gets into the pics too, and I can’t be the only one who notices that Kris’s whole demeanor changes.
Cameras flash.
Iris and Hex are next. A reporter calls for me too. “The two heirs! Photo, photo!”
My body moves, on autopilot since that moment in the snowdrift.
It’s all so fake. All of this, every second, it aches with how much of a mockery this is of anything real. But I find myself standing with my front against Hex’s back, him positioned towards Iris so I see him in profile, the harsh angle of his jaw, the dusting of snow still on the collar of his coat.
Everything around me reeks of fakeness. Except for him. And it’s crushing me, because he’s not real either, is he?
He deserves real. He deserves more than what we’re doing to him.
