𝘼𝙁𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝙒𝙀 𝘾𝙍𝘼𝙎𝙃𝙀𝘿 ↣ 𝙊𝙉𝙀 𝘿𝙄𝙍𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉

23. NAUGHTY LIST

I never liked Christmas before the boys.

It was, in essence, another reminder of the childhood I missed out on. I didn't get a stocking with my name on it, I never left cookies out for Santa Clause, I didn't bounce on my parents bed in the morning to wake them up.

If I was at the orphanage during Christmas, I got a present that the church donated.

If I was placed somewhere, it varied. Sometimes I would be ignored, sometimes I wouldn't even know it was Christmas.

My first Christmas with the boys was eight years ago. We were on tour. It was a two-in-one kind of deal, since Louis' birthday was Christmas Eve. We made hot chocolate from packets and drank it out of mugs we had gotten for each other.

The boys didn't know about much of my past at that point. I didn't tell them that it was the first time I had a family Christmas.

I didn't tell them, but I was sure that they knew.

On Christmas Eve, Keenan and I were baking cookies.

"You're sure peanut butter is his favorite?" Keenan checked.

"I asked him," I said. "It's his favorite."

Keenan and I decided that in the midst of our Christmas cookies, we were going to bake a batch of Louis' favorite. You know, for his birthday.

Louis and Karter left half an hour ago. They were on a mission to pick up Keenan's Christmas gift. Keenan didn't know what it was, obviously.

But I did.

"Are the boys coming over tomorrow?" Keenan asked. I cracked an egg into a bowl and then looked over at her.

"I think they're all planning on going home to their families. Niall's going to Ireland, Zayn's going to Bradford, Liam's going to Wolverhampton and Harry's going to Cheshire."

"Louis doesn't want to go visit his sisters?"

"I'm sure he does, but we decided it would be best to just bunk down and have Christmas here instead."

"Is it because Karter and I are here?" Keenan asked.

"A little bit, yeah," I said, even though that was the biggest part, "it's your first Christmas with us, you know? Better to spend it here at home as a family."

Keenan nodded her head at that. I realized I had just spit two very complicated words at her. Home and family.

"How come you don't talk about Niall's family? Or, like, when you do, you call them his family and not your family. Aren't your parents the same?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I didn't grow up with them or anything. I stayed there for a few nights with Niall when I was sixteen, and I didn't go back until spring break of my sophomore year of college."

"Why?"

"That's a complicated thing," I said. Keenan nodded her head, because she understood complicated. "Niall's mom left me at a fire station. That was a hard thing for me to come to terms with when I was growing up. It really made me hate her, you know, for putting me into that situation."

"That makes sense," Keenan said.

"It took a lot of growing up on my part to move past all of that. I don't think I've forgiven her, because I can't; not for that. But I don't have to waste energy hating her either."

"Should I hate my dad?" Keenan asked. I looked over at her again. She was wisking dry ingredients, avoiding eye contact with me.

"That's not my decision to make," I said finally.