Free Home for Christmas: New Adult Holiday Dark Suspense Romance by Emme Rollins Page B

with it, she never would. 
     
     

Chapter Seven
    She had just missed the seven-day advance-purchase ticket price. It was a fifty dollar difference that meant she didn’t have enough money left over to stay somewhere like the local YWCA or even the one small youth hostel in the area. She hadn’t dared to go back to the video store. Instead, she’d been sleeping in cul-de-sacs and beneath underpasses.
    With the wind whipping up under her long coat, the cold was so pervasive and relentless she shivered in a permanent state of misery. Her normal body temperature became a constant fever, leaving her teeth chattering. She longed for the relative warmth that existed between two glass panes, a place that somehow had come to feel like home.
    She had headed over to do some more research about the San Francisco Art Institute and the possibility of financial aid, but she had forgotten the library had shortened hours, now that it was getting close to Christmas. She found herself out on the street again before it was even dark, facing an hour’s walk back to town.
    Last night, she had slept in the recessed doorway of the high school only a few blocks away from Maggie’s new place on Fourth Street, choosing a door facing away from the road. She spent most of the night awake, worrying about the possibility of being found and fantasizing about the relief of the video store’s vestibule around the corner.
    She knew she had been lucky with the unseasonable warmth, but she’d heard a weather report this morning that foretold temperatures tonight dropping well below freezing with the possibility of snow. This portent arrived as she trudged her way back into town, walking down a street in a small downtown area lined with fun little shops where people were taking their very last opportunity to buy gifts.
    A little girl stood in front of the bakery holding some sort of cinnamon bun that made Ginny’s stomach clench. The child turned to the woman next to her and cried, “Mommy, look, it’s snowing!” The tone was one Ginny remembered echoing like some distant memory, that awed and giddy voice which made anything around Christmas sound magical.
    Ginny looked up and saw small white flakes floating against the light of one of the lampposts. The town’s holiday decorations, a candy cane and two silver bells flocked by evergreen branches, were just starting to gather the first bit of white dust.
    The little girl had her tongue out, trying to catch the larger flakes, and her mother smiled indulgently. The woman caught Ginny watching them and commented, “Perfect timing for Christmas, isn’t it?” before she steered her daughter out of the way of shoppers and they made their way down the street.
    What was perfect timing for everyone else’s holiday felt like a warped and unjust act of God to Ginny. More snow! As she watched the mother and daughter pair retreat, something heavy settled in her belly, a pain that went deeper than hunger.
    Her indecision stopped her at the intersection. Where was she going to spend the night? She glanced back at the street scene—traffic crawling, cars looking for places to park, people milling between stores, gloved hands clutching packages or bags. It reminded her of a snow globe she had as a kid, one of those cheap plastic things you shook in order to watch the snow fall on a city street.
    She smiled at the memory. Maggie had given her that funny little globe, the one that looked so odd and stilted with all the snow gathered in clumps on the bottom. Still, in those few seconds when everything turned upside down and then righted again, when those unidentifiable little white pellets floated through liquid in a sweet simulation of snow falling, everything seemed right with the world. Ginny found herself feeling homesick.
    Maggie had asked her to come hang out with them, even spend the night, but she had refused. She knew if she spent even one night with them, she would never want to leave. It would just sap