Have Yourself a Crazy Little Christmas

by Megan Crane

  “You didn’t recognize me. And that hasn’t happened in a long time. I thought it was fun.”

  “I’m delighted that I could be a little bit of fun for you.”

  “You didn’t want to know.” He hardly recognized his own voice, and he was standing too close to her. All he wanted to do was get his hands on her, his mouth. Because he knew that if he touched her, everything would make sense again, the way it always did. But he didn’t give in to the urge—because eventually he would have to let go of her again, and everything else that was swirling around between them wasn’t likely to go away in the meantime. “You knew I wasn’t homeless. I’m sure you can tell that I don’t dress like I’m down and out. And my hotel suite isn’t exactly a flophouse. There were a hundred clues, Devyn. You just didn’t want to solve that mystery because if you did, all of this would stop being about you. Your family. Your feelings. Your parents. You.”

  She let out a shaky sound that made him feel like crap.

  But it didn’t make him wrong.

  “I should have listened to you in that taxi from the airport. You hate my mother and you were never all that fond of me. I’m sure all of this has been nothing more than some twisted revenge fantasy—”

  She stopped herself, abruptly, when he reached out and wrapped a hand around her upper arm. He didn’t haul her to him. He didn’t do anything but hold his hand there, skin to skin, because that was still magic.

  Even here. Even now.

  Even when it felt like everything was crumbling, there was still that connection. That charged wonder that still felt as if it was changing him, every time he felt it.

  “If you want something from me, you need to say it,” he managed to say, gritty and low. “Ask for it.”

  He felt torn apart, though he knew he was in one piece. And she looked the way he felt. He could see the reflection of the party in the window behind her, all gleam and sparkle. It was Christmas Eve. Outside, the snow was coming down, inexorable and beautiful.

  And she was looking at him as if he’d betrayed her.

  As if he’d hurt her, deeply.

  It didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t fair.

  “I’m sure this is why they tell you that you shouldn’t sleep with your stepbrother,” she whispered after a long while. When her skin had started to prickle against the cold. He could feel it with his own hand. “It can’t end well, can it?”

  “For the last time,” he gritted out, not sure how he was keeping his temper battened down when he felt like the bad side of a hurricane. “I’m not your stepbrother. I never was. Even if our parents had married, we were both old enough that there would be nothing the least bit scandalous about this happening. Then or now. You don’t have to make things up, Devyn. Just tell me what you want.”

  She wavered a little on her feet, as if she wasn’t sure of her balance, when he knew very well she wasn’t drunk.

  “I want to go home,” she told him, her gaze dark and her voice much too hard. “I don’t want to feel any of this. I don’t want to think about who my mother is sleeping with. I don’t want to measure myself against the rest of my family and come up short. Maybe my grandmother is right and there’s a curse, after all, that some of my cousins got past. I don’t know. But I know you’re a complete stranger to me. You always have been. One strange little Christmas in Wyoming isn’t going to change anything. We’re going to go back to our separate lives on Wednesday and none of this is going to matter.” She pulled her arm out of his grip. “We can start now.”

  He wanted to yell. Rage, maybe. He wanted to share the hurricane howling inside of him.

  “Don’t be such a coward,” he said instead, as if identifying the issue could fix it.

  When he thought that maybe, it just made him a dick.

  Devyn let out a small sound that might have been a sob, but she wasn’t crying. She didn’t look at him again. She made her way past him, and he wanted to reach for her. He wanted to stop her.

  But more than that, he wanted her not to want to walk away from him in the first place.

  So he didn’t reach out. And she didn’t stop.

  And Vaughn watched her as she walked away from him, back into the light and heat of the Christmas Eve party raging on behind him.

  Without looking back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Christmas Day came, silent and bright, exactly the way it was supposed to do.

  If Vaughn could have found a way to overlook that heavy feeling in his chest, he might even have considered it a nice Christmas. It snowed outside. He and his dad exchanged a few things in the morning, then spent a lazy day together, eating and talking about basketball, fishing trips, and the kind of extreme camping and adventuring that people out in Wyoming seemed to take for granted and the Taylor men liked to talk about, but would never actually do.

  The truth was, if Vaughn could get himself to stop worrying about Devyn for five seconds, he might even have called the day merry.

  And he couldn’t tell if it was that concern or his own bitterness that had him broaching the topic of the looming birthday party to his father after a day that had been blessedly free of any mention of the Grey family.

  “Don’t start with this, Vaughn,” Frederick said, in that quiet way of his that was as close to an actual fighting tone as he possessed.

  But Vaughn had been spoiling for a fight since he’d landed in Jackson Hole, it turned out.

  “Come on, Dad,” he said. “How do you see this working out? Seriously. Do you think Melody is going to move back to Huntsville with you? Do think she’s really going to pick up where she left off a decade ago? Or are you planning to leave your entire life and move out here?”

  “I’m not opposed to talking about retirement,” Frederick said, calmly.

  Vaughn felt as if he might crawl out of his skin, there on the couch where Devyn had sat on his lap kissed him silly. The same couch where he’d written a furious song with that haunting little tune he’d played for her. He had still entirely failed to exorcise her from the room.

  Or from him.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said, with a whole lot more of that bitterness than he meant to share and not nearly enough concern.

  “I know you mean well,” Frederick said, still so quietly, and this time it reminded Vaughn of when he’d been younger. And how the angrier and wilder he got, the calmer and more dignified his father became. He very much doubted there was a more effective way of shaming a teenager into silence, and a more elegant way of expressing parental disappointment. “You have a good heart, son. It’s always served you well. It’s where all those songs come from. I don’t doubt it.”

  Vaughn made himself smile. “That sounds a lot like you’re blowing me off, Dad.”

  “I’m grateful that we have this chance to spend Christmas together,” Frederick said evenly. “I’ve always regretted that I couldn’t pull a holiday together the way your mother did.”

  That felt like a sucker punch. It wasn’t that the topic of the mother Vaughn had lost way too early was off-limits. It was that they generally avoided it, because why marinate in all that pain all these years later?

  “I wouldn’t have wanted you to,” Vaughn said, a little bit gruffly. “That was Christmas with Mom. This is our Christmas. I like it just the way it is.”

  “I know how busy you are. It tickles me that you can take the time.”

  “Dad—”

  “You think I don’t understand Melody,” Frederick said, his gaze steady there in that hotel suite while the snow kept coming down outside. He sat on the facing L of the sofa and made no attempt to look away. “I’ll thank you to remember that I was the one who wanted to marry her. Planned to marry her. I understand her quite well.”

  “I just think that you—”

  “I also understand myself, Vaughn.” Frederick shook his head. “I’m old and sometimes I get lonely. I wanted the nostalgia. I’ve always run toward stodgy. It’s just in my nature. Your mothe
r made everything pretty, and she gave me you. And that was enough noise for a while. It brightened things up. And Melody, well. She’s always been like fireworks.”

  It was possible that was the most talking about emotions—and marriages—Frederick Taylor had ever done. Certainly in his son’s presence.

  It made that weight on Vaughn’s chest press down even harder.

  “If I thought she could make you happy...” Vaughn shook his head. “But I don’t think she could make anyone happy, Dad. Particularly herself.”

  “It’s not up to you.” Frederick didn’t sound sad, or resigned. He sounded...certain. Vaughn blinked. “You came to Jackson Hole to keep me from being an old fool all alone. And I appreciate that. I do. I always enjoy your company. I always will, I expect.”

  “I like your company too.”

  The look his father gave him then seemed to shudder through him. It reminded him of his angry teenage years, yet again, when his father had seemed almost supernatural to him. Psychic, certainly. And able to see things in Vaughn that he’d never been able to accept in himself.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about having that same sort of look aimed at him now.

  “Make your own regrets, Vaughn,” his father suggested. “Live your own life. Hell, maybe if you do, your regrets won’t be regrets after all, and you won’t end up chasing nostalgia in all this damned snow.”

  Vaughn stared back at his father. “I don’t have any regrets.”

  Frederick’s mouth kicked up in one corner, and Vaughn had that same, dislocating experience he always did when he stared too long and too hard at his father. Like he was looking into a mirror distorted by time. He was gazing at himself a few decades from now, no doubt about it. From the lines fanning out from his father’s eyes to the shape of his hands.

  And part of him was comforted by that, the way he always had been. His father was the best man he knew. Solid. Built out of honor and kept promises. Quieter than Vaughn had ever been, because, Frederick had told Vaughn a long time ago, he didn’t speak just to hear himself talk. He didn’t throw words around for the sake of running his mouth. He was steady. Even.

  Always.

  And Vaughn knew without a shred of doubt that Frederick was not the sort of man who would have made Devyn Voss cry on Christmas Eve.

  It wound around inside him like a kind of too-hot brand that he was.

  “If you have no regrets, then I don’t know what kind of life you’ve been living down there in Nashville,” Frederick said. Then his gaze turned kind, and that was worse. “But you know and I know that Melody Grey isn’t the woman keeping you up at night.”

  Vaughn found himself rubbing at his chest and forced himself to stop. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I sleep like a baby.”

  “Of course you do.” Frederick laughed. “Well, if you ever find yourself wide awake in the middle of the night for no reason at all, I’ll tell you this. I’ve never yet met a woman who didn’t want to be swayed by man with a guitar. I couldn’t play a note or sing a song to save my life. Your mother was the one who sang. I know she’d be thrilled to bits if she could see you down here singing the songs she would if she could. Particularly if it helps you win the girl who has you moping around on Christmas Day. She was always that kind of romantic.”

  “Dad. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not moping. And I don’t perform very much anymore. And even if I did—”

  “Vaughn.” Frederick laughed again. “I came here fully prepared to take part in whatever Melody has planned. But as far as I can tell, you’re the one playing games.”

  “I’m not playing anything.”

  Frederick smiled. “If it’s not what you want, stop. It’s that simple. But if it is what you want? There’s no shame in going after it. There’s never shame in trying. Only in lying to yourself about why you didn’t.”

  Vaughn wanted to refute that, but he was running out of ways to argue with his father when his father refused to entertain the argument. He told himself he was outraged at being treated like an adolescent, but he was pretty sure the only thing he was really mad at was himself.

  And he had no intention of regretting anything. Particularly not Devyn.

  “All right, then,” his father said, as if the subject was settled, and reached for the room service menu that was still open on the coffee table. “Let’s order some food. All this talking makes me hungry.”

  Christmas was usually Devyn’s favorite holiday and she was determined that it would be this year, too.

  If it killed her.

  It didn’t matter that they were a few hours south of Big Sky, where the Greys were traditionally expected to assemble on this date. It didn’t matter that Melody’s party was hanging over everyone—or at least, hanging over Devyn and Sydney—like some kind of terrible premonition.

  It also didn’t matter that for the first time in as long as she could remember, her own father was around on Christmas.

  All of those things were strange. They were certainly not the traditional Christmas she carried around in her heart and would measure all other Christmases against for as long as she lived. But at the end of the day, none of it really signified.

  Because it was still Christmas.

  It was Christmas, and all the Greys showed up around ten in the morning. Luce confessed that her brood had insisted on starting Christmas at a far more reasonable hour.

  “Ten o’clock is late,” her nine-year-old was quick to tell everyone, as if astonished that there could be any argument—and Uncle Billy’s little girls clearly agreed, because Santa didn’t sleep in, so why should they?

  But everyone else arrived, piled the presents they’d brought with them under Melody’s newly re-trimmed tree, and settled around her living room to bask in the holiday goodness.

  Together, which was what mattered.

  “It was totally worth it to stay up way too late and clean this place last night,” Sydney said from her perch on the arm of the sofa beside Devyn. They were both wearing their pajamas, which was also tradition, with the big, thick socks that Luce’s mother, Aunt Gracie, knitted for everyone each year. Last year’s had been red with snowflakes, and they weren’t the only ones in the room sporting them.

  “Absolutely worth it,” Devyn agreed.

  She hadn’t thought so at the time, of course. She’d felt weary. Sad in ways that felt...physical, as if her emotions had crept into her bones. She’d been sure that if anyone so much as looked at her the wrong way, after she’d spent all those hours smiling and laughing and pretending she was all right, she would simply break down into sobs in the middle of the living room floor.

  Melody had disappeared from her own party sometime after midnight. Neither Sydney nor Devyn had inquired too closely into her whereabouts, because they both knew from long experience that nothing good waited down that road. The cousins had been the last to go, as usual, and then it had been Sydney and Devyn left to pick up the spills, gather up all the cups and glasses, and put everything to rights.

  And Devyn might have felt as if someone—someone who turned out to be famous, in possession of a Grammy and many hit country songs, not that she could think of anyone who fit that description off the top of her head—had reached in and torn her heart out of her chest, but there didn’t appear to be anything she could do about that. And she and Sydney had cleaned up after their mother a million times or more. This time felt almost festive in comparison, because they hadn’t had to pour Melody into her bed at the end of the evening, listen to her drunken nonsense, or have to contend with one of her boyfriends while they did it.

  Devyn had felt like quite the martyr when she’d finally crawled into her bed and curled up into a miserable little ball, but the truth was, it was possible she enjoyed that, too.

  This was what she’d learned this week. She liked these messes her mother made, because she was good at cleaning them up. She liked the whole damn circus, or she wouldn’t keep showing up for performance afte
r performance. Nor would she feel so at home when she was in the middle of one.

  And the ugly part of that was that she was enjoying her martyrdom, too. That was the unwelcome revelation that had made it hard to sleep last night. Wasn’t that why she’d moved to Chicago? The further away she was, the better. It meant she could dramatically fly great distances to see her family and stoically never complain about it. It meant she could make certain that she was always the good one. The dependable one.

  When really she was afraid.

  Maybe she’d always been afraid.

  She’d watched her mother flit from man to man all her life. And she’d told herself, all these years, that she related to the men her mother had left behind. All those brokenhearted boyfriends. All the would-be husbands, who’d never accepted it easily when Melody had announced it was time to move on.

  She’d always thought that her relationship with Melody was like one of them. She was the afterthought. She was the daughter who came on command, did what was asked of her, and was easily forgotten once Melody’s attention turned to more exciting things.

  But it had never occurred to her that she was more like her mother than not.

  It was that control thing. She’d always told herself she had a touch of OCD. That after a childhood like the one she and Sydney had lived through, it was no wonder that she needed an environment she could be completely in control of at all times.

  But it had never occurred to her—or she hadn’t let it occur to her—that it went further than that. Just like her mother always had, Devyn decided what people were and never let them grow or change. Melody didn’t have relationships, not really. Her idea of growth was to find a different man who embodied whatever it was she thought she needed to find in her own life at any given time, then leave them for the next growth spurt. Devyn had always been certain that she would never, ever follow in her mother’s careless footsteps.

  But the question Devyn had to ask herself, there on Christmas morning surrounded by all her cousins in the midst of their happy ever afters, was why she’d accepted her idea of who Vaughn was so easily.