Filthy Scrooge

I crossed my arms to match his. “No way. I will not ask him to fly me home on Christmas Day—Eve, whatever.” I resisted the urge to stomp my foot in frustration, but just barely. “I’ll just go into town and find a place for the night.”

“No, you’ll go with Joe. Period.”

The lord of the manor tone was not working for me. At all. “I don’t really care what you want.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. “He was heading to Boston to see his sister anyway. He’ll just make an extra stop.”

How very convenient. “At this time of night? I think not.”

“By the time you get to the airport and do the pre-flight checks, it’s only an extra hour early.”

“For you who has millions, sure.” I bit back the urge to make another snide comment about the fact that Joe saw fit to spend time with his family unlike Scrooge Murdock. I was tired and all I wanted to do was go home.

“Kay, please. Just do this for me.”

“Thank you.” My voice was raw, but there wasn’t a trace of tears. And for now, I took that as a win.

“I don’t want you to walk away thinking this was a mistake.”

I crossed the room and brushed past him. “I didn’t until just now.”

20

Scrooge

Explosions lit up the screen behind me as John McClane jumped from the roof of the Nakatomi building. Die Hard was my favorite Christmas movie. An action movie with a badass cop usually took me out of my personal miseries for a few hours. At least enough to get through the night. I had the entire box set for an all-night viewing party of one.

I knocked back three fingers of Macallan with a growling hiss. The frost on the window panes was getting a little blurry. No snow outside to worry about though.

No white Christmas—at least not new white.

The roads were nearly clear from the last storm, and the night was pitch black with a blanket of stars. Cold and crisp with far too much clarity for me.

She was home. Joe had texted me from Boston to let me know. Mel had picked her up. She knew how to take care of Kay, unlike me.

I’d started drinking the moment she walked out the door.

Pushing her away had been the right play. It was easier for me to do the walking before her. I wouldn’t have survived it. Sheridan had maimed me. The loss of the baby I thought we’d created had been the killing blow. The woman in the equation hadn’t hurt enough. Pain had blinded me for so long I couldn’t differentiate from the relationship and the baby.

It had nothing on two days with Kay.

“Fucking sap,” I growled and went back to the bottle. I’d passed out on the couch somewhere around dawn and woke to start a little day-drinking. That, in turn, had turn to an all-day alcoholic haze broken only by Bruce Willis’s angry cries for Holly.

I laughed as I sloshed a few inches of whisky into my glass. He had a Holly.

I had a Kandy.

Funny.

I dropped into my recliner and set my half empty glass on my chest. Bloodied and bruised, fucked up beyond all definition, and John stood there with his gun strapped to his back with packing tape.

All for the woman he loved.

I’d let mine walk out the door.

Fuck, I’d shoved her out the door.

“Stupid bastard,” I mumbled as the television faded and my glass tumbled.