Unholy Nights: A Twisted Christmas Anthology (51 page)

My eyes closed at the indescribable pleasure, not just physically, but the emotional closeness I'd craved for so long. I didn't know how much I'd missed it until that moment when we connected on a level much more intimate than I could possibly express.

"Look at me." He slowed our movements until each slide was excruciating in its pleasure.  "C'mon, baby. I want to see your eyes."

When I did all I could see was him. The hard lines of his face, the five o'clock shadow that made him even more devastatingly handsome, the dimple that somehow softened the rough exterior. I could see our past, present and future in that moment and I realized that it would mean nothing without him. Desperate at the mere thought and once again laid bare I wound my arms around his neck, closing what little distance there was between us. If we couldn't make it work during the day, at least we would have tonight.

Six

If anything the night with Spencer gave me hope that maybe things would be different. But I'm nothing if not realistic regarding our relationship.  And being so close to him the night before only made me that much more wary of trusting my future to the hands of my heart. I worried that if I gave in to trusting it, it would only serve to let me down as it had time and time again.

My caution proved wise when I received a phone call from my mother in law inquiring as to where Spencer was and why he hadn't picked up Micah after work like we'd planned. I'd gone about my merry day not even questioning him when he said he'd be able to swing by their house after his shift at the garage, then I remembered the promotion.

Obviously great sex wasn't a cure for workaholism or his abhorrence for punctuality.

I held the firm resolution not to be drawn in by his false promises in mind when I decided to give him a call.

"Terry's Garage," he answered.

"Forgetting something?" I asked.

"Sera?"

"At least there's something you remember." I could barely contain my rage and had to force myself to take deep breaths lest I lose my shit. "Now isn't there something you're forgetting?"

He was silent for a moment. "Oh, shit!" he exclaimed. "Micah! Oh my god, I'm so sorry. We've been so backed up today that Terry asked me to—"

"That's okay, you don't need to explain," I interrupted. "We've had this conversation countless times before and I already know how it ends. You need to be home to pick me up in half an hour. Your parents have a prior engagement tonight that they are already terribly late for and Micah is getting restless. It's almost his bedtime. So if you wouldn't mind tearing yourself away from there, your family needs you."

"I'll be there just as soon as I can." Sure he would.

"You do that," I replied.

I fumed in the dark living room as I waited for him. This is exactly the reason why I hadn't made any moves to get closer to him these past few months. For years I'd watched my father relegate my mother as second best to meetings, clients, and sometimes even drinking himself stupid. When I married Spencer, I thought I was getting the fairy tale ending that every girl dreams of. After all, when we decided to get married it was real love, the kind I'd always read about and hoped for.

For the longest time I didn't even believe that it existed and every day while we dated, he proved to me that it was true. I thought marrying him would mean that that dream would extend throughout our whole lives together.

Falling in love with him had been my biggest risk and now I was afraid that it was also proving to be my biggest failure. 

Maybe he was right and I expected it to be too easy, but I sure as hell didn't think that I would have to vie for his affection and time. I expected that he'd at least
try
to put me first, even if it were only once in a while.

By the time he pulled up into the drive I was shaking with anger and so upset that I couldn't even look him in the face. I completely regretted not taking the necklace off. It made me feel like a fraud.

My movements were practiced and steady so as to not betray the riot of emotions raging inside of me. I opened the door, slid inside the car, buckled my seatbelt and made sure to casually angle my body away from him.

He began backing up the car, one hand behind my seat. I was hyper aware of him, like I was putting off some kind of sensor that could track his movements. Ever nerve ending felt sensitive and I hated it. This was exactly what I got for opening myself up to him. I should have never drunk that wine.

Christmas, I thought. What a crock.

We edged out onto the road and all was silent save for the crunch of the tires on the frozen road and the whistle of the wind through the windows that would never quite close all the way. The cracks in the leather seat pinched my legs through the thin material of the tights I was wearing. The heater was on full blast and I welcomed the fact that it wasn't on the fritz.

"Say something," he pleaded. "I know you're mad, but you have to realize that everything I do is for you. All the work that I'm doing now is only going to pay off for us in the future."

"You do realize that you have a family here now that loves and wants to be with you. We're here standing right in front of you and all you're doing is putting us off until it's convenient for you. We're not some plan that you can tuck inside a box and then pull out only under the perfect conditions.
That
isn't how life works. You need to take each moment and live it, love it and learn from it because our moments on this earth are limited. Is that what you want your life to be, Spencer? Working yourself to the bone while your life wastes away? Or do you want it spent with your family, the people that love you."

He was quiet for a moment, then he sighed. "You know that's not what I want, Sera. But I also don't want our family to ever be like the one I was raised in. I don't want us to have to struggle every day, living paycheck to paycheck. We shouldn't have to fight to survive like we are. I'm better than that and I want better than that for you."

"If anyone can understand that, it's me, Spencer. My family isn't the poster child for how relationships should be run, if anything. They have everything, but at the same time, they have nothing. I don't want us to turn out like them either. I want better than that for
us
."

"Look at me," he demanded.

I stared resolutely out of the window.

"Sera, look at me." The pain in his voice made me glance over, though it hurt seeing it reflected in his eyes."

"I don't want us to fight," he continued, "especially when we get to Micah, so can we just call a truce for right now. I know things aren't great, but we will work through them. Plus," he added, shooting me a mischievous smile, "I know you've always wanted to try sushi, so I stopped by the store and picked you up a couple things. A peace offering."

He gestured to a plastic box that sat on the center console. I wasn't swayed in the slightest, but I was hungry and I hadn't eaten all day due to the knot of worry in my stomach.

I took a piece and popped it in my mouth. It was absolutely divine, but did nothing to alleviate my mood. "This doesn't change anything though. There's still so much we need to talk about."

"I know," he replied. "And we will."

The conversation did little to assuage my anxiety. With every mile that we drove, the more I worried about whether or not Micah would pick up on the rift between us. He was only one, but kids were especially perceptive. I couldn't bare it if he were affected because of the problems between Spencer and I.

The closer we got to his parents house the more the temperature seemed to rise in the car. I shrugged out of the thick winter coat to escape the heat, but it didn't seem to help. Neither did opening the window to let in the frigid winter air.

"Can you turn off the heat?" I tried grappling for the controls, but my vision wavered. "I'm not feeling so good."

"What's wrong?" He turned in the seat to get a better look. "Are you sick?"

"I don't know." I peeled out of my sweater. "I'm just really hot for some reason."

In fact I was positively burning up. My throat felt like I'd swallowed a dozen cotton balls and my eyes were watering profusely. Sweat rolled down the curve of my spine and dotted my temples.

"I really don't feel good." I wiped my slick forehead with a trembling hand.

My fingers began to feel thick, heavy and it became hard to open my eyes all the way. I fumbled with the clasp at the back of my necklace, needing to be free from it in order to breathe properly. My fingers fumbled with the clasp, unable to work the unlocking mechanism. The necklace grew impossibly tight around my neck and I struggled to draw in a breath.

"Spence," I croaked. "Spence, pull over."

"What's wrong?" He shot me another worried glance. "Are you going to be sick?"

"I can't breathe." Spots dotted my vision. "I can't get the necklace off."

I tried to pries my fingers in between the ropes of the necklace and my neck to give myself some room to breathe, but my neck felt so swollen that I couldn't even fit my smallest finger through. Beginning to panic, I pulled desperately at the necklace, but it wouldn't budge.

I drew gasping breaths in, but couldn't seem to get enough air to keep black spots from forming in my vision. I felt the car begin to slow to a stop and I heard Spencer talking in the background but my ability to think clearly started to diminish. Sounds became sluggish and my vision cloudy.

My fingers grasped at the necklace and came away covered in a mixture of blood and sweat. The necklace tightened even more and I could feel the skin rippling around it. Thick streams of blood glided down my throat and into the gap of my shirt. I grappled with the handle of the door somehow thinking that if I could get outside I could breathe more easily, but the black was now coating my entire vision.

Vaguely I saw a shape move into what little sight I had left. Offhandedly I recognized it to be Spencer as my vision faded to black.

Seven

The dissonant beep of a machine jarred me awake and I shot straight up in the hospital bed. The room around me was dark and empty save for a few pieces of furniture and the odd medical machine. I wrestled against the nausea that resulted from my quick movements and forced my head to stop swimming.

There was a tightness around my throat and after investigating with tentative fingers I realized that it was a thick layer of gauze held together with medical tape. I pressed a hand to my throbbing head as the memory of my attack in the car came back to me.

But where was Spencer?

I registered movements and voices outside of my open room door, but none that resembled Spencer. For a wild moment I considered the possibility that something had happened to him as well. Could the sushi have been poisoned somehow? Frantically, I searched for the call button for the nurse. I pressed it insistently the moment I found it.

Ten long minutes later a nondescript woman in blue scrubs came bearing a clipboard with a stack of forms on it. "Glad to see you're awake, Mrs. Flaherty. You gave us quite the scare for a minute there."

"What happened to me?" I asked.

She checked something or the other on the monitors, "Well, we believe that you had an allergic reaction to the sushi that caused your throat to swell  and with that necklace you had on, it basically cut off your airway causing you to lose consciousness. If your husband hadn't gotten you to a hospital right away you could have been in serious trouble. We've never seen such a profound reaction. Your husband drove you straight here. Thankfully we were able to get the necklace off in time."

I took the necklace from her and held it tightly in my hand. "Spencer, my husband, is he here? Is he okay?"

"He was here about an hour ago, wouldn't leave your side until he knew that you were okay. Sweet guy. He got a call and then had to rush out of here, but only after making sure that you were in good hands."

"Am I going to be okay?"

"Of course. We just wanted to keep you today for observation  due to the fact that you were without oxygen for an undetermined time. Just rest up tonight and the doctor can reevaluate you tomorrow. Don't worry, we're going to take good care of you, Mrs. Flaherty."

"Do you have my purse? I'd like to call him to make sure everything is okay. We were supposed to go pick up our son."

"He didn't bring one in, but you're welcome to use the hospital phone on the bedside table there. Just dial 8 to make an outside call."

I thanked her and she left. I waited impatiently as the phone rang, not even waiting for him to answer as the call connected. "Where are you?" I asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay." He sure wouldn't be when I got a hold of him. "I just had to come back to the garage for a minute but I'm on my way back."

"You had to do what?" I asked blankly. He had to be kidding. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I just had to run here really quick to tell Terry—"

"You're kidding," I interrupted. "There's no possible way that you would leave your wife in the hospital to go back to work. There's no way."

"No, Sera, I—"

"I mean, I knew that work was important to you, but this is crossing a line, Spencer. I can't do this."

"Please, just let me explain. I came here to-"

"You know what? I don't care!" I screamed and I could feel, as well as hear, my blood pressure rise. It physically hurt to breathe, either from the pain of the conversation or from the earlier allergic reaction. "I won't let you do this to me. I won't be that person. I almost died today Spencer and I realized that I may hide behind shopping and blowing money to hide my feelings, but I won't be put second. I can change that, but I can't change you not loving me enough to put me first."

The monitors around me were going crazy and for the second time that day my vision was blurring. At first I thought it was from tears, but the rapid blinking of my eyes didn't dispel the fuzziness. The hand that held the necklace burned and I dropped it on the floor. My hand turned an angry red, the flesh was raised where it had come in contact with the necklace.