Russian Roulette: Family secrets [2021 version]

Ch. 43: Eh?

Cracker had had the weirdest days of his life.

Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but they were in the top ten at least.

He and Alyssa had stayed with his parents for a day and a half and would meet with Gareth and Mackenzie the following morning to go back home.

Cracker stood at the window with his coffee and watched Alyssa and his dad discuss how to decorate the Christmas tree.

How was that for surreal?

Alyssa kept saying that it did not need to look like something from a department store, and that the colors could be mixed. Old and new ornaments. Some cheap and homemade, some fancy and store-bought. There could be tinsel and big bows. Little twinkle lights or big colored lights. It did not matter. What mattered was the heart that had gone into the decorating.

Senior smiled and nodded, taking the box of ornaments Alyssa had found from the days of Christmases past. Cracker wanted to sink into the ground when Senior held up an ugly clay monstrosity, which Cracker had made in preschool.

Supposedly, it was a reindeer.

Sadly, it looked more like a reindeer that had got hit by a car, run through a grinder, and put back together by a blind man with an epileptic seizure. Yeah, arts and crafts - not his forte.

Whatever the burp of clay looked like, it made Alyssa look at him with love in her eyes.

He could look at her all day.

Every day.

The way the light seemed to always catch her blonde hair, making it look like something out of a Disney movie, made his fingers itch to touch it all the freaking time. Her eyes seemed like a generic brown at first sight, but up close she had little specs of green and gold in them. Like looking at a galaxy of stars around a black sun, each time something new twinkled at him, making him lost.

Cracker could admit it. He was superficial in assessing her body. To him, it was a nice body. It was not in her being thin with perky breasts and a great ass. That was actually not his type. Her body was merely the package. What attracted him was inside. With that came a natural appreciation for her looks.

What made him perk up every time was in her intelligence, that sweet insecurity in her scars from the past, where she had gotten kicked down for being who she was. He loved her fighting spirit and her acceptance of him and the people around them. She was a kind soul, loyal, and the worst cook in history.

Yet, he had dutifully eaten whatever horrors she had cooked up.

God, that woman had him by the heartstrings.

There was just something about her.

His parents loved her too. They had fawned over her accomplishments and how intelligent, sweet, and lovely she was. She was instant family to them, not a snooty upper-class remark in sight. Not anything negative at all about her or the place she held in his life.

He was a little shocked by that.

After his mother's small display of payback when they had arrived, Bella had been all sunshine and the mother he remembered. Senior had proved a little tougher. He had treated Alyssa with perfect manners, and Cracker with overbearing hostility most of the time on the first day. He had engaged in the conversation and tried to accept the name Cracker. Luckily, Alyssa had made that a house rule, and they had followed her lead.

The first evening after dinner, Senior had taken him to his study while the women discussed nail polish or whatever.

Jesus fucking Christ, the ripping of a new one he had received.