Home for the Holidays: Mr Frosty Pants, Mr Naughty List Read online

  Home for the Holidays Box Set

  Mr Frosty Pants

  Mr Naughty List

  By Leta Blake

  Copyright © 2020 by Leta Blake Books for Home for the Holidays Box Set

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental or inspirational. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Kindle Edition

  First Digital Edition of Mr Frosty Pants, 2018

  First Digital Edition of Mr Naughty List, 2019

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Mr. Frosty Pants

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Mr. Naughty List

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About Smoky Mountain Dreams

  About Training Season

  About Any Given Lifetime

  Gay Romance Newsletter

  Leta Blake on Patreon

  Other Books by Leta Blake

  About the Author

  Mr. Frosty Pants

  (Home for the Holidays #1)

  By Leta Blake

  An Original Publication from Leta Blake Books

  Mr. Frosty Pants

  Written and published by Leta Blake

  Cover by Dar Albert

  Formatted by BB eBooks

  Copyright © 2018 by Leta Blake Books

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental or inspirational. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Kindle Edition

  First Digital Edition, 2018

  For Emmy and Tim

  Chapter One

  If Casey Stevens ignored the gaudy multicolored Christmas lights strewn through the bushes and trees—and the massive air-blown, glowing Santa popping in and out of a big, green box in the front yard—his old house looked the same as it had before they moved out. Although his dad would suck his teeth in disapproval if he saw how the new owners had decorated for the holidays.

  All Casey’s life, Jonathan Stevens had insisted on keeping Christmas “classy”: single, white electric candles in each window, expensive greenery on the window sills, and a big wreath on the front door. To Casey’s dad, strings of lights all over the house were the epitome of tackiness, and colored ones? Well, they were downright trashy.

  Casey slowed his Lexus RX—last year’s Christmas present from his parents—as he passed his old home. Nostalgia dug its nails into him with a bittersweet grip. His folks had moved out of the upwardly mobile Manor Crest neighborhood and into the uber-uppercrust Pearlwood community the autumn after he’d left for NYU. This was his first visit to Knoxville in almost four years, and his folks’ new neighborhood seemed nice enough, full of shimmering near-palaces, but it didn’t satisfy him or feel like home. Not the way the old Manor Crest house did.

  In the new house, Casey didn’t have his own bedroom anymore. Instead, he had a generic, perfectly appointed guest room to crash in, complete with cream walls, cream bedspread, and cream carpet. Impersonal and threatening in its purity, it was nothing at all like the messy room in the Manor Crest house where he’d kicked back to watch YouTube videos of cats climbing into boxes and squirrels raiding bird feeders. The place where he’d first jerked off, fretted about the fact that it’d been to thoughts of Joel, and coped with the angst of falling in love for the first (and only) time.

  Leaving his former house behind, Casey drove over the next hill, his eyes gobbling up the old, familiar sights. These were the streets he’d biked on as a kid, the houses he’d passed every day on the way to the bus stop, and the neighbors he’d ultimately lost track of.

  He noticed Mrs. Weinstein had put her menorah in the window like she did every year. And Mr. Maples had put out his giant, glowing Nativity scene again. The same one Casey and Joel had stolen the baby Jesus from during their senior year. They’d hidden it in Joel’s garage for a night or two and then brought it back to Mr. Maples’s yard on Christmas Eve wrapped in a big, red bow.

  Casey’s stomach fluttered remembering the way Joel had laughed as they’d run off into the cover of night, leaving the glowing baby Jesus behind where he belonged. Joel’s slanted smile had glinted like a knife in the darkness.

  Joel.

  Casey stopped the car and gazed longer at Mr. Maples’s nearly life-size Nativity scene. The shining Mary was pretty with her long, brown, painted-on hair and blue painted-on dress. Her rosy, holy lips were open in astonished joy as she gazed down at the child in the manger.

  Casey’s cheeks heated. Those were the lips he’d stupidly kissed “for practice” on Joel’s dare the night they’d stolen the Christ child. Joel had knelt solemnly by the manger, his pale skin glowing and dark hair messy, clutching the baby Jesus in his arms as he’d watched Casey’s clumsy attempt with hot eyes. Casey would never forget how his adorably asymmetrical face had lost all its usual crabby irritation.

  A shiver shot up Casey’s spine like it always did whenever he thought of that night: the clarity of feeling in Joel’s shining gaze. He’d looked holy too—holier than Mary even—lit from below by the glowing, empty manger.

  In that moment, Casey had almost
let himself think…

  Yes, for a second he’d really believed it was possible that his own tender feelings were returned. There’d been something so undeniable in Joel’s eyes, something he’d never seen there before and never let himself look for again.

  God, Joel’s eyes.

  During an elective poetry class at NYU, he’d tried to describe them once. The best he’d come up with was a sad metaphor describing Joel’s eyes as akin to muddy water—dark, reflective but clear.

  Obviously that poem never saw the light of day. He was better at ad copy than whimsical explorations of feelings and fanciful descriptions of nature. Poetry class had turned out like life in general for Casey: an exercise in pretending to show everything while actually showing as little as possible.

  Which was why he was getting a degree in marketing. He could shine up shit like no one else. Maybe it was because when it came to ad copy, design, and branding assignments, he actually wanted to draw people in. In day-to-day life, he’d learned long ago that to “keep up appearances,” he had to hold people at arm’s length.

  Ann, his therapist in New York, said he was a master at presenting a smooth, likable façade instead of showing his raw humanity. And he agreed. There was a reason for that, after all. He’d been brought up in a household that prioritized image over reality, and it wasn’t like anyone was clamoring to know his personal shit anyway—not his parents, not his acquaintances at NYU, and hardly any of the guys he’d dated.

  Even coming out hadn’t changed how alone he felt. There was something holding him back, keeping him from connecting. Something he was bound and determined to change because that was another issue he was working on with Ann: Coming to terms with the fact that at twenty-two, he no longer had anyone to blame but himself for his disconnected loneliness.

  The fact was, there’d only ever been one person he’d ever been tempted to be entirely authentic with, even if he died from the humiliation of it. But he’d chickened out and pushed Joel away with both hands.

  Putting the car back in gear, he eased past Mr. Maples’s Nativity scene and then past Mrs. Westfield’s gold-bow-and-holly-encrusted house—keeping it classy too, he guessed. Snowflakes drifted in hazy circles, flecking his windshield. Not enough to turn on his wipers and definitely not enough to stick.

  Just the usual Tennessee tease.

  He winced, thinking of his ex-boyfriend Theo packing up the small box of things he’d kept at Casey’s apartment. “Being with you is just a tease of the real thing, babe. You don’t love me. You act like you do, but you don’t.” Theo had run his hand through the fuzzy black curls on top of his head, sighing in frustration. “To be fair, I don’t love you either. We both deserve someone who wants more than ‘this doesn’t suck.’” He’d smiled sympathetically, his white teeth shining starkly against his dark complexion. “We deserve someone we’re crazy about.”

  He’d had a point. Casey hadn’t even cried when Theo left for good, and he supposed that said something.

  No, it said everything.

  It’d been six months since Theo put a definitive end to their year-long, off-and-on relationship. Casey didn’t really miss him so much as he missed knowing there was someone he could rely on to hang out with every weekend. Someone that meant Friday and Saturday nights were handled. Someone he enjoyed sexually and liked as a person, even if he wasn’t in love. In a city as big and bustling as New York, the appearance of intimacy was something. It beat being alone.

  At this point in his senior year, he was ready to agree with Ann that his parents had done him a disservice in getting him an apartment instead of letting him live in the dorms. He’d at least have gotten to know more people in a communal situation. Probably. But Jonathan Stevens wouldn’t have it. Not when he could afford “better.” Not for his son.

  But now, months after his and Theo’s breakup, Casey’s ridiculously expensive one-bedroom apartment, just a few blocks from busy Washington Square, felt so lonely that, despite Ann’s warnings that he might regret it, he’d been eager to accept his mom and dad’s invitation to come home for Christmas break. Spending time with his family, putting up the tree, catching up with old acquaintances, and being back home in Knoxville again? It seemed like it would be a great change from the isolation of his life at college.

  Until yesterday when he’d actually arrived after a tedious, twelve-hour car ride—something he’d rebelliously insisted on rather than accept his father’s offer to foot a ridiculously expensive, last-minute plane ticket—and discovered his parents’ new house wasn’t home at all.

  God, he knew he shouldn’t complain. So many people struggled and did without, and he was lucky as hell his parents had money. It was his own fault he was lonely. Maybe he was just broken inside. Maybe he was just wrong, and all the therapy in the world wouldn’t fix him.

  Maybe Joel was far better off without him.

  Breathing against the ache in his chest, Casey braked by the stop sign where he’d shivered on cold mornings waiting for the school bus. He’d waited there with Joel, of course.

  He sighed and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He was set to graduate from NYU in May. It’d been almost four years since he’d said goodbye to Joel. And yet he still couldn’t move on with his life. They’d never even been together! Joel had dated girls for fuck’s sake. Whatever Casey felt, it was his own burden to bear, and it was ludicrous.

  Ann said he needed to either let the past go or confront it head on. When he’d told her he was taking up his parents on their invite, she’d replied, “If you insist on returning to the scene of the crime, now’s as good a time as any to be more transparent with the people in your life, Casey. Consider it.” He’d known she was talking about his folks, but when he considered being transparent with anyone, the only person he could think about was Joel.

  He rounded the corner and entered Belmont Hills, the neighborhood behind Manor Crest, built twenty years before it. The houses there were smaller and more rundown, and the neighborhood amenities existed in a state of disrepair. The playground and tennis courts were overrun with weeds and punctuated with litter. The swing set had no swings to speak of, and the pool was roped off with yellow caution tape. Not much different than when Casey had last driven through four years ago.

  He took a deep breath as he turned onto Elder Lane and passed a multicolored blizzard of over-the-top Christmas joy hosted by the house on the corner. He was almost there. Icicle lights dripped from the rooflines of the ranch style home next to Joel’s dad’s place.

  One more driveway to go…

  Casey pulled in front of the split-level house in need of a paint job. He gripped the wheel and swallowed hard, biting down on the inside of his cheek.

  The garage door was open, exposing the place where Casey used to sit on the cold, hard concrete floor to watch Joel practice his bass guitar. But now the interior was packed with children’s toys: tricycles, bikes, balls, and scooters galore, as well as a big, pink toy kitchenette and a chalkboard. Holy shit, did Joel have kids? His heart clenched hard.

  But then two lanky teenagers, a blond girl and boy, came bursting through the front door with unopened boxes of Christmas lights tucked under their arms and pouty expressions on their faces. A flustered woman followed with a stepladder, pointing at the porch roof and directing them with swooping motions of her arms.

  After a few moments, she turned to stare curiously at Casey’s car lingering by the curb. When a man came out to join them, he kissed the woman, and she motioned at Casey. His heart lurched, and he swallowed against the lump in his throat, easing his foot off the brake.

  It was clear. Joel didn’t live here anymore.

  It’d been foolish to think he would still be in his father’s old house. Why would he be? It’d been nearly four years, and he was a grown man now. He’d probably gotten married or at least moved into a place of his own. But deep down, Casey had always assumed Charlie Vreeland, Joel’s dad, would still live in the house, that he’d be there
forever as a tether to the days when Joel and Casey had hopped the fence between their backyards, violating their fathers’ common belief that Manor Crest boys and Belmont Hills boys shouldn’t play together.

  Wiping at his face, annoyed by the sting of unwanted, stupid tears, Casey headed toward the corner of Belview Drive. There was just one more thing he wanted to see before he drove back to his parents’ house. He hoped it was still there. It had to be. It was the one thing in the world that had been theirs alone.

  The bench.

  But as he approached what used to be the empty lot he and Joel had claimed, his stomach dropped. Someone had cleared the trees to make way for a new house going up. And, from what he could see, the wood-and-iron bench—their bench—on the formerly wooded lot was gone. His breath caught. The bench where they’d hung out to smoke Joel’s stolen cigarettes. The bench Joel had only ever shared with him. Their secret. Gone.

  He’d never again sit on the garage floor and watch Joel play bass.

  He’d never again sit beside him on their bench, as they smoked cigarettes and eyed each other.

  He’d never again crawl through Joel’s window after his dad had gone to sleep and huddle with him in his twin-size bed listening to a Gaslight Anthem album and aching all over with unexpressed feelings.

  Never ever. It was done. Over.

  Gone.

  Minutes passed. He straightened up and wiped again at his traitorous eyes. The snow came down harder, threatening to stick. He flipped on the radio, his chest tight and throat aching.

  If he could change the past, he would. He’d do everything differently. Maybe Joel wouldn’t have ever cared for him that way, but Casey could at least have had Joel in his life as a friend. And that would have been something, wouldn’t it? Better than the big, fat nothing he had now.

  Leaving Belmont Hills and heading back toward his folks’ new place, he turned up the radio. A barrage of Christmas songs washed over him—bells and harps, familiar choruses and verses—but none of them touched him. He carefully stuffed his memories of Joel back into the box he’d built for them in his heart. But they didn’t seem to fit inside anymore. They poked out with sharp, rough edges.