Until Soren got here.
I’m not saying a thief breaking in is ideal, but it has been highly entertaining. Minus the concussion.
A blessing in disguise, I suppose.
I’m still trying to make sense of it—his supposedly “noble” reason for being here, his reappearance in my life—but my handy new concussion is making the processing even harder. The headache is now dull, thanks to the meds Soren gave me an hour ago.
His caring and attentiveness make it all the more confusing.
I never thought I’d see Soren again after that night. I never wanted to. I was doing great—betterthan great. I was killing it in a “my life is running on fumes” kind of way.
Then I saw him, and all those teenage feelings rushed back like they never left. The extra pumping in my chest, warmth in my cheeks, prickles on my skin, the full-body awareness of him…
But it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. He’s a criminal, and I’ll turn him in as soon as I am physically able. Until then, I might as well let him babysit Arabella; he owes me that much.
Soren glances toward the office.
I wanted to move the painting while he was dragging the tree out of the storage room down the hall, but I worried I wouldn’t have time before he came back, so I locked the door until I can get to it, hopefully before he does.
I can’t believe he didn’t take it and leave while I was passed out. Did he actually care more about me than a painting? Dissecting that thought requires the part of my brain that is currently jumbled. So I don’t.
“What’s your favorite thing to do on Christmas?” Arabella asks Soren as she adds a bloody knife to the end of her garland.
He frowns at his mess of string and body parts on his lap. “I don’t really celebrate.”
“Why?”
“Why’d you ditch your parents on Christmas?” he shoots back.
She purses her lips. “’Cause they suck.”
“Exactly.”
“Your parents suck, too?”
“Something like that.”
Soren doesn’t talk about his parents. He never has. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know.
They were never around much growing up, but shortly after I went to college, I heard his parents had both been arrested for embezzlement at the hospital they oversaw. It made national news.
A pang of sadness hits the center of my chest. How could Soren take up a life of crime after all they did? Is he trying to follow in their footsteps? I know he resents them. Doesn’t he want to be better? The boy I knew in high school would never admit it, but all he needed was a purpose. For some reason, it hurts he picked the wrong one.
“What did you wish you could do on Christmas?” Arabella asks instead.
Soren surprises me by answering. “I always wanted to build a gingerbread house.”
The simplicity of his answer breaks my heart, and somewhere inside, there’s an eighteen-year-old Maya wishing to go back in time and do that for him.
“Gingerbread houses are… the…worst,” Arabella says, overemphasizing every word. “We had to build one at school, and mine wouldn’t stay together.”
“That’s because you made it a volcano,” I cut in.
Soren smirks. “Baking soda and vinegar?”
“Is there any other way?” Arabella grins when Soren lifts his hand for a high five.
And that is where I draw the line.
