Page 15 of Mistletoe & Mayhem
“I need the package,” I say.
“Standard or deluxe?” she asks.
“Deluxe. Immediate.”
“Send me the information and your confirmation on the location we discussed in the past. Someone will be there in an hour. No mistakes, Laura.”
“That goes for you, too.”
The line goes dead, and I throw the phone out the open window, hear it shatter on the sidewalk below.
Pierce is watching me with a look that would be hilarious if it weren’t so close to terror. “Jesus, your bedside manner?—”
“Don’t get attached,” I say, half-joking, but then he takes my face in his hands, and I am the one who breaks.
“I already am.”
The clock on the nightstand spits light. 2:21 AM. My father is a man who keeps banker’s hours, but his wrath never sleeps. In my head, I imagine him turning an empty glass, judging by the way the ice melts whether I have succeeded or failed. Maybe he’s known all along that I would choose Pierce over blood, or perhaps I am just another nail in his hands, a daughter he’s always meant to crucify.
I want to speak to him. One more time. I want to tell him what he’s made, and why it’s broken, and why I love it anyway.Maybe it’s fear. Perhaps it’s the final compulsion of the ruined child inside me who still longs for his blessing.
I take Pierce’s ancient iPhone and dial my father’s private line from memory. The rings are slow and deliberate, like a clock’s last ticks.
He answers: “Laura.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t do it?” I say, brandishing defiance like a letter opener.
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He sounds calm, but there’s a bruised undertow, a low cold fury that makes the hairs on my arm wake up and salute.
“Then why send me?”
“I needed to see where your loyalties lie.”
I laugh, but it’s a raw, red sound. “My loyalty lies with me.”
A pause. I try to picture him—his eyes, like stones pressed into wet paper, his hands braced on the edge of the desk. He must be in his home office, the sanctum where my mother’s photograph presides, the one room in the house without a gun or a crucifix. “Come home, Laura,” he says, and it sounds like a curse.
“No.”
“Think carefully.”
“I already have. If you hurt him, if you so much as touch him, I’ll?—”
“You’ll what?” There’s ice in it, glacier-thick. “You’re still sentimental.”
“Maybe. But I’m not stupid. If you want me back, come get me yourself. Otherwise, let it go.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” he says.
“Then we have something in common,” I say, and hang up.
My heart feels like a stone, dropped into a black pond. I want to scream, or sleep, or punch a hole in the sky, but insteadI crawl back into bed, let Pierce wrap himself around me like armor.
Outside: engines turn over. Inside: the world narrows to breath and bone and the damp heat of shared skin.
When it’s time, I’ll take him by the hand, and we’ll run like the animals we are—desperate, afraid, and finally, finally free.
Chapter 11
