Tropical Christmas Stag

by Zoe Chant

  “Losing music? That didn’t break him. Giving up everything he worked so hard on? That could.”

  Gizelle stared, conflicted and hurting inside. “He’d have me,” she said faintly.

  Aideen patted her hand and didn’t have to say how little that was. “He would get over you if you let him go,” she assured her. “He is smart and would know that you did the right thing when he thought about it more. This island is the best place for you, of course. But Boston is the best place for him.”

  Gizelle’s antelope was trembling and anxious, pacing in her head, and the whispering all seemed too loud and overwhelming. Gizelle had to resist the impulse to shift with all of her will. She had promised herself she wouldn’t flee and right now that was the only thing she wanted to do.

  She wanted to run and run because nothing she could do would be right. She would hurt Conall if she asked him to stay. She would hurt him if she told him to go. Was Aideen right, that the hurt wouldn’t last for him if she let go? She knew it would hurt forever for herself.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed.

  Aideen sighed. “I’m so sorry, Gizelle. I just... don’t want him to resent you.”

  “Resent me?” That sounded worst of all.

  “If he gave that all up for you, after a while, he’d probably regret it. He wouldn’t be happy here, and he’d always wonder why.”

  “Regret,” Gizelle whispered.

  Regret was a pile of broken glasses and bare feet.

  “He’d miss you, of course,” Aideen said sweetly. “At first. But he could have a normal life back in Boston.”

  Whatever else Gizelle was, she knew she was not normal. Hard as she tried, she would never be anything close.

  She wanted to weep, and fling herself into the air and leap away, and she wanted to curl into a ball that wouldn’t let the pain in. She wanted to cry, but her eyes were dry and her voice was gone, choked by horror.

  “Don’t make him choose,” Aideen suggested. “Everyone knows you like to run away. That’s all you have to do.”

  Gizelle raised searching eyes to Aideen’s lovely face. She was Conall’s mother. A mother would know the best thing for her child.

  “I know you’ll do the right thing,” Aideen said, patting her hand gently.

  Running would be so easy.

  Chapter 52

  Gizelle was standing at the French doors, looking out over the deck towards the ocean. The sun was starting to set, making all of her edges golden and soft.

  It was tricky light, difficult to lipread in, and Conall went to take Gizelle’s hand so he wouldn’t have to.

  To his surprise, she skittered back from his touch, and her eyes, when she turned to him, gleamed suspiciously. She wouldn’t quite look at him, though she carefully tipped her face so he could easily see her.

  “I want you to go back to Boston,” she said.

  “I am going back,” Conall said, puzzled. Had he misunderstood? “But I’ll be gone less than a week. I’ve already got the lawyers drawing up the paperwork I’ll need to sign and... Gizelle?”

  “I want you to stay in Boston. You shouldn’t come back.”

  Conall stared at her mouth, willing it to different shapes.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. When he reached again for her hand, she reluctantly gave it to him.

  If the rush of sound was usually overwhelming, it was even worse this time, making him wince at the scale of intensity. He twined his fingers into hers, and when he concentrated, he could tune out the worst of it.

  Gizelle raised tearful eyes to him. “I wish I could already write,” she said. “I would have written you a letter and gotten it all right and not have to think about how to say things when all I want to do is run.”

  “Why do you want to run?” Conall had to ask. “What changed? Why do you want me to go away?” The obvious occurred to him. “My mother. My mother convinced you I’d be better off in Boston.”

  Worse than that, he recognized now that Aideen taken the time to win Gizelle’s trust, to best betray it. At that moment, he would cheerfully have throttled his own mother. Maybe he could convince the Shifting Sands staff to make good on their myriad of threats and save him the trouble.

  “You have a life in Boston,” Gizelle reminded him softly. “An important business. Important friends. Opportunity you shouldn’t waste. I... don’t want to keep you from better things.”

  Those were his mother’s words all right.

  His elk offered to drive his mother from their herd... and Conall was half-sure he was serious.

  Conall was more than half-sure he would take the offer at that moment, looking at the raw pain in Gizelle’s face.

  But she hadn’t run.

  “My life is on this island,” he assured her. “And the most important opportunity I will ever have is right in front of me. As for friends...” he had to laugh dryly, thinking about the curious, quirky staff of Shifting Sands, and the way they had opened their arms to him.

  There was no comparison to the callous, self-important dandies he’d thought were friends in the city. They had been his friends when he was a rising star, left him when his world came crashing down, and come crawling back for awkward favors when he rebuilt himself and clawed some success from the ashes of his career. The Deaf community of Boston had been welcoming, but he had been too bitter and angry to accept their offers of friendship.

  Here, on this strange island, they didn’t care if he was famous, or if he was rich, or that he was deaf. As long as he loved Gizelle, they would accept him without judgment.

  And Conall could imagine doing nothing else. “My friends are already here.”

  “What if I never remember anything?” Gizelle cried. “What if I never find out where I came from?”

  “None of that matters,” Conall said sincerely.

  Her eyes were dark behind the tears: aching, ancient pools. “But I’m never going to be normal, Conall. I’m all mixed up in my head, and even if I learn everything, I am never going to be ordinary. I’m... broken. And I don’t think I will ever be fixed.”

  “You aren’t broken,” Conall started.

  “I am,” Gizelle interrupted, as fiercely as she’d ever said anything to him.

  Just as fiercely, Conall replied, “You are not a thing to be fixed. You are person. A beautiful, clever, caring person who deserves to be loved. And I love you.”

  He took a deep breath, and tucked a loose lock of her hair back from her face. “No, you may not ever be normal, but I hope I can make you happy, because you make me whole. Just the way you are.”

  The tears welling in her dark eyes spilled over. “I cry too much,” she whimpered.

  “Then I will comfort you,” Conall promised, and he folded her into his arms as she took a fistful of his silk shirt and sobbed into his chest, all the tension in her body releasing.

  Chapter 53

  “Is this my fault?” Gizelle had to ask quietly, her chest tight and her hands shaking too hard to unwind from each other.

  Wrench was picking up Aideen’s matching bags, and he gave her a sharp look. “He can’t hear you,” the tattooed man reminded her before he disappeared with all of the luggage.

  Indeed, Conall was looking away from her, at Aideen coming out of her bedroom with her hair perfectly done and her chin high.

  “There’s no reason to be this melodramatic,” she said with a sniff. “It’s incredibly selfish of you to throw me off the island just a few days before Christmas, and so unnecessary.”

  “I find it necessary,” Conall growled.

  “I’m sure this isn’t your choice,” Aideen said to Conall, with a look like thorns at Gizelle.

  Gizelle kept herself from stepping behind Conall’s comforting form mostly by being too afraid and sad to move. She had thought that Aideen liked her, that she and Conall and his mother could be a real family. She’d never had a family and it had sounded so pleasant.

  But nothing about Aideen’s a
nger and disgust was pleasant.

  “You should have just run,” Aideen said coldly to Gizelle. “You’ll be sorry when you break his heart.”

  Gizelle’s heart quailed in her chest. What if Aideen was right? What if Conall regretted her? Or worse, resented her?

  Conall stepped between them. “She gave me my heart,” he snarled. “And I trust her with it.”

  Gizelle rallied at his words and the undeniable truth behind them. “I’m very sorry you couldn’t like me,” she said, peering around Conall. “I had hoped you could be my mother, too.”

  Aideen stared at her, clearly expecting some other kind of response, and her surprise gave Gizelle the rest of the courage she needed to step from behind Conall and extend her hand as steadily as she could. He put a firm hand on her shoulder but didn’t hold her back.

  “I enjoyed meeting you,” Gizelle said as formally as she knew how. “And you were nice to me even though you thought I was too weird and I’m glad for that much. I can’t be sorry for choosing Conall over listening to you, and I’m not really sad to see you go, but I feel badly for Conall because he is so angry with you.”

  Aideen took her offered hand as if she could not figure out a way around it, and her elk’s distressed voice came clearly into Gizelle’s head.

  ...shame! Bow our head to the alpha female of the herd! Instead we lose everything! Remorse! Run!

  “You don’t have to run,” Gizelle said in sudden sympathy. “I don’t blame you. It is a hard thing when you are afraid of being alone, or of feeling trapped. Sometimes we don’t make the right choices and we’re afraid of facing truths.”

  Aideen and her elk were both stunned into silence, and sky blue eyes like Conall’s but so very different gazed back at her in consternation.

  “You don’t want to miss your plane,” Conall growled, clearly not ready to forgive anything.

  Aideen licked her lips and drew back her hand from Gizelle. “No,” she said, dazed. “I don’t suppose that I do.”

  But she paused in the doorway. “Perhaps I can come back and visit, some day?”

  Whatever gentleness she had hoped to find was not apparent in Conall’s stony face, but after a moment, he nodded. “Perhaps,” he conceded.

  Then Aideen lifted her chin and walked away with the kind of graceful dignity that Gizelle could only aspire to.

  When her footsteps had finally crunched away on the gravel to be drowned in the unending sound of the ocean, Gizelle turned to Conall.

  This time she was touching him when she asked, “Was this my fault?”

  Conall’s look was no less intense than his mother’s had been, but it felt much better than hers had. “This wasn’t your fault,” he said fiercely.

  “If I had been more normal,” Gizelle sighed. “If I had worn my clothing more....”

  He put his hands on either side of her face, gentle but irresistible. “You are perfect just the way you are,” he said with quiet fervor. “I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

  “Even—” Gizelle started.

  “Nothing,” Conall promised without reservation. “Not anything.”

  You are perfect, his elk echoed, and if it was hard not to believe Conall, it was impossible not to believe his elk. You are all the herd we need.

  Her gazelle took a few springy steps in joy and contentment and Gizelle knew that even if she sometimes had to run, she would never have to run alone again.

  Chapter 54

  Even if Conall had not actually needed Gizelle for what he was about to face, he couldn’t imagine doing it without her.

  “Are you sure?” she asked anxiously, a hand on his neck.

  Conall wasn’t sure at all. “I’m ready,” he said anyway.

  Gizelle reached over his shoulder, keeping her other hand carefully on his bare skin, and tapped the play-arrow on the screen in front of them.

  The file had taken nearly an hour to download; Conall knew better than to try to watch it streaming on the resort’s unreliable network.

  It was always jarring seeing himself in videos, but it was even more surreal to hear himself.

  He stalked onto the stage; he had been so angry then. Angry and undefeated and grim.

  He hadn’t bothered to acknowledge the audience, though they enthusiastically applauded his entrance. He remembered how gingerly he had carried the guitar, remembered how much trust that performance had taken; had the guitar been tuned correctly, or just barely well enough? Would it stay in tune through the entire piece? He hadn’t been thinking about performing, he’d been thinking about how the guitar deserved someone who could make music with it, not just on it.

  The orchestra had already tuned, and once he nodded at the conductor, they swept into the music he’d written.

  The music he’d written.

  The feeling of disassociation only intensified when he began playing.

  The music clearly showed that he felt like he had something to prove. If there was a simple progression choice at any point, he had ignored it, preferring to show off his skill instead. There were also points where the song was more about the drama than sound phrasing. He arguably over-used the flutes as a counterpoint to the mellower guitar notes. And towards the end, the guitar might have been just slightly sliding out of tune; understandable after the way he had so ferociously played it.

  But on the whole, it was good.

  It was an emotional piece, with a strong melody and technically excellent harmony. His playing was inspired, if questionably full of angst. If he had been listening to someone else’s work, he would have praised the work as excellent, if slightly raw. His recorded version gave the most cursory bow in the history of music performance and fled the stage, leaving the guitar behind as if he had been struck with a case of stage fright, while the audience rose to their feet and thundered their approval.

  Conall remembered how it had felt, the silence around him like a fireman’s blanket, the despair that he’d tried to recapture in his music feeling distant and unimportant as he tried to shutter away the pain, and all the other feelings that came with it.

  “Conall?” Gizelle’s quiet voice near his ear reminded him where he was now. “Are you all right?”

  “Did you like it?” Conall had to ask, only recognizing the tightness in his throat when he heard how choked he sounded.

  “It was beautiful,” she said immediately. “So sad and glorious and strong.”

  Conall folded his head down onto her shoulder and put his arms around her, feeling weak and full of relief. “I... I deserved it,” he said numbly. “I actually deserved the Grawemeyer award.”

  “Of course you did,” Gizelle said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and as if she had anything more than his own explanation of what the award was to base her opinion on. She wrapped her arms around him in return. “You are amazing.”

  “I never felt amazing,” Conall admitted. “Not before you. I always felt like I got everything handed to me out of pity or privilege. Everyone felt sorry for me.”

  “Who would feel sorry for you?” Gizelle asked in astonishment. “You’re so beautiful and smart and have such a big strong elk inside.” She drew back suspiciously. “Is the word you’re looking for envy?”

  Conall had to laugh at her earnestness, and at his elk’s proud assertion that she clearly had a point.

  “I want to hear all of your music,” Gizelle said eagerly. “Is there more?”

  But Conall was looking at her, not at the laptop. Her face was so animated and dear. The white streaks in her dark hair were glowing in the sunlight through the French doors, and her skin was like warm velvet under his fingertips.

  He traced the line of her long neck with one finger, then let it wander further, navigating her collarbone and traveling to the enticingly low neckline of her dress. She sucked in her breath and gave a tiny whine of anticipation.

  She had given him everything.

  And there was only one kind of music he wanted to hear now.
r />   Chapter 55

  “You can’t open anything until Christmas,” Conall reminded Gizelle from where he was sitting at the end of his bed, pulling sandals on.

  “It’s so tantalizing!” she exclaimed, bouncing in place.

  Conall’s cottage—their cottage!—was filled with gifts. They didn’t fit under the tiny fake tree, or even on the desk where Conall had set it up. There were colorful wrapped boxes on the floor all around it, and on top of the wardrobe, and on the bedside table, and covering the easy chair in the corner.

  “I only have one present for you,” Gizelle said shyly. It was sitting in a place of honor in front of the plastic tree, a modest-sized box clumsily wrapped in silver paper and sporting no fewer than five glittering bows.

  “I started out with more things,” Conall reminded her. “And you have a lot of missed Christmases to make up for. It’s all fair.”

  She smiled, accepting his logic. But when she went to touch one of the smaller boxes, he stopped her. “No touching, now! My mother used to threaten to take them away if she saw fingerprints on them.”

  Gizelle froze with her fingertips almost touching the box and reluctantly withdrew them. “I don’t know how I’m going to wait two whole days,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “You stood up to my mother,” Conall reminded her. “You took a shower.”

  Gizelle considered. “Those were hard,” she agreed. “But this is harder.”

  “You’re learning to read. That’s hard.”

  “That is hard,” Gizelle conceded. “But... presents!”

  Conall laughed at her earnest excitement, and it felt so good to hear him laugh. Gizelle left the enticing gift to touch his knee and he took her hand to pull her close and kiss the laughter at the edges of her mouth.

  She scrambled back at the sound of a knock on the door.

  “It’s Scarlet,” she explained. She walked backwards so that Conall would see her face. “She’s angry.”