The Sweetest Gift by Scarlett Cole

Author:Scarlett Cole [COLE, SCARLETT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838246921
Publisher: Scarlett Cole

7

Nik slipped his arm from beneath Jenny and moved to the edge of the bed to sit up. He rubbed a hand over his face then through his hair. His phone told him it was a little after seven in the morning.

Christmas morning.

He had mixed feelings over the day. He and the baby Jesus didn’t speak… heck, he didn’t even believe in God, choosing to focus on the idea that there had to be something bigger than he was, something deeply spiritual that had created the earth and everything on it.

And the great creator was probably a woman.

The day also brought back memories of envy. Envy of knowing his school friends would wake on Christmas morning to find a motherload of gifts waiting for them beneath a lush green tree that smelled of pine in a warm, secure home. Or worse, returning to school in the new year to see everyone comparing gifts.

During his years in foster care, there had been years without gifts, years without heat, and years without even the slightest hint of love or affection.

So, yeah, Christmas really wasn’t a big deal.

The previous year, Jenny had even worked at the group home she ran. She’d gone so far as to suggest he was a grinch in the run-up to the big day as she’d decorated their home and he’d grumbled his way through hanging a million feet of garland and lights.

This year, though, felt different. There was no way in hell he’d ever let Jefferson, Henry, and Charlie face the same Christmas morning agony he’d felt.

He’d started by taking them to Home Depot to pick out the most outrageous decorations for the outside of the house. Jefferson had picked a giant inflatable snow globe with Santa inside it that he took great joy in putting on every evening when he got home from school. Nik had read that kids started to lose their belief in the Santa myth somewhere around eleven, but Jefferson was a hard-core believer.

Seven-year-old Charlie had picked out a projector that projected falling snowflakes onto the outside of the house. The kid would watch with wonder, his brown eyes wide, for hours. He’d make a snow angel and then just lie there looking up at the house, watching the lights, even if real snow was falling around him.

But Henry had been a hard sell. He’d been painfully indifferent. Nik had shown him lights, and reindeers made out of wood, and candy canes to light up the path to the front door, but he’d been resolutely against the idea. No matter how hard Nik had tried, and fuck knew he’d tried every trick in the book to persuade him, he’d refused to pick anything. In the end, Charlie had needed the bathroom, so Nik had picked the candy cane lights for him and rushed them all home because Charlie had refused to use the store bathroom.

In the car on the way home, his heart had broken for them all when Henry had whispered to Jefferson, “You know they aren’t going to let you take the snow globe with you when we leave.

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