Four Letters Christmas Read online

ALSO BY CHRISTINA CHANNELLE

  Four Letters Series

  Those Four Letter Words

  Jaded Little Lies

  Blood Crave Series

  Dahlia

  Fallen Tears

  Rowan

  Sage

  Also by Christina Channelle

  Dealing With It (Two Short Stories)

  Four Letters in Reverse

  Coming Soon

  Never Letting Go (Coming April 2016)

  Four Letters in Reverse, Volume 2 (Coming Spring 2016)

  Love, Lies, X’s and O’s (Coming Fall 2016)

  Check out Jade’s beginnings with a sneak peek of Those Four Letter Words.

  …

  THE POWER OF THREE.

  Three.

  It was the number of people in my life that I cared for more than life itself.

  Yes, there was my mother and father but they didn’t count. It was expected of me to love them, and occasionally despise them for some of their less than perfect choices in life. But you know, there was the whole unconditional love, providing food and shelter, and a wonderful safe environment for their offspring that sort of canceled out the hate.

  Yup, that was my ma and pops.

  But it always seemed as if three was the amount of people I would give my heart to at any given moment in time. The people might change now and again but the number always seemed to stay the same.

  That was deep … wasn’t it?

  When I was five, it was Bryn, Reed and Allison. But then Allison moved away so it became Bryn, Reed and Melissa when I was ten. At fifteen, it turned into Bryn, Reed and Nina.

  Then it was Bryn, Nina and Connor.

  Bryn, or rather B as I liked to call him, was my brother. He was my best friend even though he was five years older. Usually brothers ignore their younger siblings but he was different. He didn’t think of me as a nuisance, this pest that followed him around wherever he went. No, he loved me and protected me—always had since I was a little girl. And although eighteen and perfectly capable of fighting my own battles, that definitely hadn’t changed much. Though there were a lot of bumps in the road along the way.

  I guess you could say we took care of each other.

  Nina was my best friend outside of my family. For some reason I didn’t have many friends. Okay, let’s be honest: girls hated my guts because I tended not to play nice and could be quite bitchy when provoked.

  Emphasis on provoked.

  Honestly, they were just jealous because my overprotective big brother never paid them any attention when he came to pick me up from school, jealous because they were just not as pretty as me. Yeah, I said it. They were jealous because I knew how to throw a mean punch and knew how to take a hit, whether verbally or physically. But anyway, this was not what the assignment was about. No, this was about love and hate—not jealousy.

  So Nina was the only girl to make an effort to befriend me. She was this tall, blonde thing, and the total opposite of me in every way. But she didn’t put up with my bullshit and always told it like it was. She was new to the school so perhaps she hadn’t heard about my reputation as Big Bitch as of yet.

  The day I met her I’d been sitting off in the corner by myself in the cafeteria when this blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl sat right in front of me and just started digging into her meal as if I wasn’t even there. I just silently looked at her until she glanced up and finally noticed me gawking at her. “You know if you don’t shut your mouth, it’ll freeze like that,” she’d said with a drawl. Then she’d lifted her right hand up and crossed her index and middle finger together as she gave me a sly look with a wink. “Honest.”

  Since then we were joined at the hip—I liked her spunk.

  Connor was my boyfriend. I met him when we were both sixteen, a year after I had met Nina. I was stuck in detention after having been in a fight with a girl who had called me a name. I think it was bitch or something along those lines. Anyway, I didn’t take too kindly to that and punched her in the nose.

  I happened to break said nose.

  As a result, when the girl was probably getting her nose splinted at the hospital, I was sitting in detention after school, sucking on a caramel hard candy, staring blankly at the wall in front of me, when I felt a shiver run down my spine. I frowned, knowing someone must have been staring at me hard. I turned around to give the person a piece of my mind when I happened to lock gazes with a brown-haired, brown-eyed guy. He just … looked at me with this glint in his eyes … and my mouth suddenly went dry, my heart hammering in my chest. Only one other person had ever made me feel like he had at that very moment.

  Like prey.

  I quickly looked away from him and faced the front, touching my chest as if to try and stop my rapidly beating heart. But it was no good—the damage had already been done.

  As soon as the bell rang I rushed out of the room, but my attempt was futile. I felt a hand firmly wrap itself around my wrist and tug me back. I smacked right into a warm body, chest to chest, and looked up into almost illuminating brown eyes. He quietly stared down at me then slowly started to grin. My knees were suddenly putty and I felt that familiar flutter in the pit of my stomach.

  “Hey, baby girl,” he’d murmured.

  And with those words, the rest (as they say) was history.

  If you were paying any attention to what I was writing, you were probably wondering about Reed. What happened to Reed? you were asking. Reed was one of your three for so long and then poof, he disappeared into thin air.

  Well, I’d rather not talk about Reed.

  Although this whole assignment is about love and hate so perhaps I have to talk about Reed….

  I find it rather depressing that the people you love most in this world can also be the same exact people you hate with fervor. But it can happen, trust me.

  It was the fucking story of my life.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Christina Channelle is the author of Young Adult and New Adult Fiction, her series including Four Letters and Blood Crave. She’s happily addicted to coffee, the colour green, and Netflix. She’s also partial to writing about angsty girls who may or may not have a potty mouth.

  Christina was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, graduating with both Bachelor of Arts and doctorate degrees. She is currently enrolled in a post-graduate television writing and producing program where she looks forward to being buried in scripts and producing awesome web series.

  For more information on upcoming books and other book-related fun, visit Christina at:

  www.ChristinaChannelle.com

  Or subscribe to her newsletter at:

  tinyletter.com/ChristinaChannelle