Chapter 1

I was never into Christmas. I wasn’t into Santa, or holiday greetings, or presents, or any of it. Never had a family that was into it, never really had a family, except for my best friend Jonah, and he wasn’t into Christmas either.

Sure, I could down a quart of eggnog, if you put some rum in it, but otherwise count me out. I didn’t mind the snow, though. If it fell on Christmas morning, it was kind of pretty, in a wholesome way.

Jonah, my best friend, was the same as me. I’d known him since we were kids. We could both take it or leave it. At least that’s how it used to be, back in the day.

At Christmas, we’d walk down the 17 th street mall in Denver, half drunk, looking for office parties to crash, so never in my dreams did I imagine he’d want to celebrate Christmas the year after he got out of jail—celebrate it without me.

Yeah, he had been behind bars. Not sure for how long (a year? Two? Jeeze), but it was long enough. I visited him as often as I could so he wouldn’t forget me. I was half in love with him, you see. My best buddy from kid hood. My dark-haired, wild-eyed Jonah.

We were there for each other, starting with fights in the schoolyard, and then working together in our little business, tearing down stolen cars and selling them for parts.

What a life. We lived above the garage and shopped at the bodega down the street, guarded our turf and each other’s secrets.

We were more than brothers. Sometimes, we were lovers. I had always thought that it was me and him. Him and me. Together forever.

Except when Jonah got out of jail, he didn’t come home. He went into a parole program. A sort of halfway house for ex-cons in Wyoming, in a place called Farthingdale Valley. Miles from Denver and everything he knew.

I think he wanted to get rid of me. I guess I wouldn’t blame him, looking back, cause maybe I was dragging him down a little bit. I never meant to, but love makes you stupid.

The benefit to doing the Stupid Fresh Start Program was that Jonah’s parole would be finished much quicker. The downside was Royce, one of the team leads there.

Oh, I hated Royce from the beginning, with his fussy ways and gentle nature. That perfect head of golden hair and angelic blue eyes. Not Jonah’s type at all, in my book.

I did my best to get Jonah away from that place, even to the point of getting Jonah drunk and driving off with him at midnight. I guess he threw himself out of the car roaring down that country road and managed to find his way back to Royce.

The problem was, Royce took Jonah back with open arms. They were so in love—it took me a while to realize it. That I might be standing in the way of Jonah getting what he needed.

If what he needed wasn’t me? Then so be it. Not saying it didn’t hurt. Not saying that at all. It hurt like getting my insides ripped out.

But eventually. Yeah, I figured out that Royce loved Jonah with all the fire of a blazing suns. Fuck me. Just fuck me. No way I could match that. Jonah looked at Royce like he never looked at me. It took me a while to pull my head out of my ass, but I did it.

Royce was a good guy, I finally figured out. He was also very rich and could give Jonah everything he wanted. Money, cars, sex.

As for Royce himself, he was good looking, in a soft rich guy kind of way, with his blue eyes and blond curls and a self-assurance I’d seldom encountered on the rough streets around Five Points in Denver.

I tried to smack him down once, all brawn and bluster, my fists raised. All of that usually would have gotten the desired results. People stepped out of my way in my old neighborhood, but not Royce.

It would have been easier if all Royce gave Jonah was sex. I could have taken the back seat to that. What I couldn’t do was take a back seat to them truly being in love. All goo-goo eyes when they looked at each other. Hearts and flowers in every word and gesture. Just about made me sick.

Okay, sure I came around. Even moved up to the family ranch-a-roo in Montana, where each horse was worth ten grand, and each square inch of land was worth almost as much.

Royce’s grandad, Grandad Thackery, gave me a job in his garage, and I got my own apartment above that garage. Sold my shop in Denver and plain up and moved to Montana, if you could ever imagine such a thing. I never could.

It was fine. A country life for a city boy. I got up to work early, worked a good many hours (cars were always fun for me). I even stopped smoking, can you believe it?

Sometimes I missed the feel of it, the how-cool-am-I air of it as I blew out a series of perfect smoke rings, one, two, three. But without the cigs clogging up my lungs, it was easier to laugh, so there was that.

Okay, so there’s me, working at Grandad’s garage, keeping up with his car collection. Living as a third wheel to Jonah and Royce. It was so pleasant until it wasn’t. That first year Christmas rolled around—or just-before Christmas—which was when I realized how much of a third wheel I was.

Royce’s idea was that me, him, and Jonah would go on a Christmas cruise in the Caribbean. We could share a cabin, or get two attached cabins, he said, and that’s when it occurred to me.

I’m not stupid. In fact, I’m pretty smart. I know what a velvet box looks like when it’s got a ring or two in it. I’ve pawned a few and stole a few. I know exactly what it looks like. So when that box showed up peeking out of Royce’s jacket pocket, I knew what the cruise was for. He was going to fucking propose to Jonah.

No way was I going to be a hanger-on for that. Sure, I’d be happy for them both. I’d be at the wedding, Jonah’s best man, I hope, but I wasn’t going to travel along like a poor relation.

I said no. Thank you, but nope.

“But we want you there,” said Royce, in his wide-eyed, sweet way. He’d stopped me in the hall after dinner, just the week before Thanksgiving, when all the planning was getting underway. You have to book a cruise in advance, I found out. “Don’t think for a moment that we don’t.”

I looked at Royce with my hardest glare, the kind that would make any thug back down, and said, “I won’t tell Jonah, but I see the ring in your jacket pocket. When you hung it up on the hook just now. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I never imagined for a minute that you were,” said Royce. He didn’t back down, but his voice wobbled. He also looked troubled, because if there was anything Royce hated more than anything else, it was to have his plans be, as he would say, disturbed . “You won’t tell him, will you?”

“Course not,” I said, pushing my hair off my forehead, because in that moment, my heart was beating hard and I was hot all over and I wanted to hide it. Jonah get married? Then I’d really be a third wheel. That life was not for me, and it was wild that it took me until that time to realize it. “Spoil it? Not me, man.”

“And you won’t come on the cruise?” His sweet face was tight with worry.

“No, man,” I said. “You two go. I’ll be fine with Grandad.”

He contemplated this as he looked down the hallway to the dining room, the casual one. (There was a fancy one and a breakfast one and a casual one. For fuck’s sake. Who needed three dining rooms?)

“Grandad’s going to Florida to go golfing,” he said. “I’d hate to leave you all alone here.”

“House full of servants,” I said stoutly, though I shuddered to think of those folks with nothing to do but wait on me all night and all day.

“What about this?” asked Royce. And then he paused. I waited because, as I’ve learned, Royce’s ideas are usually good ones. “I give you the credit card and you book yourself any vacation that you’d like.”

I laughed because there was more than one credit card floating around. I’d only ever asked for it once, when the compressor in the garage busted. Grandad said to order a new one and put it on account. He wanted me to call up the local grange and order that compressor and just say, Put it on the Thackery account . Holy crap. Having access to that much money must be fun.

“Anywhere?” I asked.

“You could go anywhere,” said Royce. “Fly, drive, take the train. Anywhere, stay a week. That way, I won’t feel bad about leaving you on your own. You have carte blanche.”

The writing was on the wall. When people get married, as far as I could tell, they wanted to be alone. Alone together. They certainly don’t want to have a garage mechanic with a couple of tattoos and not enough good breeding to not wipe his hands on his jeans all the time. It was time I got used to thinking about making a life of my own.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll book something.”

Royce handed over the credit card then and there, though, to be honest, I know he really had wanted me to come with him and Jonah on that cruise. He just had a credit card on him at all times, and I was kind of flattered that he’d trust me with it. I’ll admit I had to look up what carte blanche meant.

We got through Thanksgiving without any fights, but then, the Thackery were not only rich, they were polite and not prone to throwing mashed potatoes at each other. Also, I waited too long—never having booked a fancy vacation like that, you see—because by the time I sat down at the computer in the den (there was only one of those), it seemed every trip, every package, was booked for Christmas.

I scrolled for hours. Hours till I got a cramp in my hand, and Royce was starting to talk about booking the adjoining cabin on that cruise, against my protests.

All the cruises, the tours through some swampland down in South Carolina, the gala Christmas market somewhere in Germany, even a crappy, low budget Chicago City Tour and Show Package—all booked.

So I figured I’d put together something of my own and booked five nights at some fancy hotel at some ski resort in the Colorado mountains, in a town called Steamboat Springs. Far enough away to make a nice drive, close enough that I could drive there in a day.

I got rooms at a hotel called The Anchorage at Steamboat Springs. One night cost four hundred dollars, and that was just a single queen room, so the hotel bill alone was two thousand.

Add to that a thousand bucks on a mountain-worthy car rental, a Volvo V90 Cross Country in a deep green color. It had good ground clearance, all wheel drive, and heated wipers, seats, steering wheels, climate control, and remote start.

It wouldn’t be as grumbly and sexy as Olive, my green 1968 Pontiac GTO, but it’d be a nice luxury ride, something I seldom got. A good long drive with only my handpicked playlist on Spotify and my own thoughts to keep me company.

I also booked a huge spa package, that was another thousand, though I figured I might get more use out of the hotel’s secluded hot tub, soaking with a G &T while I looked up at the stars.

As for skiing, fuck that shit. I might go for a walk in the woods, but there was no way I was strapping skis to my feet just so I could barrel down an ice-covered hill at a billion miles an hour. Count me the fuck out. Hot tub and me, yes. Ski, no.