Free Wicked Wonderland by Lisa Whitefern Page B

“Oh, she’s like the three of us, another half fae who’s basically an orphan. We have a roster back at the North Pole that makes sure she has visitors every week of the year.”
    Half reluctantly, Nick spread a little of the caviar on a baguette and tried it. The intense saltiness assaulted his taste buds. He grabbed for the bottle and wondered if the saltiness of the caviar would lead Lilly to drink a lot. After taking another gulp of champagne, he decided to broach a question he’d wanted to ask for a very long time.
    “Speaking of family, baby, I have to wonder why you never wrote to Santa when you were a kid the way Kris and I did, asking for a family. Kris wrote to Santa from the orphanage he lived in, and I wrote to Santa when I was stuck living with my bastard of an uncle. It’s the way most half fae who’ve been abandoned get brought to Santa’s home or back to the Fae Realm.”
    Lilly flinched. “Nick, I had a family. I lived with my mom. I still have that family.” She turned her body away from his, her shoulders hunched.
    A muscle twitched in Nick’s jaw.
    Obviously wanting to diffuse the tension in the air, Kris interrupted. “While we’re catching up, I heard you were living with Cody Nixon, the violinist. Are you still involved with him?”
    Nick’s stomach tightened at Kris’s words. He hadn’t heard any such rumors himself.
    Lilly finished swallowing a bite of sushi and shook her head. She reached for the caviar and spread some on a mini baguette. “No, we broke up a year ago. He cheated on me, for one thing.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “And when I confronted him, guess who dumped whom? He told me he’d been meaning to break up with me because he’d decided he preferred slimmer women and because my life was too ‘complicated’.” Lilly glanced at Nick and blushed. “He meant my mother’s gambling and everything.”
    Nick had to admire her honesty; he’d fought with her about her mother enough times, even during the brief period when they were happily dating. Even now, thoughts of her mother’s selfish behavior burned him. He couldn’t tolerate seeing her used by her adoptive mother for the money she could earn. But he’d fought with her enough about that issue. “I’m sorry to hear your ex-boyfriend was such a prick.”
    Lilly bit into a baguette, then took another sip of champagne and paused. Nick knew her well enough to recognize she was reluctant to tell him something. Finally, she whispered, “He couldn’t handle anything about my life, to be honest. He couldn’t handle the fact I was being stalked, the constant vandalism of our apartment…”
    “What?” Nick felt like someone had knocked the wind out of him. He remembered the damage done to her dorm room twice in college; some asshole stalker and vandal had trashed Lilly’s dorm and left nasty messages calling her a bitch and a whore on the walls. The bastard had never been caught.
    “Are you telling me that stalker you had came back?”
    She rolled her eyes. “The stalker never left, Nick. I’ve been receiving odd messages from the time I was eight years old. Before that, someone tried to drown me at the lake one Christmas holiday when I was seven. I survived, but they never found out who pulled me under. The police decided it was one of the kids I was playing with, but they couldn’t get a confession out of anyone or any clear witness statements.” Lilly set her champagne flute down on the seat and turned toward him. “This stuff is really not something I want to talk about right now. Seriously. I’m trying to have fun here.”
    “At least tell me they finally caught the son of a bitch.”
    “No. He’s as slippery as an eel. And to tell the truth, my stalker has ruined every relationship I’ve tried to have. Cody was totally creeped out by him. The stalker even sent us videos he’d made of Cody and me together.”
    Rage coiled in Nick’s gut, but he crushed it with his will so as not to scare her.