Christmas Beyond Christmas

by J P Sayle

  The feeling of giddiness increased and I found it impossible to take a deep breath with his eyes level with mine. The next thing I knew, I was hoisted above his head, my ears buzzing as he effortlessly held me there. Oh fuck!

  Despite being immobile, my body decided it was the best time to awaken from its sexual drought. My instincts kicked in and I started to struggle. The last thing I needed was for him to look up and see what was becoming more obvious by the second. Never had anyone made my pulse race as much as Will was doing right now. It was mortifying. Really, is that what it is?

  I was saved from examining what was going on in my head by Willow jumping up and down and shouting, “Make Daddy flies. Will flies Daddy.”

  “Your wish is my command, bean sprout.” Given her laughter, it was impossible to be angry as Will carried me above his head, down the porch steps and into the open garden. The next thing I knew, he was whirling me around and making me dip and soar through the air till I was breathless and dizzy.

  By the time Will fell to his knees, laughter was pouring out of me and he still hadn’t let go. I barely registered the feel of the sun on my back as it became apparent how close Will’s head was to my groin.

  Willow’s continued shouts of encouragement brought me back to earth with a bump, my laughter dying. “Put me down, jeez! I’m not a child,” I gritted out, doing my best to get my unruly semi-hard cock to behave. The fucker wasn’t paying me any attention though. Will chuckled as he lowered me to the ground.

  Thankfully, as his face was now higher than my groin, I wasn’t subjected to that embarrassment as well. I swayed and the world spun for a moment as he continued to hold me. The last thing I wanted was for Will to figure out I fancied him. Why not? You’re single.

  A single parent is what I am, with a child who needs me.

  Any hope of that thought splashing cold water on my arousal was dashed as Will chose that moment to lower his gaze. His eyes became hooded and he released a sharp exhale.

  When his gaze moved to mine, there was a flare of arousal in his eyes which left me with a pulse rate high enough to make me pull back.

  I released a breath as he let go, a shiver running down my spine as his eyes seemed to hold a promise that this wasn’t over.

  You’re reading it wrong. There is no way he is interested.

  Are you sure?

  Was I?

  I sighed and was grateful when Willow ran over to me and wrapped her arms around my leg. “Oh Daddy, that was fun. Ya whirled and whirled.” She grinned at Will. “Daddy needs to laugh more.” The serious way with which she spoke caused my throat to close up. I blinked back tears, refusing to look over at Will as he stood and towered over me.

  His hand lowered to Willow’s blonde curls and he stroked them gently, reminding me of times past when he would do the same to me. “Then we’ll work on making your Daddy laugh more.”

  His voice was no more than a husky rasp, making me look up. He lifted his other hand and his fingers brushed my hair. But an inscrutable expression left me unable to figure out what he was thinking as his fingers tugged on my short hair. “I loved your curls.” He said it almost as if he was talking to himself before shaking his head and dropping his hand. The sense of instant loss I felt was enough to make me step back.

  Remember, it’s never gonna happen, not in this lifetime.

  Willow giggled as she clung to my leg. “Do it again, Daddy.” Happy for the distraction, I waited for her to step onto my sneaker before lifting my leg. I inhaled slowly, chancing a look over to Will. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

  His face fell for a second but he nodded. “Cool! Don’t forget you still owe me a beer and a catch up, Tiny.” There was something in his tone that said he’d make sure that we’d be talking—and soon.

  The mad fluttering in my belly at the thought of being alone with him didn’t ease as I nodded, giving a vague answer before hightailing it home.

  Shit, double shit!

  There was no way I’d be able to resist him if he ever got me alone away from Willow’s interruptions.

  You’re fucked.

  Will

  I stilled before entering the house, my gaze moving to Tiny’s retreating form. Stupid, stupid! You should never have touched him.

  My palms continued to tingle with warmth, even as my fingers clenched and balled at my sides. Neil’s threat ran through my head as I watched Tiny disappear through his back door, Willow still clinging to his leg like a limpet. What was I going to do?

  The hum of attraction still lingered in my belly. The feeling flowing through me had initially been a little shocking and surprising. But then Tiny had started to laugh and I’d found myself transported back to the times where I’d set out to make him smile at me. Feelings that I’d purposely avoided thinking about when Tiny was just a teenager had returned and I’d had no idea what to do with them once I’d opened that door. So I’d carried on holding him, needing something to distract myself. How did that work out for you?

  The bulge in Tiny’s shorts had left my mouth dry and made my own body react. If it wasn’t for the little girl giggling next to us, I wasn’t sure what I would have done.

  Stop kidding yourself. You’d have been doing your best to taste that sweet, sexy body.

  “Oh fuck,” I groaned, my hand palming my now throbbing cock. “Stop it. Remember, hands off.” The lack of conviction in my own voice made me roll my eyes heavenward before walking into the house in an effort to find something to distract me.

  The lunch dishes drew my eye, but I carried on walking and headed upstairs. As if on autopilot, I went over to the bookcase in my bedroom and pulled out several photo albums my mom had filled over the years.

  Going over to the large king-sized bed I’d had ever since my teenage years which took up most of the room, I sat on the edge. I placed the dusty albums on the floor at my feet and rifled through them searching for the year before I’d turned twenty-one when Tiny had been sixteen.

  Turning the pages, I was transported back ten years to a time where life had seemed so much easier. Tiny’s face beamed up at me from the pages, my fingers tracing over his delicate features. There was something in his expression as he stared at me that I’d not noticed before, something akin to worship. How had I missed that?

  You were too interested in leaving to find adventure.

  I sighed in disgust.

  I’d wanted nothing more than to join the marines and defend my country as far back as I could remember.

  Where did that leave you?

  It had left me in countries that showed no respect for the citizens who lived there, with mortars raining down on them. My fingers tightened on the album I held. Sweat gathered on my top lip as I made a valiant effort to shove the images to the back of my mind. I sucked in a deep breath, needing to rid my nose of the scents which accompanied the pictures in my mind.

  “It’s over! It’s over now.” And it was. I’d submitted my paperwork last year when I’d been informed that I’d be spending yet another Christmas in a hellhole. While families across the world celebrated, I’d be digging graves and sweating my ass off.

  For four years in a row, I hadn’t had the opportunity to be with family, to appreciate the simple pleasures of Christmas. It had brought home to me what my life had become and highlighted the emptiness that I could no longer hide from. So once I’d returned from my latest tour of duty, I’d gone about untangling my ass from all the ties I had to the marines.

  I focused back on the pictures in front of me, my heart skipping a beat. Could the things I’d been missing, the things I’d always craved have been right under my nose all this time? The album fell to the floor as I shot up off the bed. Hold your fucking horses!

  The conversation I’d had with Neil on the first night replayed in my mind.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that Tiny had a daughter?” I scowled at Neil as he lounged back on the bench, looking out at the back yard and blatantly ignoring me.

&n
bsp; He lifted his beer and drank deeply before shifting his gaze to me. “He asked me not to.” He spoke so matter of factly that my eyes widened in disbelief.

  “What! Why would he do that?” I blustered, twisting to face him.

  He shrugged and took another drink from his bottle.

  “Don’t play dumb with me. What am I missing? I’ve been a part of your family for as long as I can remember. We’re brothers in every sense, bar blood. That makes that little girl a part of my family too,” I exclaimed angrily.

  His lack of response only goaded me further as hurt sliced at my heart. “Or is it that you didn’t want me to be a part of her life?”

  Dark brooding eyes met mine and I struggled to keep hold of my temper as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Ever since I’d seen the little girl, I’d been off-kilter, wondering why Neil hadn’t mentioned something as monumental as the birth of a baby in the family.

  “It wasn’t my choice, okay. Tiny specifically asked me not to say anything to you and I honored that request,” he ground out, sounding pissed. Only thing was, I wasn’t sure if he was pissed at me, or at Tiny for making him keep Willow a secret.

  “Would you have told me if he hadn’t said that?” I held my breath as I waited for his answer.

  “Of course I would have. For fuck’s sake you just said it, we’re brothers!” He got up off the bench and walked over to the porch railing, slamming the bottle down on the ledge. It rattled against the wood, beer flowing out over the top to cover his hand. He cursed, shaking his hand before leaving the bottle on the ledge and swinging around, his eyes full of fire.

  The air left my lungs in a rush as he stood there glaring at me.

  “I was so fucking mad at Tiny for being so damn stupid to find himself in a situation where he couldn’t remember what the fuck he’d done. Then this girl shows up saying she’s pregnant and that she can’t have a baby. It broke my mom’s heart.”

  He grimaced, as if recalling the moment. His fingers raked through his dark hair, his eyes seeming to look right through me as he carried on talking. “It was only when we’d all sat down with Kerry to try and figure out if there was another way, that it became obvious that her parents were behind the decision to get rid of the baby. Well, so we thought. Anyway, once she’d had Willow and signed over all her rights to Tiny, her feet barely touched the ground she left the area so fast. Tiny was barely twenty-two and became a single parent virtually overnight. He was a fucking father trying to navigate dirty diapers and bottle feeds.” Neil sighed mournfully, returning to sit next to me. I remained silent, knowing by his expression that he hadn’t finished.

  “Thing was, my baby brother stepped up and manned up. He’s done most of the parenting on his own. Mom tried to let him be, but you know her. She was never gonna be pushed out for long and somehow everyone has muddled along. He’s doing a great job and Willow’s a little rock star.” He chuckled and the tension in my gut multiplied.

  “Tiny finally managed to persuade Mom and Pops that the world wouldn’t fall apart if he was left alone in the house with Willow. So they finally booked the trip your parents had been nagging them to take. Tiny can be quite persuasive when he wants to be,” he said, a bit sheepish now that his anger had died down. “If there was ever a time I needed to talk shit through, it was then, but Tiny was embarrassed—”

  “What!” I exclaimed so loudly that Neil jerked, my blood heating up at the thought of Tiny being embarrassed by that beautiful little girl.

  “Hold on there! Let me finish. He wasn’t embarrassed ‘bout Willow. Fuck, far from it! It was the circumstances he’d ended up in. He’s a gay man with a baby he conceived while drunk as a skunk. How would you feel?”

  His gaze met mine and I shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never been drunk enough for a woman to hold any attraction. And just an FYI, is that your way of telling me Tiny is gay?”

  “Oh, come on, you must have figured it out. He was always…” His cheeks darkened and his gaze swiftly moved away from mine.

  “He was always what?” I questioned, a funny sensation crawling up the back of my neck.

  “Nothing. Let it drop. Just stay away from Tiny. He has a lot on his plate and doesn’t need any distractions.” The underlying warning was clear.

  Neil’s warning rang alarm bells as I blinked my eyes back into focus. My heart thundered in my chest and my hands shook. Had Neil been about to say that Tiny had… had what? A crush on me? Had feelings for me?

  As I stared at the picture of both of us, the idea settled over me like a warm blanket. When I couldn’t find anything wrong with the feeling, a smile spread across my face.

  What if he’d got over it? What if it was just a teenage crush?

  Then why did he get aroused when I touched him?

  My smile grew wider until my face ached, a plan starting to formulate in my mind. All I needed was a co-conspirator and I had just the person in mind.

  Greg

  I listened at the door before popping my head around it to check if Willow was sleeping. The nightlight cast shadows across the room and my heart swelled at the sight of her curled up with her battered little stuffie which Neil had bought for her a couple of years back.

  The thing was falling apart at the seams and it stank worse than skunk, but she refused to let me wash it. When she sat on my knee with it clutched in her arms, it took a concerted effort not to retch, even the thought of it turning my stomach. I shook my head, considering, not for the first time how I could wash the thing without her knowing.

  My shoulders sagged. You’re kidding yourself. The smell alone would be a dead giveaway!

  I sighed, Willow shifting and cuddling the toy closer to her as if she was getting ready to defend it. Stepping back out of the room, I closed the door with a smile on my lips.

  The love, which often caught me by surprise with its intensity, rose, reminding me that no matter how hard things had been in the beginning, I wouldn’t change a thing. Okay, maybe I’d change having to deal with dirty diapers. I shuddered, pushing back the images of poop which had seemed to get everywhere while attempting to clean her tiny, wriggling bottom.

  In the beginning, I’d insisted on doing as much as I could on my own, my mother reluctantly stepping back. I should have taken the light in her eyes as a warning. It wasn’t long before my Mom had laughed long and hard at the mess I’d got myself into. She’d caught me more than once with poop up to my elbows and everywhere in between. She’d said it was revenge for what she lovingly referred to as the poopnami events my brothers and I had rained down on her.

  How could such a small person create so much poop? It was a question I’d never figured out the answer to. I was just grateful when we’d got on to potty training. Not that that had been uneventful. There had still been some hairy moments when Willow had got overexcited and peed herself. But the years of being able to wander around with my head in the clouds, yeah, they were long gone with the reality of being a parent.

  Would I want to go back?

  Thoughts of my Pops and everything he’d done for me and my brothers, and the pride I saw on his face when he looked at me with Willow, was answer enough. There was no going back and with my Pops as a yardstick by which to navigate parenthood, I didn’t think I’d done a bad job on the whole.

  Then there were days, like today, where I felt totally inept. After another visit next door, Willow had returned with no sign of her sunny disposition. Recalling how upset she’d been, the feeling of panic started to return.

  Her face was pinched as she came through the back door, walking past me without saying anything. What was that all about?

  As she was so rarely quiet, I followed her up to her small bedroom which had once been mine. My heart fluttered madly in my chest at the sight of her on her little princess bed, clutching her stuffie. My heart dropped to my boots as she moved her gaze to mine. “Daddy Will didn’ts get Christmas. I’s sad about that.” Her chin wobbled and her eyes glistened, causing my chest
to tighten.

  “What do you mean Willow? Why didn’t he get Christmas?” My brows rose as a tear slid down her chubby cheek breaking my heart.

  “In the marinees. They’s make him go away. He didn’t get Christmas Daddy, like’s we did.” She lowered her face into her stuffie and sobbed.

  The sadness rolling off her left me feeling like the worst parent in the world. “When you are in the marines, munchkin, that can happen sometimes.” I bit my lip as her tiny body shook and her sobs increased. I stroked her hair, encouraging her to lift her face, frantically trying to come up with a solution. “What about we recreate Christmas for him now?” The panic in my voice made it sound nothing like me.

  Her eyes became hopeful, but then her face fell and more tears slid down her cheeks, dripping onto her stuffie. I swallowed the saliva gathering in my mouth as the skunk-like scent wafted over to me. I shifted back a little, sitting down and then lifting her onto my lap, hoping to avoid the awful smell of the stuffie.

  “It’s July, Daddy. It’s not Christmas. It’s momths ago.” Her nose wrinkled as she pointed out the obvious as if I was stupid.

  “Yes, munchkin, I know. But we could create a Christmas beyond Christmas for Will.” Warming to the idea, I wiped her wet cheeks. “We could get Uncle Neil to get some Christmassy garden decorations and a tree to plant. Then we’ll root through Gramma’s Christmas decorations and find some that we can put up in Will’s house. We can make him some pumpkin pie as well. What do you say?”

  Eyes much like mine brightened, the tears disappearing as she started to bounce up and down on my lap. “Oh Daddy, you are so clever. A Christmas beyond’s Christmas, is that likes a after Christmas thingy?” Her tiny brow pinched as she stared at me expectantly.