Well, this is new.
A black fucking horse trotted into the ballroom, a masked rider in a cape looming over us as the music halted, the dancing stopped, and everyone moved back, giving him ample room.
I grabbed Octavia, pulling her with me. “Come here.”
A few screams hit the air, while others gasped and laughed at the display.
What the hell was this? I mean, I didn’t pay attention to details, but I would’ve remembered Michael and Rika mentioning a massive mammal riding into their house as part of the festivities.
Frickin’ Athos. This reeked of Edgar Allan Poe.
The rider wore a skull mask, and I boosted Tavi up into my arms, watching her watch him, her eyes bright with excitement.
The horse stopped, everyone quieting and waiting with bated breath, and the cool air he brought with him chilled my skin.
“The phantom watches from box five,” he boomed, his voice echoing. “You will see him, though he be not alive.”
Octavia didn’t move a muscle, everyone around using their phones to film his message.
“Bring me his mask by the bonfire’s light!” he shouted, spinning in a circle to reach everyone’s ears. “Your treasure awaits you before the end of Fire Night.”
And then, he shot off, leaving the room, the horse’s hooves clacking against the marble floor. After a moment, we heard the quick gallops as he rode away into the night.
I chuckled, looking up at Octavia’s face, who was still in awe. These kids were going to have a rude awakening when they got into the world and realized there was no place like Thunder Bay.
But that was okay. If I had it my way, they’d never have to find out how much the rest of the world sucked compared to home.
“Box five?” someone said. “So, the theater, then?”
People moved, chatter overtaking the room as the younger set started to leave, gathering their coats and deciphering his clues for the treasure hunt.
“Maybe plot five?” another person added. “In the cemetery? The riddle said the phantom wasn’t alive, so…”
“Could it be a grave?” another woman chimed in.
“But he’s ‘watching’,” another one argued, replaying the message on his phone. “A statue? Situated from a vantage point, maybe?”
Guests filtered out of the room, the younger ones dashing into the night to try to be the first to win the million dollars in trust they could either use for college or—since many already had college paid for—they could access it when they graduated, most of whom would use it to travel, invest, or start their own business.
About half the guests remained, the music, dancing, and conversations starting again as I set Octavia down and held her hands, swaying with her.
“Why can’t I go tonight?” she asked.
“Because our family is hosting the hunt.” I looked down at her as she stepped onto my shoes and let me lead. “It wouldn’t be fair if we won it, right?”
“It’s not fair anyway.”
Are you pouting?
I stared down, amused. “On your birthday, do you get presents or give them?” When she didn’t answer, I answered for her. “It’s the same difference. The hunt is a present to the town from us. There are other treasures for you out there.”
I looked over, seeing Christiane stumble as she tried to dance with her husband, Matthew, his pathetic demeanor as superbly fantastic as his son’s dumb attitude. I mean, what was she thinking, marrying him? He barely had the courage to manage a sentence. He was quiet. She was quiet. That house must be a party every day. How did they decide when to have sex? Through text?
And then an image of them having sex invaded my brain, and I bit back the snarl before it escaped.
“Where are they?” I heard Octavia ask.
I blinked, turning back to her. “Where’s what?”
“My treasures.”
“You have to find them,” I told her. “And fight for them. Nothing is given.”
Her lips twisted to the side, and I almost laughed. I wanted her to dream, but this was where dreams were dangerous. Nothing ever happened how you wanted it to. It was going to be harder than she thought, and she would fail many times before she won. That was what she didn’t know yet.
It wasn’t the fight that got you. It was the lure that you could always quit.
She could use some practice.
I stopped dancing and dug into my breast pocket, handing her the parchment I’d cooked up. “I had a feeling you’d be sulking.”
She took the folded paper and opened it up, her black fingernail polish chipped as she took in my present for her.
She gasped. “A treasure map!”
I pointed up. “It’s somewhere in this house. Above us.”
She darted her eyes around the room, finally tipping her head back and gazing up to the railing of the dark gallery on the second floor.
“Can I have help?” she asked me.
We couldn’t see anyone, but we knew who was up there, and I knew whom she was referring to.
I nodded. “Mmm, go ahead.”
I’d put some words on the map she might need help reading anyway.
She started to run away, but she bumped right into someone, and I moved to catch her, but he was way ahead of me. He grabbed her shoulders and set her right again before standing up straight.
I looked up, seeing a man in a full white mask and a cloak step back, look at her, and then take a dramatic bow.
“M’lady,” he said.
“Sorry,” she chirped.
And then she ran away, heading for the stairs to fetch her cousin. I chuckled, nodding at the man as he passed, and thankful my kid was tough but also polite.
I looked back at him, noticing the cloak. A little overdressed, but okay.
I glanced upstairs, seeing a shadow pass the ceiling as Tavi ran for Madden.
He always hid during functions like this. Kai tried to explain he was uncomfortable in social situations, but I think it was a courtesy on Mads’s part. Guests were uncomfortable when he was around.
Slipping my hands into my pockets, I drifted around the room, gazing at my wife as she danced with Kai’s father, his wife deep in conversation with a few ladies from the garden club. I caught Rika’s eyes as she stood near the fireplace, munching on another green tea macaron.
She froze, seeing me watch her. I cocked an eyebrow. Another one? You want a cake, too? Maybe two cakes, Rika? She hesitated only a moment and stuffed it into her mouth, followed by another one, before flipping me off and stalking away with her chipmunk cheeks full of unhealthy food for the baby.
I laughed, just teasing her. Winter had had her cravings, as well. Live it up.
I gazed back at my wife, loving her this time of year most of all. She adored the music, the food, and all the little things. She couldn’t see the lights, but in a way, she did. She said they made the house feel different. Warmer, somehow.
I loved that nothing escaped her. Even the scent of wrapping paper. It had never occurred to me wrapping paper had a scent, but she made me lie down under the tree every winter and inhale the presents.
She was right. I noticed it now.
Kai and Banks walked back into the ballroom from wherever they had been hiding, Banks’s hair now hanging down around her as Kai straightened his tie. Will twirled Emmy around the now-spacious dance floor, since some of the guests had left, his laughter filling the room.
But then I saw Matthew head across the room, through the center hall, into the dining room.
Christiane wasn’t with him. I immediately searched for her.
Spotting her as she drifted in the opposite direction, I hesitated a moment, watching her disappear into the next room. I tensed, something nipping at me as it did more and more the past couple of years.
In the days, months, and decade since I’d found out Rika’s mother was also mine, I waited for what I was sure was coming from her.
Failure.
At some point, she’d relapse. She’d forget one of my kids at the store or the park. The novelty of being a loving, attentive, and responsible grandmother would wear off or take too much energy to keep up with, and she’d slowly disappear from our lives.
No matter how cold I could be, or the years of answering her in one-word responses, nothing had fazed her, though. She was nothing, if not patient.
As time passed, the opposite happened. Instead of her giving up, my fight began to lose its steam. It was hard not to love how indulgent she was with Octavia—making almost all of her clothes by hand, since there really wasn’t any quality period clothing in the style Tavi liked that didn’t look like some cheap costume.
She was amazing with Gunnar, always thoughtful in scrounging yard sales for spare parts he could use for his inventions, and she didn’t mind when Fane and Dag destroyed her house, building forts in every room.
She’d been a huge help when Winter was in the hospital giving birth to Octavia, one of Kai’s dogs nearly bit off Ivarsen’s ear and he was only six. She stayed in the hospital room with him two floors down when I had to be with Winter.
I didn’t want to swallow my pride. It felt like I was fucking choking.
But more and more, I was also starting to hate the hurt in her eyes she tried to cover up when I ignored her. I didn’t used to care.
Something had changed.
I followed her, my feet moving without thinking.
Pulling open the white door, I slipped into the next room, a smaller ballroom, dark and vacant. She stood at the window, the moonlight making her sparkly white gown shimmer and her blonde hair—pulled back in a bun—shine.
I stood there, pulling the door closed behind me as I watched her.
It was like she was waiting for something.
“You do that a lot.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Leave rooms full of people to be alone.”
She didn’t turn around, just clasped her hands in front of her.
“I do it to give you an opportunity to follow me,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t speak to me with others around.”
“You think you know me?”
She turned her head, meeting my eyes. “You don’t know me.” Her voice softened. “There are so many things I need to say. Have been waiting to say.”
I didn’t move. Well, let’s hear it, then. You’ve had years to prepare.
Part of me was dying to hear this, if for no other reason than to open old wounds and get me angry again. Angry enough to remember why I should hate her.
She’d abandoned me. Every day, for years.
She might be a good person, but did it matter? Did I need her now?
No.
She turned her body but remained in her spot. “Do you remember the toy bear I gave to Ivarsen his first Christmas?”
I still didn’t move. Or respond.
But I remembered it. It was small, about half the size of him, with a red ribbon tied around its neck. It had been wrapped in old, wrinkled brown paper with a dusty bow. I remembered thinking it looked out of place among the fancy bags and boxes of the other presents she’d bought him.
She dropped her eyes, and I started to tense.
Well, what? Did she steal it while she was high? Mean to give it to Madden? What?
“That bear was yours,” she told me. “It had been yours since you were a baby.”
I clenched my jaw.
I heard her swallow, but she didn’t come closer. “I thought I’d find a way to get it to you—and all the other presents I bought over the Christmases and birthdays throughout the years.”
I stared at her, unblinking.
“The music box I gave Octavia, the toy trucks I gave to Fane, and the remote-control boat and books I gave to Dag and Gunnar…”
My throat swelled, and I tried to force down the needles, but I couldn’t.
All mine. An image of all the toys wrapped, collecting dust in her attic and waiting for a kid who would never open them flashed through my head, but I pushed it away.
So what? I had all the toys I could ever want growing up. I never went without anything money could buy. I didn’t miss it.
“It’s my fault.” She took a step toward me. “Everything that…everything you grew up with, it’s not your fault. It’s not theirs, even.” She shook her head. “They weren’t good people. We couldn’t expect them to do good things, but I was a good person once, and while I didn’t know how bad it was for you, I knew it wasn’t good.”
I balled my fists under my arms.
She let her eyes fall again, and I saw something shimmery drop off her cheek.
“I wanted to die.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I deserved to die. I was trying to die.”
Every muscle in my body hardened.
“God, I wanted it all to end,” she whispered, her shoulders shaking. “I had no idea how ugly the world could be until your father.”
She turned blurry in my vision, because that was a good way to put it. With my father, everything was dark and hell.
“I was a child.” She walked closer. “I didn’t even know how to ride a bike until I was eighteen. Schraeder taught me. I was so sheltered.”
Tears spilled down her face, thinking about this teenage girl, younger than Rika was when I terrorized her.
Banks, Winter, Em, Rika…I had no doubt they would survive what Christiane went through, but…they would’ve been hurt. Badly hurt, inside and out.
Anger twisted my gut just thinking about it.
“Rika was so alone for so long,” she murmured. “Quiet, meek, always pressing her nose against the glass, trying to see into a world she was waiting to be invited into. She had no voice, because I had none to give her.”
I remembered.
“The years faded in and out,” she continued, “and any moment of clarity was like a knife in my brain. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand to remember you. I was so weak.”
I knew what that was like. I had the scars to prove it. She had pills. I had razor blades.
But it wasn’t weakness for me. It was coping. I had to do something.
“But she eventually found her way, didn’t she?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. “Michael, Kai Mori, Will Grayson…you. I should’ve known life would find a way to take care of her when I failed to. I should’ve known you’d find each other.” A gentle smile flashed across her lips. “She speaks like she has ten-thousand soldiers behind her now. You did that. Not me.”
Rika learned everything she didn’t want to be by seeing firsthand every day what a wasted life looks like, just like Banks and I did in my house.
“And you’re happy,” she told me. “Winter did that. Not me.”
Christiane had finally learned what she should’ve taught her children—instead of them teaching her—you’re one-hundred percent responsible for your own happiness.
“I’m grateful the lessons she learned didn’t come at too great a cost,” she said, approaching me. “And I’m forever regretful yours came at so much.” Her chin trembled. “I’m sorry. God, I wish I could go back and do it all differently. I would do everything differently, even if he killed me for it.”
I forced down the lump in my throat, my head aching, trying to hold back the tears.
He would’ve killed her. Maybe she should’ve fought. Should’ve tried. Should’ve gotten ready for when I was old enough to approach, or gotten some help from people my father feared, but maybe it would’ve still ended badly, and instead of having a sick mother, Rika and I would’ve ended up without one.
Enough time had been wasted.
“I will be forever sorry, but I needed you to know that I love you,” she said. “Always have, and there is one more present under that tree out there that those beautiful children can’t have, because it was always yours. You can open it after I leave or never at all, but I needed to give it to you.”
She started to leave, always ducking out, because she didn’t want to overstay her welcome, but while I was curious what she got for me when I was a kid that she left under the tree, I didn’t want her to leave yet, either.
“Christiane,” I said.
She stopped, and I looked over at her next to me, not sure I had the stomach for this. I didn’t trust parents, and I was too old to start.
But I didn’t want to hurt her anymore.
Maybe I could be her son, eventually. Maybe not.
But we could try to be something.
“How is it you don’t know how to dance?” I asked.
She blinked at me. She and Matthew looked like two middle schoolers at their first Spring Fling back there. I thought she was cultured.
She shifted, looking uncertain. “I don’t know a lot, I guess.”
The dull hum of the music drifted through the walls, but I was able to make out the tune as I turned to her.
Holding out my hand, I waited as she stared at me, looking a little shocked.
Finally, she took hold. I pulled her in, her cool hand fitting in mine as I slipped my other around her waist. My heart skipped a beat, feeling my mother in my arms for the first time.
She gazed up at me, the lines around her eyes giving away her age, but the look in them still like a child.
“Follow my lead,” I instructed.
Pushing off, I moved her around the empty room, the music barely audible as we twirled and stepped. I looked down at her, something swelling in my throat, and it hurt, but I couldn’t look away, either.
I didn’t need her. I’d made a beautiful family, not just my wife and children, but my friends too. I had everything.
And still, holding her in my arms, I realized something that had been missing. I realized how much I wanted to bring her in closer and hold onto something.
Sometimes I was so tired. I could ask for help, lean on the guys or vent to the women, but I wouldn’t. Not ever.
I wanted to be strong for them. I never wanted Banks to see me scared again, or Rika to see me lose my shit and not be able to handle something.
I never wanted my children to see me as anything less than a man.
I wasn’t sure why, but with Christiane, I didn’t care if I wasn’t the strongest in the room. Even well into my thirties, I had to admit, I kind of still wanted a mom.
A mom might be there for the times you were vulnerable.
Pulling her in closer, I carried her around the floor, hearing her breathe out a laugh as we spun, her feet barely touching the ground the faster I moved.
How strange it was to be a parent. For so many years, I couldn’t see myself in her shoes, and even though I knew I’d do so many things differently if I’d been her, I could at least understand how hard it probably was to be desperate for your child and watch another woman raise him.
Between Christiane, Natalya, and Gabriel, they did everything wrong.
But I was still here.
Banks was still here. Rika was still here. Despite everything, we survived our parents.
Not once had Banks or Rika ever blamed theirs for anything. I had done nothing but blame Christiane for the past decade.
How easily could my own kids turn around and do the same? All this love I had for them, and they could still hate me.
I slowed my feet, a weight settling on my shoulders, and I was so tired all of a sudden.
And scared. She wanted to be more, but she failed. How did I know I wouldn’t? How could I stand there and judge her, acting all high and mighty? No one knew what the future held.
Christiane looked up at me, her smile falling as we stopped, but I didn’t say anything.
Slowly backing away, I left her and headed back into the ballroom, immediately searching for Winter.
The music grated on my ears, and I spotted her talking to Michael and Emmy. I walked for her.
Taking her hand, I saw her smile as she instantly recognized the feel of me and grabbed hold with both of her hands.
“Where’s Octavia?” she asked.
“Treasure hunting with Mads,” I mumbled, pulling her with me without a word or look to the other two. “Come on.”
Without question, she held onto me as I guided her into the foyer, underneath the candlelit chandelier, and to the door to the catacombs.
I pulled open the latch, ushered her inside, and closed it behind us, immediately scooping her into my arms and stepping down the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“I need to hold you.”
“You are holding me.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, kissing her lips.
She didn’t press further, just let me carry her into the bath and set her back on her feet. The candlelight extended into the catacombs, the jacuzzi already filled with water and steam rising off the surface.
Reaching over, I turned the knob, the spouts in the ceiling springing to life, and water poured into the small pool in a circle of about twenty different streams, almost like a fountain pouring down.
I tore off my jacket and shirt, dropping them to the floor, followed by the rest of my clothes, and then got to work on Winter. I unlaced the corset and pushed down her dress before peeling off her underthings, leaving the ribbons in her hair.
Heat coursed under my skin at the sight of her, and I pulled her into my arms, lifting her up. “Come here,” I gasped over her lips.
She wrapped her legs around me, and I climbed into the huge bath, the hot water sending chills all over my body.
I sat down, taking her with me, the rain shower falling around us as I hugged her to me and buried my face in her hair.
She tensed, but I just squeezed tighter, trying to feel solid again. I hated doubt, and most of the time I kept busy enough to not let myself worry about my kids, but I didn’t know what I was doing any more than the next person. I could judge the people who raised me all I wanted, but it was me who’d be judged next.
“Damon…” Winter whispered, knowing something was wrong.
“I’m not a good father.” I breathed out a sigh, clutching her. “Ivarsen has no discipline. He’s going to be undriven. Fane is neurotic. Everything has to be perfect. Gunnar is going to blow us up with his machines. Dag has refused to eat a vegetable since birth, and Octavia’s going to wind up in a fucking asylum when she finds out real life pirates are just terrorists with grenade launchers.” I gulped, hating that after thousands of years there was still no proven method of raising kids. “I don’t know what to do. How the hell would I know what a good parent does and doesn’t do?”
I was just as ignorant as Christiane was when she had me. Kai was right. They had a better chance at life with more guidance. I was doing everything wrong.
Winter’s arms finally wrapped around me, and she pressed her lips to my temple, her breasts flush against my body.
“A good parent has happy kids,” she whispered in my ear. “Our kids are so happy.”
She kissed my cheek and then my lips, soft and slow. I closed my eyes, reveling in the sound of the water and the feel of her.
“They’re so happy,” she told me again. “And so in love with you.”
A flutter hit my stomach, and I smiled a little, unable to hold it back. They do love me, don’t they?
“And I’m so happy,” she added.
I pulled back, looking at her as my thoughts started to come into focus again. It didn’t happen often, but it was hard not to compare myself. Kai’s kids had great manners and were fairly quiet. Athos was smart, ambitious, and determined. Will’s children never fought him on anything. They did what they were told the first time he asked.
My kids…
But I stopped the thought in its tracks, remembering Ivar helping his mom make pancakes this morning.
My kids could be really sweet, actually, couldn’t they?
Gunnar was so good about helping with spills, so his mom wouldn’t slip. Fane helped her pick out books at the store for Dag and Octavia, describing the pictures and story, so she knew what to buy.
They were good kids. I drew in a breath and exhaled, letting the worry go for now. We were doing a good job.
“Better?” she whispered, kissing my jaw and caressing my neck.
My eyelids fluttered closed, and I nodded. “Don’t stop.”
She grinded against me, and I started to harden, my hand palming her breast, but then a high-pitched sound penetrated the ceiling above our heads, and we both stopped, looking up.
“Was that a scream?” she asked.
I groaned. What now?
