Silent Night: Vampire Holiday Romance (The Night Songs Collection Book 4)

by Strassel, Kristen

  Sleep almost came easily a thousand times, but then my mind snapped back to my mom. I dreamt that I had to do the surgery on her, and no one would tell me what to do, no matter how much I asked. And they didn’t give her anesthesia. The ever present beeping from work sped up to signal danger, but no one seemed to care but me. A couple times, I woke myself up pleading for help.

  Aidan slept through the whole thing.

  Eventually, I just gave up. I had too much nervous energy. I actually considered going for a run, but I only ran when people were chasing me. I ransacked the cabinets, thanking God when I found a box of brownie mix. I ate brownie batter straight from the bowl, then felt guilty so I baked the rest, eating half the pan before they even cooled.

  I’d forgotten all about the mess I left in the kitchen until Aidan shuffled out there to make his first tea of the evening. He burst out laughing.

  “Sorry!” I rushed around him to clean up. I’d gotten lost binge watching a design show that Memere and I used to like. In my chocolate coma, I could almost forget she wasn’t with me anymore.

  “Don’t be.” He stopped my hand mid-wipe on the counter. “Were the brownies good, at least?”

  “Delicious.”

  “You all right?” He raised an eyebrow. “You look exhausted.”

  I took a deep breath, my body slumping under the weight of my secret. “No. My mother got admitted to my department last night.”

  “The ICU?” His eyebrows disappeared under his rumpled hair. “Shit.”

  “She’s in bad shape.” My voice broke. “She was in a car accident, and her heart stopped, but they revived her.”

  Aidan wrapped his arms around me, holding me close as I broke down. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into my hair, rubbing my back.

  “I don’t even know what she was doing in Cambridge.” I gulped air down when I stopped crying. “Last I knew, she lived in Brockton. And she never has a car or anything. That was always her excuse why she couldn’t come see me.”

  Aidan shrugged. “Maybe she got one.”

  “But still. She wasn’t in it, as far as I know. They didn’t say car accident. Just that she got hit by a car.”

  “Maybe she was looking for you.”

  “Don’t say that!” I broke down all over again, slumping against Aidan, and he had to hold me up so I didn’t slide down to the floor. “Don’t make this my fault.”

  I fell to my knees anyway, dragging Aidan down with me. He didn’t say anything, he just let me cry against his shoulder until I had nothing else to give.

  “Listen to me, Kyndra.” Aidan took my face in hands and looked into my sore and swollen eyes. “Whatever happened to your mother is not your fault. You didn’t make her the way she is. She did.”

  “But she’s never wanted me.” My words were just air, no sound. Saying those words that I’d held inside of me all of my life hit me like a sledgehammer in the gut. “Why now?”

  Aidan squeezed his eyes closed. He was struggling with this, too. “I won’t make excuses for her bad decisions.” His voice wasn’t much louder than mine. “Because I can’t imagine what kind of person could abandon their child.”

  “I couldn’t make her love me.” My bones all felt like jelly. “She would rather be drunk than spend time with me.”

  Leaning in closer to me, Aidan shook his head against my hair. “You deserve so much better than that.”

  I pulled away. “I know that.” With him, with Memere, I had it. But I wanted it from my mother, damn it. The person who should be there for me no matter what, above everything. Just because she couldn’t do it for me, didn’t mean I couldn’t do it for her. “But I can’t let her die.”

  Twenty-Eight

  All of the sudden, I had this great idea. I sat up straighter, wiped my face with the back of my sleeve, and pulled my hair away from my face behind my shoulders.

  “You can help her.” My face brightened, and for the first time since I walked into that hospital room I felt hopeful. “You can make her like you.”

  I still had a hard time with the word vampire. Aidan was flesh and blood, and even though I’d let him convince me to swap blood with him when we had sex, I still preferred to think of it as a kinky little secret. Aidan had to be human. The most important part of my life had to be real.

  Aidan saved me from Matt, but we didn’t talk about that. So far, no one had come looking for Aidan in connection to Matt’s death. Funny what a low priority the police put on solving that crime. Aidan had done them a favor. Everything Aidan did made my life better. He had truly been a gift from God--delivered to me in a church.

  There were sacrifices I was willing to make for my happiness. Now, I asked him what he was willing to do to make me happy.

  “I can’t do that, my love.” He smiled sadly and traced his finger along my jaw.

  “Why not?” I scrambled up to my feet, not wanting him to touch me. “If you’re a vampire, you can save her. You can make her live forever.”

  Aidan stood as well, following me into the living room. “So she can be rewarded for a life of terrible behavior? So she can make you feel horrible about yourself for the rest of your life? Why would you even want that, Kyndra?”

  “Because.” I flopped down into Aidan’s chair, pouting. I actually needed to think about why I wanted that. He was so right, but in my fantasy, my mom would see all the mistakes she made if she had a second chance. She could start over, clean. She’d actually be my mother. “It would be better this time.”

  Aidan sank to his knees in front of me and took both of my hands in his. I paid special attention to his icy fingers, running my fingers from tip to palm. His hands were smooth, since the only manual labor they saw was on a keyboard, his nails clipped short and neat. No signs of wear or age. Almost too perfect.

  I shook my head, and pushed the thoughts out of my head. I was sick of everything sucking so incredibly bad, so I just wasn’t going to deal with it anymore. Except for my mom. That I had to deal with.

  “It won’t.” Aidan’s head bowed.

  “But I want it to!” I stamped my feet, his whole body bobbed in response. “Why can’t she just do what she’s supposed to? If you are her master, you can make her do the right thing. Please.”

  “I’m not God.” Aidan sounded so sad. “You have to let Him do his work.”

  “But you killed Matt.” I pushed him away from me and hugged my knees to my chest. “You just want to take everyone away from me.”

  “Kyndra, that’s not true.” Now his words were clipped, angry. “If you could have seen what I walked in on that night, you wouldn’t have forgiven me for doing any less. He didn’t deserve to live.”

  “Are you saying that about my mother?” I was crying again. “Because it’s not true.”

  “It’s not my decision to make.” Aidan tried to sound soothing, reaching out to touch my leg but I jumped back away from him.

  “I think you aren’t what you say you are.” I wanted my words to hurt him as much as his were hurting me. “That’s why you won’t do it. If you cared about me, you’d---“

  This time he grabbed me, and held me tightly. “Kyndra.” Back to angry. I looked up at him out of the corner of my eyes, I sucked in a hard breath and didn’t try to struggle. His eyes were red.

  Red. Just like I swore they were the night he killed Matt.

  “I can’t make you accept anything you’re not prepared to believe. And that’s okay. But I will do my damndest to make sure you are safe and happy, even if we don’t agree on my methods.”

  I nodded, and his grip didn’t loosen.

  “I will do anything to keep you in my life,” he continued. “But I won’t save your mother.”

  My whole body went numb. Aidan’s hands were still holding me in place, but I didn’t feel them anymore. I stared straight ahead, letting his words sink in.

  If she didn’t make it, which wasn’t going to happen, because even after everything that had happened to me I still stubbornly believe
d in happy endings, I would really be an orphan. I’d belong to no one, except Aidan.

  My phone buzzed from the coffee table, snapping me back to reality.

  “Here,” Aidan handed me the phone, acting like the last hour hadn’t even happened. Like we were some normal, happy couple. It was Stephanie, asking me to bring the college catalog again tonight. And shockingly, it was time for work.

  “Thanks.” The corners of my mouth tried to turn upward, playing his game. I wanted a fantasy, I guess I just couldn’t choose the one I got.

  Twenty-Nine

  The hallway stretched on forever between the elevator and the ICU. Every step echoed, and I had to convince myself to keep moving forward. Not to run away.

  So much could happen in one day, and considering my track record, I wasn’t expecting good news to greet me when I walked into the unit. But I prayed for it, anyway.

  “Hey Kyndra,” Mikhail, one of the interns at the desk greeted me, flashing his perfect smile. I smiled back, heat rising in my cheeks. He was so good looking it bordered on being distracting, but I wasn’t going to feed in to it like every other straight female working on this floor. Not that he didn’t eat it all up, but I didn’t want to make him think I was looking for more. I’d been working with him a week and already rumors flew around the break room in loud whispers. A few of the nurses had seen him outside of the hospital, and were anxious to go back for more.

  Shift change filled the locker room with people and laughter. I let out the breath I’d been holding ever since I’d left the elevator. It seemed like a normal night. Good. I shoved my things in my locker, and then went back out to the desk area to find Stephanie.

  “You all right?” she asked. “You look like you’re not feeling great. If you’re sick, this isn’t the best place to be.”

  “I’m fine.” I had to convince myself of it, too. “Just a tough night.”

  “Fighting with your boyfriend?” Stephanie examined my face and frowned. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “Something like that.” Couldn’t I get away from it? “What’s happening here tonight?”

  “Not much, it looks like.” Stephanie’s face brightened. “No new patients, everyone from last night is still here.

  That was good news. My mom was still alive, even if she still was in intensive care. We could work with alive.

  “That lady who came in last night had surgery today,” she continued.

  “Joanna?” I asked, probably way too hopefully.

  Stephanie raised an eyebrow. Reel it back, I told myself. Act normal. “Yeah. There were some complications, it looks like she’s a pretty heavy drinker. Her kidneys and liver are having a hard time processing the medicine and the anesthesia. They couldn’t take her into surgery until later this afternoon because they had to let her sober up.”

  None of this was a surprise to me, but I had to pretend I was hearing all of it for the first time. All the things I could tell the staff that might help. But would take me right out of the loop. My mom was a hot mess, and she made no effort to hide it. The doctors would figure out what they needed to know without me saying a word.

  My heart pounded so hard I was afraid that Stephanie might actually be able to hear it. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we aren’t out of the woods with her yet. They’re keeping her pretty heavily medicated so they can regulate things, and we’re going to have to watch her carefully. It might start to cause stress on the rest of her organs.”

  I nodded, like I agreed. Problem was, I did. With all the wrong parts of this conversation. I swallowed hard and put on my best game face. “How’s everyone else doing?”

  Stephanie looked through the day’s notes. “Not bad. Holding steady. Arthur is getting much better.” Arthur was the elderly man whose wife hadn’t left his side, even overnight. He’d had a quadruple bypass and was recovering with us. On our shift, he mostly slept, but when he was awake, he kept trying to talk the nurses into bringing him pizza and letting him smoke. He flirted with us, and his wife was constantly trying to get him to behave.

  “Awesome. They’re so cute. I’ll kind of miss them.”

  “I miss the patients, too. But we never want them to stay with us.” Stephanie got up. “Ready for the first round?”

  “Let’s do it.” I got up and followed her into room one. We were starting to really get into the flow of our routine together. Stephanie took the lead and I did whatever she needed me to do. Of course, she was an actual nurse, so she had a lot more responsibility than I did. She could dispense medication, and adjust the machines. I just cleaned up. It might not sound like much, but it was a great learning experience. For the first time in a long time, I felt needed. I listened in and paid attention to what she did, trying to guess her next move. Any time I was right, I was psyched.

  Our routine fell apart when we made it to my mom’s room.

  “Kyndra! Pay attention. I need you to help me roll her over so we can change the sheets.”

  “Sorry.” I stared at my mother, trying to communicate with her without words. She looked worse than she did last night. Her bruises from the accident had bloomed in to ugly purple blotches, and she had more bandages and tubes keeping her together. “Be careful.”

  Stephanie stopped changing one of my mother’s dressings to look up in me with half surprise, half disgust. “Of course I’m being careful.”

  “I know.” I backpedaled and made up something fast. “I didn’t have a good hold on her.”

  We finished working with my mom without saying anything else to each other. “Do you want to take a break?” Stephanie asked me once we finished.

  “Okay.” Shit, was I in trouble? Air sounded good. She followed me to the break room, and I grabbed my jacket.

  Stephanie opened her locker, fished through her purse, and handed me some money. “Could you get me a coffee? A medium regular? And get yourself something, too. I think it will make you feel better.”

  As nice as she was being, Stephanie’s message was loud and clear: I’d fucked up. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Kyndra,” she called to me before I left the locker room. “You can’t let yourself get attached. You’ll drive yourself crazy in no time.”

  I nodded, and her words echoed in my head the whole walk to Dunkins. Stephanie had no idea how right on she was.

  I knew she meant Joanna, my mom, but she fucking nailed it for Aidan, too.

  Thirty

  My mom stayed with us the next couple of nights, and each shift, my acting job got a little better. The longer she stayed unconscious, the more I could pretend she was just like any other patient we had on the floor.

  But the longer she stayed unconscious, the worse her chances got for a full recovery. Those are the things that no one ever talked about. We always remained hopeful that everyone could walk out of the hospital, good as new. Like a used car rolling off the lot.

  Now that I had the hang of things in ICU, I thought it might be my favorite unit to be in. Unfortunately, our patients stayed with us longer and needed more from us, but that’s what I liked. I was filthy and exhausted by the end of each shift, but I felt like I was really making a difference. Even though I got better at hiding my concern for my mom, I got much better at picking up on what was going on with all of the patients.

  That was one thing I could thank my mom for my whole life; having to read between the lines to figure out what no one wanted to tell me.

  It helped that Stephanie and I hit it off. Even though I definitely knew she was my boss, she never made me feel like I was less than her, or still just learning. It was totally the opposite of working at the mall, when I could never do anything right. She made me feel like I was right where I belonged. And my mom being here, it was like a sign from God this is what I was supposed to be doing. Who could take better care of her than me? Even if I couldn’t do anything to blow my cover, I felt like just my being here helped her.

  Had she been brought to any other hospital, I�
��d have no idea she was in such bad shape. I wondered if anyone would even bother to tell me, if they could get in touch with me. My confidence in my decision to cut ties with my family always wavered, but in a way, maybe I was better off not knowing they were trying to get in touch with me. Or not.

  Arthur became well enough to be moved to another unit. It was strange to walk past the empty room, and see the bed crisply made, waiting for the next disaster. But on the other hand, I was thankful no one needed it.

  One less person to take care of freed up a lot of time. The night seemed too long. A few of the nurses sat in a semi-circle around Mikhail the intern, laughing at everything he said, funny or not. Mikhail perched on the desk, eating up all the attention.

  I sunk into one of the patient chairs with a beat up copy of an Allison Duprois book.

  Stephanie pushed back the cover of the book to see what I was reading. “Ooh, I love those!” I relaxed, it still didn’t feel right to read at work. “I think I’ve read every single one of them.”

  I almost gushed about Aidan, but then I remembered the pen name, and I would sound crazy if I referred to my boyfriend as a woman well into middle age. I’d mentioned he was a writer before, but even I had a problem with the timeline of the books in relation to what I saw. I didn’t think I could make a convincing argument. It never worked in my favor to let on the person who was my support system could be a little bit less than sane.

  “I feel like I’ve lived these books.” Well, according to Aidan, I sort of had.

  Stephanie raised her eyebrow but didn’t say anything. After all, the books were all set before we were born, and mostly in Canada. I’d finally picked A Piece of My Heart back up to finish.

  The story had shifted to London. The head vampire, Talis, was pissed at David for shunning her once he realized she could never replace Marielle for him. Even though he created another vampire for her, Cash, Talis tortured the newborn for not being David. Truly an evil genius, she’d come up with new and inventive ways to make Cash suffer for his affections toward her. This time, she’d convinced English authorities that Cash was insane and had him admitted to Bethlem Hospital. At this point of the book, she’d gone to visit him, taunting him and running her fingers along his open, festering wounds through the bars of the cell he was held captive in, then licking her fingers clean.