Draft version - Russian Roulette - Family secrets

Ch. 120: Eh?

It had been the weirdest days of his life.

Ok, that might have been an exaggeration, but they were in the top 10 at least.

They had been there for a day and a half and were going to meet with Gareth and Mackenzie the following morning to go back home.

Cracker stood at the window with his coffee watching 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, 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 had smiled and nodded taking the box of ornaments Alyssa had found from the days of Christmases past. Cracker had 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 been hit by a car, run through a grinder and put back together by a blind man with an epileptic seizure.

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, when up close there were little specs of green and gold in them. It was 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 accessing 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. It was the package what he was attracted to was inside, with that came a natural appreciation for her looks.

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

Yet, he dutifully ate whatever horrors she cooked up.

God, that woman had him by the heartstrings.

There was just something about her.

His parents loved her, they had been fawning 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 at 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 been a little tougher. He had treated Alyssa with perfect manners and Cracker with overbearing hostility most of the time the first day. He had been engaging in the conversation and tried to accept the name Cracker, luckily Alyssa had made that a house rule and they had followed her lead.

Senior had taken him to his study after dinner while the women were discussing nail polish or whatever.

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