red jeans and a red jean jacket with a white fur. Atop his brown hair, he was wearing a red Christmas hat, cocked slightly to the side, and a pair of sleek, black boots. He had a brown sack slung over his shoulder and was smiling and waving at everyone he passed. “Um, what is happening?”
My relationship with Nathan had been weird, to say the least. We were together in the sense that neither of us could resist the urge to be near one another, but I refused to let us put labels on it. The reality was, the second I let Nathan call me his girlfriend or I called him my boyfriend, I’d officially be dating someone who raped someone who I considered something like a friend, and I simply couldn’t reason that away in my head. More than once, I considered trying to let it go, but every time I thought about it, it caused me anguish all over again, and I wasn’t even the victim. Ultimately, I was trying to wean myself off of him by spending fewer days at his house and trying to distance myself as much as possible.
But then he would do something like walk toward me with a bright smile on his face, wearing a Santa costume, and all the resolve I had would snap like a toothpick.
“Hey.” He leaned in and kissed me. “Merry Christmas!”
I tried and failed a few times to respond to what I was looking at, and when I started laughing, it was Jaxon who stepped up and said, “Uh, you do realize it’s February, right?”
“I’m aware,” he replied, “but we never got our Christmas together. I mean, Nikki and I were together, and I know different arrangements of all of you guys were together, but we typically celebrate Christmas as a group. So I have presents for everyone, Sicily and Cherri included. Hopefully, they won’t break them. We’re going to enjoy the big, Royal Court Christmas we missed out on over lunch.”
Jaxon and I exchanged confused looks, but Jaxon shrugged and said, “I like free shit.”
Nathan grinned widely at that. “That’s the spirit.”
On top of all the gifts he’d apparently secured, he had The Royal Court’s lunch table decked out and decorated with a fancy white tablecloth, a silver lace overlay, and a couple of real candles. Ordinarily, Nathan wouldn’t give two shits about flaunting The Royal Court’s special treatment around the school, but for this Christmas in February extravaganza, everyone got to benefit. He’d ordered enough food to feed a kingdom and invited everyone to enjoy it as a Christmas gift to him. Quickly, before Cherri made it to lunch, Nathan ran his presents for her and Sicily over to a guy and asked him to present Cherri with hers as a gift from him instead of Nathan, then returned to the table, satisfied that his gifts wouldn’t be in vain.
“What did you get them?” Kyle asked.
“I got Sicily a laptop. I know he doesn’t have a great one because I see him in the library using the school computers a lot, so I figured he could use it.”
Alistair shook his head. “Barely know the guy, and you got him a computer. That’s next-level.”
“What about Cherri?” Avery asked.
“She used to tell me this story all the time about the house she used to live in. There were wild horses in the forest behind it.”
“Yeah,” Avery cut in. “There was a white one that she fell in love with and always wanted to tame, but her house wasn’t big enough to keep a whole horse. She would feed it, though, and it would always come around. She named it Marshmallow.”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. So I got her a porcelain horse.”
I kept my hands, which were balled into fists, under the table so that Nathan couldn’t see them and tried to convince myself not to get jealous. Whatever was going on in Nathan’s head, he had a reason for it, and I was trying to pull myself back anyway.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter.
Once Brayden finally arrived at the table and everyone had their food, Nathan took his crystal goblet of water and held it up. “Guys, I know this isn’t the Christmas party we’re used to, but it’s the best I could come up with. Every single year, you guys get me such thoughtful and wonderful gifts on top of being my friends, and I want to say thank you for these past years. I know all of