Winter Wanderlust Complete Series



It was a goddamn Christmas miracle. I am a goddamn Christmas miracle. 


Three flights, two delays, forty-eight hours of travel time, one spilled coffee, a sprint across CDG airport, and I made it to New York City.


The doorman sends me up in the elevator to Uncle D’s penthouse apartment. What is normally a brightly lit space is nearly pitch black—it’s four am on Christmas morning, and Uncle D’s floor-to-ceiling windows are opaque, blocking the ever-present lights of the big city. The Christmas tree isn’t even lit up, although I can see the dark shape of it sulking in the corner.


I glide in, the wheels of my suitcase smoothly following behind me. Dad and Uncle D are surely asleep, and I don’t want to wake them. Uncle D is fastidious about his sleep, claiming that eight hours a night is going to help him work his magic. What magic that is, since he’s practically retired now, I don’t know.


But there is one person sleeping here that I don’t mind waking. I leave my luggage by the door, gently setting down my backpack next to it and slipping my shoes off. I walk in the opposite direction from Dad and Uncle D’s room toward the west wing of the penthouse. This side is more familiar to me; one of these bedrooms will be mine for a few days, my home in New York while I celebrate the holidays with my family. But the other bedroom is even more familiar—Nash’s room.


I gently turn the knob on the door, the soft glow from the flashlight on my phone illuminating a dark shape on the bed. I leave it on just long enough to make out the edge, Nash’s dark head of hair peeking out from under the white comforter. Nash’s bedding must be new because the last time I was here, it was navy. 


The door closes with a soft click. I tiptoe over the mattress, resting a knee on the bed, and then carefully crawling up. 

“Hey, baby,” I say gently. The body shifts next to me. Nash has always been a light sleeper, even with the blackout windows and high-end bed that he keeps now.
I lean down closer. “I finally made it. Want to welcome Christmas in the naughty way?”


Nash raises up, and I can barely see anything, but I bet he’s got the adorable, grumpy, and sleepy face that he gets when he’s been woken up. I know it pretty well after nine years of booty calls, and I know that Nash, when he fully wakes up, will be thrilled to see me, and even more thrilled with the wake-up call.


My voice turns playful, and I give the sheets a little tug. “Come on, Nash, wakey, wakey. We have a few hours before my dads wake up.”


The grip on the sheets turns firm, and a voice I definitely did not expect answers me.


“Clara?” the man in bed says to me.


“Dad?”