Chapter 9

CYAN

On the fifth day of Christmas, blizzards and bastards

I don’t understand.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m excited. But I don’t get it. Who wouldn’t want to be pursued by these guys? It isn’t my usual jam, but I like it. Frost then Aspen. An open invite from Vale. Crispin did say he wanted to kiss me.

“ Move ,” Tina snaps, pushing me out of the way before I’ve finished making a flat white for Vale. She’s thirty years old and a mother of three. Look how she behaves. My mother enables her.

“Cyan, for heaven’s sake. How many espresso shots have you had today? You’ll never be able to concentrate on anything if you’re drugged up all the time.” My mom is sitting at the small table in the kitchen, scheming ways to get out of here. She’d been planning to stay for Christmas, but now that she can’t leave whenever she wants, it’s become absolutely vital that she escape.

“Tina, I’m making something for our guest. Don’t be a bitch.” I reach past her and yank the steam wand down, pressing the button to froth the milk.

Vale is a welcome escape from pretty much everything. My family. My grief. Aspen and Frost.

If I have to kill Tina to make him his coffee, I’ll do it. Fortunately, both she and my mom lose interest in me quickly, and I’m able to make two drinks before escaping the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Vale tells me when I hand a full mug over to him, his words sincere. His smile is warm, and the way he lifts the cup in encouraging salute soothes all my frayed nerves.

Conversation flows easily between us, mostly because he doesn’t press for details about anything unless it seems like I want to talk about it.

I don’t. Not about my family. Not about my encounters with his band. Nothing serious.

I write with Vale for most of the day, trying not to feel excited by the sheer number of words I’ve managed to put on the page. I’m shaping up to have a story here, and it’s incredible. So rewarding.

It’s a mistake to return to the kitchen. It’s the one place in the house that I always seem to run into my family.

“How long are you planning to freeload off Mom and Dad?” my brother, Adam, asks. He and Atticus are twins, and they’re pricks. I hate them both. “At your age? It’s kind of sad, don’t you think.”

He makes it seem like I’m pushing fifty or something, taking advantage of my ‘elderly’ parents by moving back here.

“I’m twenty-two,” I reply, trying to find something in the regular fridge to eat. Digging into the perfect organization of the industrial fridge is a task I’m just not up for today. Too distracted. Too emotional. Aspen was great yesterday, but his attention is making me feel some type of way again.

I need to stop watching so many of those goddamn movies.

“Mooching off our parents. Somehow, I could’ve guessed that’s where you’d end up.” This is from Tina, wearing a beige turtleneck and matching slacks with a subtle red plaid pattern. Her version of Christmas is even less colorful than my dad’s. “We warned you about the bookstore thing, told you that it was a bad idea. In ten years, we’ll all have an app on our phones with an AI bot that can write us whatever book we want, whenever we want. Nobody needs or wants bookstores anymore. You might as well have opened up a Blockbuster.”

Both Tina and Adam laugh as I toss some bacon into the cast-iron pan that I brought from home. It belonged to our grandma, but nobody cares except me.

“Only somebody who never reads would say something like that.” I crack two eggs into the pan as well, using the grease to crisp the whites.

“Don’t think we all haven’t noticed how weird you’re being with the band. Don’t kid yourself, Cyan. They’re way out of your league. You pursuing them is just embarrassing.” Adam cuts a pomegranate in half, spattering crimson juice across the counter.

“You’re an easy lay, Cyan,” Tina whispers, getting way too close to me. “I heard you in your room yesterday. And with a different guy than the one whose crotch you grabbed? You’re jobless, with a failed business, failed relationships, no friends. Think about that before you make a fool of yourself.”

Her words are harsh enough that I take my food directly upstairs and lock myself inside.

Tina’s probably right.

Nobody comes knocking this time.

The house is quiet when I finally venture out in search of sweets, creeping down to the kitchen and piling up a dozen cookies on one of dad’s plates with the shiny gold rims. Sugar cookies, shortbread, chocolate chip, M&M, snickerdoodles. All of that and a huge glass of milk that I’m already sipping from when I hear an unmistakable sound.

A man moaning.

I stop in the hallway, turning and trying to pinpoint the source.

One of the guys must be staying in the downstairs guest room.

My dad rarely uses that room, since there are a dozen more upstairs, but we’ve got a full house at the moment. Another moan follows the first, piquing my interest. I come to a shuffling stop, turning my head to look in the direction of the closed door and the cranberry wreath that adorns it, complete with a green velvet bow.

No, Cyan. Don’t stop. Keep going. This is a personal moment, and not something for you to listen in on.

My hand tightens on the edge of the plate, the other curling firmly around the glass of milk. Those sounds seem familiar somehow. Aspen or Frost? I still can’t fucking believe that something happened with either of them let alone both. Aspen? I mean, Aspen? How did I manage to bag my bias—twice?

I find myself standing in front of the door, debating the merits of knocking.

Frost or Aspen, I … I’m curious.

Screw it. I turn, getting ready to put the milk and cookies on a side table so I can knock. The door opens, a square of gold light spilling out into the hallway. Frost is standing there, damp with sweat, hair stuck to his forehead. He’s panting as he stares at me, one green eye squinted like he’s trying to make sense of something confusing.

“Were you spying on me?” he whispers as I spin, a single M&M cookie flying off the plate and exploding. Red and green candies bounce across the floor and land in the space between my toes and his.

“No, no, not at all. I was getting a snack.” I lift the plate as proof, choking on the words. Caught in the act. Caught red-fucking-handed. I feel like I have to explain. “You were sort of … loud. Really loud, actually. I came over here to knock and see if—”

That’s where I stop.

Frost leans his shoulder against the doorjamb and folds his arms, frowning at me.

“You were going to ask to join me? As if that isn’t more intrusive than eavesdropping.” He’s frowning, but there’s the tiniest, ittiest bittiest little smile on his pretty mouth. “What the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t I say that you were a parasocial stalker?”

“I am not a stalker,” I growl out, gesturing with the cookies again and losing a snickerdoodle in battle. RIP. I’ll have to clean all of that up before my dad finds out.

“Stop wasting perfectly good Christmas cookies.” Frost stands up straight and then bends in half at the waist, his eyes on mine. He nips a chocolate chip and rises to his full height, cookie held between his teeth. Frost steps back, holding out his right hand to invite me in.

Before I do …

“I had sex with Aspen yesterday.” I’m not sure if I’m actively attempting to ruin a good thing, or if I just like Frost so much that honesty is absolutely necessary between us. “Sort of. We were both wearing our clothes, but we also both came so … however that stacks up for you.”

Frost’s eyes narrow, and he gestures with his hand again, refusing to put the cookie down and talk with me.

I scamper into the room, and he slams the door shut with his palm. Flicks the lock.

Heat suffuses my entire body, forcing me to take a sip of the milk to cool down.

The bed is rumpled, the green sheets with their adorable yule log pattern tossed and suggestive. Frost sees me looking at them, walking over and taking a seat. He pats the mattress next to him with one hand and takes the cookie from his mouth with the other. Steals a bite.

I join him, picking up my own dessert and taking a bite of a no-bake wreath cookie. It looks better than it tastes. I should make the ugly ginger cookies that my family hates. I put the wreath down without finishing it. Frost seems to feel differently about his cookie of choice, nibbling it slowly while staring at the advent calendar on the back of his door.

“You both came with all your clothes on?” is somehow what Frost took out of everything I said. “How? Dry humping?”

I think about the stain on Aspen’s sweatpants. No, it wasn’t dry at all.

“You’re seriously asking me that?” I’m so shocked that when Frost reaches out for the glass of milk, I let him take it. He drinks it, eyes widening when the ice cubes hit his teeth.

“You like ice in your milk?” he asks, and I shrug.

“My brothers say it makes milk watery, but I like it extra cold.” I try a different cookie. The shortbread is far superior to the green-dyed-marshmallow wreath.

“Same.” Frost chugs half the glass and hands it back to me. I hesitate, but ultimately end up accepting it. I don’t usually share drinks with people I just met. Don’t usually have sex with people I’ve just met either. He puts his hands on his naked thighs (I seem to have a thigh fetish), working his fingertips against his skin as he thinks something over. “You can fuck Aspen and not tell me about it.”

“It wouldn’t be right for us to …” I gesture at his sheets and then look down at my plate. The tree in the corner provides plenty of light, but it’s this dull, lazy light that makes everything seem more personal than it should be. “Without me telling you.”

“Right for us to what?” Frost asks, indignant. “I didn’t invite you in here for sex.”

My mouth drops open.

“Oh?” I slam my cookie back down on the plate, cracking the tasty dough in half. “That’s exactly what Aspen said when he came to my room yesterday, right before he grabbed my face and kissed me. Guess you’re all full of shit.”

I stand up and step in front of Frost, putting the dishes on his nightstand and turning to face him.

“Tell me to leave, and I will,” I declare, folding my arms.

He looks up at me with absolutely zero expression then stands and scoots around me, heading for the door and opening it.

“Out,” he growls at me. “Get out.”

I’m shocked. I thought he was playing a game the way Aspen was. Or Vale. I gather up my dishes as quickly as I can and sprint out of his room and into the hallway, beyond mortified.

Maybe Adam and Tina were right? I am embarrassing myself.

I throw the rest of the cookies away, put the plate and glass in the dishwasher, and tiptoe back down the hall to clean up the mess of crumbs on the floor.

After this, I’ll leave Frost alone. He’s made it pretty clear what he wants, and if I can’t listen to him then what hope do I ever have of getting my family to listen to me?