Chapter 13
BELL
“You were looking for me?” Her nose scrunches the tiniest bit. She does it whenever she’s concentrating, and I think she has no idea that she’s doing it at all. It’s fucking adorable.
“Yes,” I say, smiling at her. I’m so happy. Lust and satisfaction and a little bit of anger even still—it’s all convecting and blistering inside me. I feel like a fucking sun. “And now I’ve found you. Can you guess how?”
“The statue,” she says quietly, looking back down at her feet.
I’m almost close enough to catch her chin and make her lift her eyes to mine.
“But I didn’t… No one knows it was me.”
“You must have known what I’d think if I saw it. It’s my hair, my face, even down to the beauty mark above my mouth. And the spot on the hand…”
“But…how did you know where to find me? If you couldn’t find me since Evelyn?”
“Oh, that,” I say. I step closer, close enough to touch, but I keep my hands in my pockets now.
I’ve won, but she doesn’t know that yet.
She didn’t even know that she was playing a game.
“It was clever to hire a tow truck driver to pick up the carving at a second location, but they still had a name for the order, which was easy enough to get when Public Works decided to press the issue. Mary M. Cooper.”
God, I felt so stupid when I realized I’d had the answer for seven years, since that day Busy came to Evelyn.
Named after one grandfather, and Birdie after the other.
I hadn’t put it together. Even in my most Catholic moments, I don’t think I could’ve imagined parents looking at a set of twins and deciding they both needed to be called Mary.
But the Coopers did it. Mary Geraldine and Mary Merle.
Birdie flicks her eyes up at me, so much bright blue through those long copper lashes.
I can’t say she hasn’t changed in seven years—stress or scarcity has carved hollows under her cheekbones and underneath her jaw, and her tank top reveals the pronounced bevels of her collarbones, the crescents of her ribs under the fabric.
I catch sight of three or four strands of silver curling through her red hair.
And her eyes—there is something worse than sadness in them now.
“They always knew they’d call me Birdie,” she says, looking away again.
“My sister was supposed to be the real Mary, the one who went by Mary, I mean. But then…” She trails off, a twist to her mouth as she remembers something sweet that’s now tainted by the pain of the present.
“She became Busy. From the minute she opened her eyes.”
“I found the farm, you know. Seven years ago. And I saw the name M. Merle and thought it had to be a relative.” I shake my head. All that time wasted, and all because I didn’t think Merle was a girl’s name.
“I—” Birdie takes a breath and then lifts her gaze with what I know must be a fair amount of courage for her. “I still don’t understand. Are you angry about the statue?”
“I’m not angry about the statue,” I answer, amused. “I’m honored to be your devil.” She’s the only one who knows I’ve been hiding horns where no one else can see.
“Then…if it’s not the statue…why? And why look for me before that?”
Finally. I step even closer and reach up to catch a loose curl between my thumb and forefinger. I mostly keep my trembling under control as I ask quietly, “Can’t you guess?”
Birdie’s eyes move from the lock of hair I’m rubbing between my fingertips to my face. She doesn’t believe what’s right in front of her—or she doesn’t want to believe it.
I drop my hand so my palm rests against her collarbone, and then feeling her breathing quicken, I deliberately move my hand so my palm is pressing against her throat.
My thumb and fingers collar her neck. Not to choke her, just to hold her.
When I feel her swallow against my palm, the smooth undulation of that gorgeous throat, I nearly lose control.
I’m wrestling it back as she speaks, hesitant.
“I don’t… Ryan. You want to—” She bites her lip. “Like you want to try going out together? Like dating?”
A real laugh is surprised out of me. If I needed proof that the difference in our age has never mattered, here it is, because she sounds like the younger one right now, like someone who’s never even been on a date.
Dark, arrogant satisfaction blooms inside me at the idea, immediately followed by a fast and burning jealousy at the inverse.
I hate that she might have been on dates before, that there have been other people besides me.
I know she’s thirty-six, and I know I haven’t exactly been a priest, but it doesn’t fucking matter.
I want all of her, even her past, and no, I don’t care how fucked that is.
I look down at her, a smile lingering on my face, laughter still in my voice. “No, Birdie. I don’t want to date you.”
“Then what?” she whispers.
I glance down at her hand. “Swallow your medicine first.”
She follows my gaze and then startles. “Oh.” She forgot she still had her pills cradled there.
“Go on, pretty bird,” I coax when she hesitates. She’s waiting for me to move my hand from her throat before she takes her medicine, but I’m not going to.
She correctly reads my intentions in my face, squares her lean but muscled shoulders, and pops the pills into her mouth.
She swallows them dry with the ease of frequent practice and then rubs her palm against her jeans.
There is a brick-colored smudge there from where the coating of the pills came off on her sweat-damp palm.
“Okay,” she says, her pulse throbbing in her throat. “What do you want then?”
Holding her throat like this, I can feel every word she speaks. It’s delicious, and I end up removing my hand so I don’t have to worry about losing control because I’m getting too worked up as it is.
I used to want to exorcise you like a demon, I nearly say. But now I want you to join me in hell.
But she’ll come to understand all that in time. For now, I settle for plain honesty. “I want to make a deal.”