Chapter 8 That’s the Trouble with Me
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH ME
All around me is chaos.
Lewis screams, forging toward a four-legged beast with sharp teeth and a blade in his paws.
Screams rend the air, and everywhere I look is mutiny.
Tears spill down my cheeks. I spot Finlo barreling toward me.
“Eleanor! Get down! Cover your head!”
Spinning, I lock my eyes on an enormous monster dipping from the skies toward me.
A scream gurgles out of me as I drop into a tight ball on the ground.
Finlo lands over me as the Red Queen’s laugh follows the ascent of the monster back into the air. “We have to get you home. Wonderland is no longer safe,” he tells me, helping me to my feet.
“No shit!” I scream.
Finlo looks over his shoulder, tugging me toward the woods around the palace’s exterior. “Language!”
“That’s the least of our worries right now, Fin!” I duck as a rock tossed overhead explodes.
“Sorry!” Lewis shouts, rushing by on all fours, something I’ve rarely witnessed him do.
“Finlo! I can’t leave you!” I scream as he tugs me behind him toward where I know a portal into my world lies beyond the trees.
“You must! You can’t lose your head here in Wonderland. Whatever will the mice think of me if I allow it?”
“Hatter!” I scream, sitting up in bed covered in sweat. Sobs choke in my throat as I turn to look at him, locking eyes with him as sadness dwells in his own.
He’s on his elbow, his muscles taut as I continue to cry. The memories feel so heavy sometimes, especially that one like it was trying to hold me hostage inside of it.
“Shh. It’ll be alright, Tiger Lily,” he coos, pulling me into him.
He spoons in behind me beneath the covers, his body pressing to mine as emotions feel like they’re just below the surface, as heavy as lead in my veins.
“What was that fight? It was so awful.”
“The queen’s hate bubbles over sometimes.”
That’s such a nice way of putting what I witnessed back in my dreams, rather, nightmares.
I ignore the way my body responds to his proximity, shutting my brain’s spiraling at the way my thighs press tighter together the tighter he holds me down.
No good will come of lingering on the idea of us being more than we already are.
I was close to a portal home in my dreams, like I knew before how to get home. Like there was more than one way.
“I met Ariadne when we were in the palace yesterday,” I whisper. “Re-met her? I don’t know. Anyhow, that’s where I was.” I don’t know why I’m telling him. It feels like the lightest subject I can bring up to alter the hefty mood in the room.
“She’s the sunshine in the night,” he says, his tone lifting.
His words, while upside down, make me smirk. I know he means she’s the sunshine after a storm. The longer I’m here, the more I understand him. Or maybe he wasn’t that hard to understand all along? Either way, I fit in rather nicely. Like I’ve always belonged.
“She is,” I agree.
I turn onto my back, and his arm stays around me, shifting over my belly as my shirt—his shirt—rides up, our skin touching.
An inferno rises in my belly. My eyes flick down to where our skin heats against one another. When I finally pull my gaze away to look at Finlo, his eyes are likewise glued to where our bodies press together.
“Was it just awful?” he asks, his voice hoarse with lust, and I have to force a swallow over the gravelly sound of it.
It’s a question he’s asked me before, and I have a feeling it’s one he’s going to ask until I have an answer.
“I don’t know yet.”
He tips his chin down. “Tell me when you do?”
“I will.”
I could argue that we’ve already had this conversation, but there’s a dense meaning behind his question that I think is more than it appears like everything in this place.
Everything here is just left of right, upside down, topsy-turvy—even Finlo.
“It’s so different this time,” he whispers, his head leaning down. Forehead pressing to mine, he closes his eyes. “You’re so different. What did the world up there do to you, Tiger Lily?”
“Broke me a little,” I admit, realizing it’s the first time I’ve spoken it into existence.
His eyes open, his face remaining pressed to mine. The sizzling connection between us has me spinning. It’s like electricity our bodies produce, specifically charged to ruin us both.
“How do we repair you?” he asks, his eyes so innocent.
“I don’t know that we can.”
Sadness dances in his eyes. “Everything can be repaired. Don’t be a fool.”
I grin. “Then I just don’t know the answer. I don’t know how we repair me.”
“First, you’ll need a hat.”
I laugh, and he peels his face away from mine. “How will that help?”
“It’ll keep your beautiful head warm.”
There he goes again.
My body tingles beneath his words, beneath his arm, wishing he’d have closed the distance and kissed me any of the times we’ve danced around it.
His arm lifts, his thumb lifting to brush through the heat on my cheeks. “You’re flushed.”
“Yes,” I breathe, feeling more heat maneuver through my body the longer his touch lingers.
“Do you have a fever? Maybe we should call the doctor. He’s a beaver, but we won’t hold it against him.”
“What?!”
“The last time I needed his help, he ate half the tea table, but having a nail through my foot required his services, so I had to pay the fees.”
My chuckle is uncontrolled now while Finlo eyes me as if I’ve gone mad.
“I’ll be fine. I don’t have a fever.”
“Then why are your cheeks so red? Even now, they’re getting darker.”
How do I tell him the truth delicately?
I clear my throat. “Because I like it when you call me beautiful.”
I also like it when you touch me.
I kept that bit to myself, not wanting to push him too far too fast.
“Oh.” As if taken aback, he’s silent momentarily, his gaze pinned to mine.
His thumb resumes its perusal over my cheek, only deepening the shade, I’m sure. Tingles tangle in my spine, knotting there as I fight a shiver.
“Amaranth,” he whispers, licking his bottom lip.
“What’s that?”
“The color in your cheeks. The brightest shade of amaranth. So very alluring.”
My breath catches in my chest, caught on his words.
I’m speechless, but I also don’t feel the need to complicate the moment with words.
“Sorry,” Finlo says, dropping his touch away.
Finally, I can draw breath into my lungs. I’m sputtering at the loss of his touch.
“I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. Madness, surely.”
I clear my throat, sitting up to hide the fact of how hard my nipples are behind his shirt. My back hits the gnarled wooden headboard, and I tug the covers over my breasts. “I think we all have a touch of madness in us, Fin. It’s nothing to apologize for.”
“And you?”
You’re my madness.
“Yeah, sure. I have some.”
He grins, a look on his face like he knows I’m only trying to appease his worries.
A comfortable silence befalls us as he removes his pants and dresses. Every part of me begs the universe to allow him to turn around, but the angel on my shoulder scolds me for such wantonness.
Even while I should avert my eyes, I stare at his perfect ass. It flexes as he shoves into his pants, foregoing his briefs. I don’t know why I find that so fucking thrilling.
“What are we doing today? Tea?” I ask him.
When he turns back around fully dressed, I choke and take in his smirk. “We’re going to Erotsy.”
My curiosity peaked, I ask, “Where?”
“Erotsy. The city? You need clothes. I assume your old clothes won’t fit you. You’re much more… voluptuous.”
I hate how hot it makes me that he thinks I’m voluptuous.
“Yes. I need more clothes. I can’t keep wearing yours.” I shimmy into some pants of his, knotting them at the hips and folding the bottoms up.
“You’ll want some dresses, I’m sure.”
I can’t actually remember the last time I wore a dress, but it might be the socially acceptable thing to wear in a realm such as Wonderland.
Finlo leads the way into the kitchen, where a spread of food and tea is already set out when I know I was the one who woke him.
“Do you have a private cook?” I ask, grabbing a pastry while he pours me some tea.
“No. The mice come and prepare treats. I hope I never anger them.”
I swallow a bite of croissant, trying to ignore the fact that mice made them.
“So,” I say, trying to decide how to word my following sentence so as not to offend Finlo. “In my dream, you took me to a portal. One that went to my world.”
His chewing slows, and his green eyes fill with worry. “Yes.”
“So, there are portals?”
He clears his throat, seeming to weigh his following words the same way that I had. “There are thin points in the veil between Wonderland and the mortal realm, yes. I wouldn’t call them portals.”
“Well, I was young.”
“Verily so,” he agrees in his off-kilter way that makes me smile widely.
“Is Erotsy far from here?”
“About an hour’s ride.”
“Ride?”
Finlo nods, eyeing me warily as if he thinks I’m testing him somehow.
My memories, while returning slowly, aren’t all intact, nor do they make sense when they return.
“The horses will take us by carriage.”
“I didn’t know you had horses.”
“The stable is behind the house. I’ll show you once you finish your tea.”
The longer I know Finlo, the more normal he becomes, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Could it be that I’m becoming madder? Or could he only have bouts of madness?
I chug down my lukewarm tea, handing him the cup. He tosses it in the sink, shattering it to bits, causing me to jolt.
Just when I was thinking him more normal, too.
“Let’s be off.” With an arm in the air, he turns toward a door at the back of the kitchen I never much paid attention to.
A path leads away from a porch off the back of the house, and we follow it through trees and underbrush until it spits us out in front of a small barn.
Inside are two black shire horses with white cuffs on their legs.
“They’re beautiful.”
“This is Jet and Thunder. They’re a bit bonkers, but who isn’t?”
I swallow.
“We’d like to take the carriage out today!” Finlo announces loudly, and I’m looking around to see who he might be speaking to.
A moment passes, and I’m certain his madness is spreading until I hear feet pattering over the stable floor. Stepping back, I nearly crush a tiny field mouse.
“Hey! I’m workin’ here!”
“I’m so sorry,” I reply, thinking myself insane for doing so, but I almost stepped on him. It’s only polite to apologize.
God, this place has me so twisted up.
Looking up from my spiraling thoughts, I realize there are hundreds of mice, maybe even thousands. They’re working together to connect the carriage to the horses. The doors behind me open as another army of mice prepares for our departure.
“My word,” I breathe.
“They’re something, aren’t they? Not the nicest of beasts, but they’re hard workers.”
“We can hear you!” a small voice says, tossing a fist in the air toward Finlo.
I can’t help my laugh that escapes.
He looks at me, and I’m caught in his gleaming smile.
There’s this thing about me where I’m attracted to someone who can make me laugh. No matter if they’re a good person or not. The way to my heart is through my funny bone. That’s the trouble with me.
Finlo has undoubtedly found that funny bone—unwittingly, but still. All I can hope now is that I don’t end up too hurt at the end of my story because Finlo Pennington is as far from a bad person as one can get, so I know the fall is going to hurt.