9. Daphne The Things That Keep Us （A Memory）
nine
Daphne: The Things That Keep Us (A Memory)
Seven Years Ago
“Shut up!” Thay teased, pulling me in. “You’re so goddamn annoying.”
“Yeah, but you love me for it,” I joked, falling into the slow burn of his scent. He smelled of ivory soap, caramelized tobacco, and blood.
“Maybe,” he squeezed me tight. “Maybe not.”
I nudged him in the ribs, and he laughed, lifting my chin to search my eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re eighteen,” I said, noting the way the blinking city lights haloed his face.
The number did not quite add up to the man in front of me or the woman screaming inside. We had been ancient since the day we were born.
“What do you think they’re going to change your name to?”
“Who knows?” his eyes darted left before falling to the wet pavement below. “What time are the boys supposed to get here?”
“Any minute,” I soothed, tracking his emotions while I pressed a kiss over his heart. “Thay, can I ask you a question?”
The edge of his perfectly shaped brow tilted in my direction.
I was fond of the way his nose crinkled whenever he thought something was funny, and the three freckles that played over his left eye.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I panicked. “Do you ever think about it?” I blushed, biting the corner of my lip.
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” Thay bent low, keeping his hands on my waist. “I mean, I can usually read your mind when it’s not hiding behind all those stupid shades of pink.”
“Me, Thay,” I mumbled as my heart pounded. “Do you ever think about me?”
I knew I was crossing a line, but I couldn’t help it. Lately, it was all I could think about; him inhabiting my body the way he did everything else, suppressing the inborn need not just to hold him, but to touch him for real.
“Daphne, you are all I think about.” He shot me a look like I had lost my goddamn mind before tucking a piece of hair behind my ear in a flirty attempt to end the conversation.
“I mean, naked,” I blurted, shaking my head because he had seen me without my clothes on a million times. Thay smirked. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” he peered over my shoulder, searching for anything he could use to distract himself from the question.
“Come on, Thay,” I pressed, studying his face for any sign of an answer. “I guess I do not understand why you fuck all these girls when I sleep right next to you.”
His body tensed, but he didn’t let go.
“Maybe I don’t turn you on, or I am not your type?”
I glanced down at my curves and the fullness of my breasts, remembering the eighty-pound waifs he usually pushed through the door.
“I guess I’m not very exciting.” A dark cloud rolled into my brain, and I peered up into its squishy core. This was the man who had stolen a box of tampons the day I got my period and showed me how to use them. “Maybe you know me too well.”
Thay’s eyes flashed, disgust and anger welling in their core, but he didn’t have time to respond before Silas, Christopher, and Merrick came rushing up behind him.
“Hello, beautiful.” Silas pressed a hot kiss to my cheek, practically pulling me from Thay’s arms to wrap me in his, but I pulled back, falling deeper into my thoughts.
“Happy birthday, asshole!” Chris cheered, punching Thay in the arm before narrowing his eyes at the Seattle Science Center. “Little old for field trips, aren’t we?”
“Don’t look at me,” Thay pointed. “This is all Daph.”
“Hi, love.” The Irish charmer stepped out of the shadows to kiss my neck. “Jay told me to tell you he has a new set of locks to pick later, if you’re interested.”
Oh yes, my rogue lessons.
Of all the men in the house, Jay shared my affinity for early morning whiskey and insomnia.
One night, he found me on the lounge in the common room, snuggled by the window watching the rainfall, and ever since, he kept a batch of door locks and tools waiting for me in case my hands needed something to do.
In a different life, he would have been a teacher. Not only did he sit through each click and sound with me, but he did not seem to mind when I hurled them across the room in a fit of toddler rage. Thanks to him, I had become damn good at getting into places I shouldn’t be.
“Where is he?” I asked, moving to see if he was straggling behind.
“In the shitter,” Chris chuckled. “I told him not to eat burritos from the Quickie on Seventeenth, but that fucker never listens.”
I made a face, and the guys laughed, passing a cigarette around between them.
“Alright,” I smiled. “I guess it’s time to go then.”
Silas inched forward, throwing his arm over my hips as we walked under the dusky lights that veered toward the back of the Science Center, just past the Space Needle. Although the men who surrounded me resembled minor gods, they looked small in the shadows of Seattle’s looming architecture.
I shot a smile at the birthday boy, who was busy cataloging every touchpoint that Silas had created, sending me a look of disgust. I pivoted, spinning toward him with wild, playful eyes that reminded him I was his.
“It is right through there,” I pointed to the metal entryway.
“Daph?” Chris smirked. “Are we breaking into the fucking Science Center?”
“No,” I cooed, twisting the knob and flinging it wide. “We are walking into it!”
They gave me a look.
“Through the naughty back door?” Merrick held it open for me. “Whose dick did you have to suck to pull this off?”
“The doormen’s.” I flashed a grin and blew him a kiss.
“Holy shit!” Chris charged through, completing a random karate kick in the air. “Speaking of dicks being sucked. Your sister is fucking hot, Silas!” Chris yelled into the darkness, riding high off the way the word dick echoed throughout the empty chamber.
Silas grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into the wall, sending him a warning that none of us missed. Well, less for Christopher, whose grin only promised he would destroy her. I pressed my thighs together to dull the slow ache at the thought of being obliterated.
“What is this?” Thay bent low, his dark, dreamy voice trickling into my ear.
“Remember when we slept on that bench at the Kingston Ferry, and you talked about the way the storm clouds created the strangest art in the sky?”
“I remember that my balls nearly froze off,” he cleared his throat. Our life wasn’t the kind you thought much about, if you could help it.
“You asked if nature creates art from all the madness, then what does it make us?” I shimmered in the metaphor, loving the way his mind worked when his anger wasn’t controlling it.
“I don’t think we are art, Daph. Just scars!” he made his way through the empty auditorium, sitting in the middle row.
“Because scars are forever?” I asked, tracing an X over my heart as Thay watched.
“You certainly are.”
I stared at him, getting caught in his starry-eyed words, when the lights softened and thousands of lasers lifted into the sky. Thay grinned, peering up into the colors popping to the sounds of nature.
“How the fuck did you pull this off?” He asked, pulling me closer.
“I told you, I blew the doorman.” I smiled, and he laughed, his body rolling as if he weren’t a weapon lingering in the darkness. “Actually, I’ve been covering shifts at the diner for his sister over the last two months, and he was grateful.”
“I do,” Thay breathed, watching a thunderstorm conjure strikes of red into a falling burst of orange.
“What?” I said in a whisper, glancing at Merrick, Silas, and Chris, who sat there in awe. Being children of the Underworld meant learning to fire a gun before ever eating cotton candy, and for them, this was Disneyland.
“Think about you naked,” he whispered, and I met his eyes, watching them fill with strange colors and wondering how to touch them. “Every moment. Every second… of every fucking day.”
My cheeks heated, spinning with a fiery tingle that I felt in my throat.
“But I didn’t pull you from one room to lock you in another, Daphne. And the worst thing I could ever do is keep you.”
And then that fire turned into something else. Something broken… Something sinking and… violent.
Keep me?
He already had me.
All he had to do was turn on the damn light.