Chapter Text
The sleigh climbed higher, its bells a faint, ghostly jingle against the wind’s cold hum. Each gust whipped across Carol’s face in sharp, needling bursts. She crouched beneath the back seat with her knees jammed to her chest. Her pulse thudded into her fingertips. The North Pole lay far behind her, yet the pressure still clung to her like frost, the kind of cold that noticed you, as if it might remember your name later.
The cheers of the elves. The rushed vows. The bouquet shoved into her hands. All of it a blur now, one dizzying reel she wished she could rewind and undo entirely. She had said I will because there had never really been another choice, at least not one that wouldn’t cast her as the villain in their story.
The sleigh dipped, skimming a small rooftop before settling with a feather light crunch. She froze, holding her breath as Scott, Santa as she reminded herself, climbed out. His boots sank into the snow with a muted crump before he vanished down the chimney, sack over his shoulder as if gravity didn’t quite apply to him.
If she weren’t planning her escape, she might have admired it. The shimmer of magic in the air, the quick slip between dimensions, the impossible glide from roof to roof. But now every scrape of the runners sent a spike of adrenaline through her chest.
Carol eased up just enough to see over the edge. Nothing but dark rooftops and the soft silver hush of falling snow. One wrong step and she’d tumble three stories into a snowdrift that would swallow her whole. Yet waiting for a perfect chance felt like its own quiet kind of death.
The sleigh jolted forward again. Roof after roof blurred beneath them. Somewhere ahead, Charlie’s voice drifted back, naming neighborhoods, then, bright with wonder:
“Look! You can see the Statue of Liberty!”
Her heart steadied. A city she knew. Crowds. Hotels. A shower that didn’t smell faintly of peppermint and reindeer. This was it. New York would be her exit point.
Scott’s voice carried from the front, warm and steady for Charlie, cheerful and completely unaware. He didn’t know she had left the North Pole. The elf girl Judy must have realized by now. Apparently no one had told him at all. Because tonight was about Christmas and nothing else, she reminded herself.
Another landing, soft and precise. Carol peered out and saw a rooftop door left ajar, a wedge of golden light spilling over the snow. Perfect. The building was tall, its windows glowing like beacons in the winter dark. It looked like a way out.
Now or never.
The moment Scott vanished down the chimney, she slipped out from her hiding place. She kept low and moved quickly. Charlie sat forward, watching the sky, completely oblivious. By the time Santa returned, she would be nothing but a trace of footprints.
Snow crunched as she bolted for the door. Her breath burned in her throat. She hurled herself down the narrow stairwell, her boots slapping the concrete.
He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake… The old song unspooled in her head, louder than it should have been. But that was about children. About belief. She wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t on his list. Santa tracked wonder, not fugitives. She repeated it the whole way down. Still, she was Charlie’s school principal. How long before he found her? Where could she possibly hide?
She shoved the thought aside.
I love you.
The memory struck like a sucker punch. She hated that her heart leapt without her permission. In Santa’s workshop, looking into Scott’s eyes, she had believed him. And maybe, in his own way, he had loved her. But not in a way that felt safe to her. He had backed her into a corner. Made her marry him for the sake of Christmas and never once asked if she wanted any of it. Never talked about what it meant, her role, whether she felt the same.
Yes, there had been a magical deadline. She understood that. Yet there had been time afterward. He could have talked to her then. Instead, he left her at the North Pole, alone with the confusion and her doubts, while he took to the skies.
She reached the bottom of the stairwell, the air warming around her with the hiss of radiator heat. She took the last steps two at a time, her hand gliding along the icy rail. One final push through the door carried her into a quiet, dim lobby.
Somewhere above, sleigh bells jingled faintly before slipping into the distance of the night. Carol released a breath that stumbled out of her, shaky and slow.
For now she was free. She also knew it wasn’t anywhere near over.
***
New York at Christmas carried its own kind of magic, taxi horns braided with twinkling lights, bundled strangers rushing past with shopping bags. Carol pulled her brown coat tight, head down, until she found a modest brick-front hotel with a glowing Vacancy sign.
The clerk, a young man with thick glasses, didn’t blink at her snow-mussed hair or trembling hands.
“One night,” she said, sliding her credit card across the counter. “Please.”
Inside the small, quiet room, Carol locked the door, sat on the bed, and finally let her breath escape in one long rush. She had no plan beyond this, but tonight she was safe, and that mattered more than magic.
Her gaze drifted to the nightstand, to a cheap little card that read Merry Christmas in red and gold letters. Her fingers trembled as she picked it up and flipped it over. Blank.
He had kissed her in front of hundreds of witnesses, elves and Legendary Figures alike. Married her without giving her a moment to think. And now what? She was here, in a hotel room in New York City, alone.
The echo of her parents’ phone ringing filled her mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to call. Not yet.
Would they even believe her, she wondered. Would anyone?
She glanced at the television, where the news replayed the same segment every year, NORAD’s Santa Tracker. On the screen, the sleigh blipped from city to city. Her stomach twisted. He was still out there.
With a trembling hand, she reached for her phone.
“Carol?” Her mother’s voice was instantly warm but tinged with worry. “Sweetheart, are you okay? It’s the middle of the night. Where are you?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I just…” She stopped, her voice trembling. No one would believe the truth, not if it involved Christmas magic and Santa Claus. She knew how impossible it sounded. Just days ago she had made Scott Calvin leave her house after he confessed his secret identity to her. Besides, she was certain there was a rule about revealing it, and even if there wasn’t, she couldn’t risk shaking belief itself. Christmas depended on it. That was why she had gone along with the pressure, why she had married him in the first place. There were things bigger than her own heart at stake.
Taking a steadying breath, she tried again. “Things moved too fast with someone I was seeing. We were on vacation in New York and…” Her voice hiccupped.
“Are you hurt?” Her mother’s tone sharpened with fear.
Tears pricked at Carol’s eyes, but she blinked them away quickly, trying to keep her tone even. Careful. “No. He didn’t hurt me. I just… needed space.”
A pause. “Do you need us to come get you?”
“Yes,” Carol said. The word felt like a small relief loosening in her chest. She knew her mother would have questions but appreciated that she didn’t ask them yet. “I would like that.”
She gave her location, and when she hung up, she curled into a ball on the bed, fighting the memories of the last twenty-four hours. Her body was exhausted, but her mind raced in jagged circles.
She tried to sleep once, her eyes falling shut for a few minutes before some small noise in the hallway snapped her upright again. It didn’t last, and she lay there after that, watching the bar of light under the door and listening to the building settle around her. At some point the city outside went from loud to quieter to a different kind of loud, the garbage trucks, a delivery van, someone laughing on the street below. Morning arrived without her permission.
Had it all been manipulation, she wondered, or had he simply not understood? Could someone so loving and awkward have known what he was doing to her?
It didn’t matter. She had run away from Santa Claus.
The only question that remained was what happened when Santa wanted you back.
***
Carol woke to a sharp knock at the door, the unfamiliar texture of the sheets irritating her skin. Her eyes snapped to the clock on the nightstand, 7:04 a.m. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep.
Barefoot on the scratchy hotel carpet, she crept to the door and pressed her eye to the peephole. A hotel employee stood outside, setting down a small paper bag of continental breakfast. He walked off without a backward glance, though the faint jingle from his room service cart still made her shoulders tense as she held her breath.
She waited until his footsteps faded, then cracked the door and pulled the bag inside. A muffin. A banana. A small carton of orange juice.
She sat on the edge of the bed, holding the banana as if it might explode.
What now, she wondered. What did people do when they ran away from something like this?
She glanced at the phone. Her parents hadn’t called since her late-night confession, but she trusted them to come. She only hoped they arrived before Scott realized she was gone. She wondered if he would look for her, though part of her already knew the answer.
For a long time she sat in the thin hotel heat, listening to its low hum, unsure which outcome she dreaded more, or which one she would choose.
***
Carol pulled the hotel’s complimentary bathrobe tighter around herself, though she hadn’t showered. Not yet. The sink water had run lukewarm, and she was still debating whether to freshen up when another knock landed on the door.
She crossed the room quietly and opened it a few inches.
“Hi,” her mother said, arms already open.
Carol didn’t speak. She stepped forward and folded into her mother’s embrace. For a long moment no one said anything. The distant chatter of other guests and the faint hum of the waking city thinned into background noise.
Then her father’s hand settled on her shoulder, steadying her.
Her mother eased back. “We took the first flight out. You couldn’t come to us?”
Carol shook her head, her voice unsteady. “I just… couldn’t.”
Her parents exchanged a glance but didn’t press.
“Let’s get you home,” her father said gently. “You don’t have to talk about it yet.”
***
The ride from the airport to her parents’ house was mostly silent. Snow had begun to fall again, blanketing Chicago in a soft white that felt almost protective, a quilt drawn over a restless child. Carol watched it through the passenger side window, her arms locked around herself.
Her parents didn’t ask questions, but she felt them hanging in the air between them like fog.
Who had she been with? Where had she gone? What had happened?
She had no answers she could give.
Driving through the familiar streets toward her childhood home felt like stepping into the ghost of a former life, one she barely recognized now. Her old bedroom was exactly as she had left it, pale green walls, posters from college curling at the edges, a shelf of childhood books gathering dust.
The bed creaked under her weight as she sat down.
Her mother appeared with a cup of tea. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” she said, setting it on the nightstand.
“I know.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Carol hesitated. The words hovered on her tongue. I married Santa Claus. I didn’t mean to. He proposed in front of hundreds of magical beings and I panicked and said yes. And then I escaped in his sleigh. But she couldn’t say it. She didn’t fully believe it herself.
“As I said, I… met someone,” she began carefully, staying as close to the truth as she dared. “And I left town with him. It was impulsive. It happened so fast.”
Her mother sat beside her. “Did he hurt you,” she asked again, studying her face.
Carol shook her head quickly. “No. Not physically. He didn’t mean to… he just…” She swallowed. “He put a lot of pressure on me, and I felt trapped.” She sighed, pressing her hands to her face. “I didn’t know how to say no without hurting him. And then I realized that if I stayed… I would lose myself.”
Sylvia was quiet for a moment. “How long had you known him?”
Carol felt the question land. “Not long enough,” she said. “That was part of the problem.”
Her mother rubbed her back gently. “Okay,” she said. “That’s enough for now.”
***
Carol lay awake long after the house had gone quiet. The tea beside her was cold. The sheets were warm. The familiar smell of cinnamon and laundry detergent filled the room in a comforting way that made her throat ache. But each time she closed her eyes, the North Pole crept back in.
She replayed everything, the look in Scott’s eyes, the icy air, the elves’ silent, expectant stares. Abby’s whispered instructions. Bernard’s barked orders. The flowers. The coat.
I love you.
Was it real, she wondered. She didn’t know. Maybe part of it had been. But it hadn’t been love, not the kind she needed. It had been desperation. He had been trying to save something, his job, his identity, Christmas itself. And she had been part of the solution. Not a person in it, not really. Just wrapped in like one more requirement, one more magical thing that had to fall into place before the clock ran out. Except she wasn't magical. She was a school principal from Lakeside who had said yes because she didn't know how to say anything else.
And she had been scared. Not just of the North Pole. Scared of how quickly she had wanted to say yes. Scared that maybe she had loved him too, even a little. They had only been dating for, what, six minutes. That wasn’t like her at all.
She buried her face in her pillow and exhaled into the cotton.
It wasn’t just what had happened. It was the after. The fear that no matter where she went, he could find her. The way Christmas music knotted her stomach. And the gnawing sense that she had left something unfinished, not just a man, an entire world.
She told herself that world would forget her if she stayed quiet long enough. But in the dark, the thought it might come looking for her refused to leave.