Chapter 12
B y the time the three of us got back to my apartment, it was almost ten, and I was exhausted.
Wylen and Tris were eerily quiet. So much so that I called in an order of milkshakes from a nearby diner.
Okay, maybe that was selfishly more for my well-being, but I did enjoy Tris’s excitement as he mixed several flavors together.
I also liked how Wylen kept getting brain freeze since he’d never had a milkshake before, and he refused to heed our warnings.
The somewhat normalness of it all was a welcome relief…
at least for a little while. I had just changed into my comfy clothes after forgoing a shower when I heard Tris and Wylen quietly arguing back and forth in my kitchen.
I couldn’t make out the words, and when I walked out of my bedroom, they stopped.
Tris raised his brows at me and sucked on his milkshake some more. It made an awfully loud slurping sound that Wylen didn’t like. “Must you do that?” he snapped.
Tris sucked harder.
Sighing, I walked over to him as he sat at my small table with his feet taking up a second chair, and I held out my hand. “Give me.”
Slurp .
I yanked the cup away and threw it in the trash. “What were you two talking about?” I let the lid of the trash can fall fast enough to make the slap echo throughout my tiny apartment in the hopes of letting these boys know I wasn’t having it.
“Mr. Twinkletoes thinks he can solve all of our problems.” Tris crossed his arms over his chest and acted like he just won some kind of competition.
“I do not. And stop calling me that. My name is Wylen, you ignorant troll.”
“Guys,” I pleaded. “It’s been a really long day…a really long several days. Can we just,” I shrugged, “all get along?”
“Nope.”
“Never.”
“Can we at least pretend?” I groaned. Rubbing my forehead, I poured myself a glass of water and sat next to Tris.
Wylen was still pacing in the living room area, tapping his fingertips with his thumb in some kind of pattern.
I watched him fidget for several minutes before deciding to ask, “Do you play an instrument, Wylen?”
“What?” He’d stopped dead in his tracks, and I really seemed to surprise him with my question.
“An instrument. Music. Can you play?”
Tris snorted. “He probably plays the fiddle.”
Wylen scrunched up his face and stood taller as he faced Tris. “I play the lute. Not the fiddle.”
“Even better,” Tris muttered through his laugh.
Feeling bad for Wylen for reasons I didn’t fully understand, I gave Tris a glare and said, “Well, I’d like to hear you play sometime.”
“Really?” Tris asked me with a huff.
“Yes,” I said sharply. Turning back to Wylen, who gave me a grateful smile, I asked again, “What were you discussing?” Tris made a point of yawning very loudly, but I ignored him. It was best to ignore Tris sometimes .
“I would like to go and search for some more of your kind, the halflings, in the city.”
“Okay. Sounds like an excellent plan. So, what’s the problem?”
“He doesn’t want to leave you,” Tris said just as Wylen opened his mouth to answer.
“Is this true?” I asked.
Wylen scowled at Tris and then stomped over to the table. He pulled out the chair across from me, knocking Tris’s feet to the ground with a thump. The guys exchanged another menacing look but kept their mouths shut. “Sosie, I am worried for your safety.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“See, bro,” Tris said with a chuckle, “I told you she would say that.”
“I do not trust the trolls,” Wylen said.
“Hey, I’m not going to do anything to hurt Sosie, you asshole.” Tris was on the verge of jumping out of his seat, so I put my hand on top of his in an effort to calm him down.
“I’m not worried about you hurting her,” Wylen admitted, and Tris relaxed a bit. “I don’t trust Razi and the others at the warehouse. Something wasn’t…right.”
“Correct. They were murdering people there,” I snapped.
Wylen opened his mouth to say something, but Tris held up his hand. “Look, I get it. I didn’t trust him, either. But I’ve told you twenty times now, I will stay here with Sosie tonight. She’ll be safe.”
I was tired. Tired in my soul and tired of being treated like I couldn’t fend for myself. But when I looked at both men sitting in my apartment, concerned for my well-being, I decided not to fight the feminist fight tonight.
“I’ll be fine, Wylen. All I’m planning on doing tonight is sleep. I promise I won’t go anywhere without Tris. It’s more important that we talk to the others. And I’m not going to be able to do much searching until tomorrow. ”
Wylen gave me a nod and stood. “All right, Sosie. I will put your life in the hands of this tr—” He stopped himself and then added, “Tris.” Moving away from the table, he gave me a weak smile. “I will return at first light.”
Tris and I watched as he popped out of existence, staring at the empty space a little longer than we needed to. As though this was our new normal, Tris jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together. “How about a drink?”
“Wine, please,” I muttered, ignoring that inner voice reminding me of how horrible I’d felt this morning.
Resting my elbows on the table, I dropped my head onto my arms. I was exhausted.
With all the craziness we’d seen these last couple of days, I think my brain had gone into protection mode.
I didn’t find that I was in denial of believing in all of these magical beings, and that should have set off the warning flags.
“So,” Tris started while he opened the wine and grabbed two glasses. He knew where everything was in my kitchen. “Shifters?”
I giggled. “Yeah, we saw that, right? I mean, you got body slammed by one of them.”
“I know. That was so cool!”
Handing me the much-needed drink, he beckoned me over to the couch.
It would be more comfortable than the cheap wooden chair I was currently sitting on, but I was a little afraid of falling asleep too quickly.
However, I had a hard time resisting Tris’s smile, and I joined him.
Nestling into his arm, I leaned against his side as we both stared at the blank television.
“So, I talked to Caroline today.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead like his hair was in his face. “I did some searching in the library archives, you know, trying to find out more about my family history.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I couldn’t find anything about my grandparents on either side, so I asked her about it.” Tris had been told that both sets of his biological grandparents had died before he was born .
“Let me guess, she said she didn’t know anything?” Caroline was not one of my favorite people.
“She told me the approximate years of their deaths and maybe which location to check for records, but that was it.”
I turned so that I could face him. Stretching out my legs across his thighs, I took a sip of wine before asking my next question. “You’re telling me she doesn’t remember when her parents died?”
He shook his head. “She was young. Her older sister raised her. They never talk about it.” With a shrug, he added, “I mean, maybe she doesn’t want to remember.”
“True,” I whispered, unable to imagine losing a parent. Well, a parent that I actually knew as a parent.
“I called my uncle, too.”
“Your dad’s brother?” Tris’s father had died a few years ago. His family tended to die young, and I’d always felt that lump in the back of my throat when I thought about what Tris had lived through so far in his short life.
“Yeah. He didn’t help much, either. Although he did know when their parents died but apparently no one ever talked about the great-grandparents much.”
His face was etched in worry, and I absolutely hated seeing him this way. “Hey! Why don’t you talk to Zurie? She does all of the work on family custody cases. I’ll bet she’s got some connections and research strategies to find missing relatives.”
He smiled. A real smile that poked at my heart. “That’s actually a good idea.”
“I always have good ideas.”
“Eh,” he teased with a shrug.
I tried to kick him, but he grabbed my leg. And when he started to massage it as he leaned back and focused on the ceiling, I tried not to think too much about his touch.
“This is pretty fucked up, right?”
Laughing at his words, I shook my head. “That’s a good way to describe it.”
“Do you think we can find Gil?”
I loved his used of we . “I do. But we are going to need Wylen’s help, too.”
Tris groaned. “I really don’t like him.”
“I know. But we don’t have to like him. We just have to tolerate him.”
“Not sure if I can do that, either.”
I nudged him with my knee. “Is this a troll versus fae thing? Because if that’s the case, then I don’t think we can be friends anymore. Hey!”
Tris flipped around until he was lying on top of me.
Slowly taking the wine glass out of my hand, he set it next to his on the coffee table.
He nestled against my chest, the weight and warmth of him surprisingly comforting.
I ran my hand through his hair as his breathing slowed.
Finally, he spoke again. “It doesn’t matter what we are, Sosie. We’ll always like each other.”
“I don’t know, you do stink a little.”
He lifted his head high enough to make sure I could see his eye roll. “Not any more than you.”
“Hey! That’s not a nice thing to say to a girl!” To shut me up, Tris kissed me quickly on the lips. It worked like a charm.
“We have to stick together. No one else would believe us.”
“True,” I said as I smiled at him. But when I saw how suddenly serious he looked, I added, “We’ll stick together.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky swear.” I giggled.
“You’re such a girl,” he teased, rubbing his mouth against my neck. “And your skin is so soft.”