Chapter 36
GRIFFIN
I jolt to sitting in the middle of the night, my heart pounding. My muscles are tense, the feeling of running still spasming through them.
Sasha murmurs beside me.
Relief rushes through me. A dream. It was just a dream.
I lie back down, reaching out for Sasha, needing to feel her warm skin under my hand.
It was the dream again, the one in the warehouse.
Only this time, it was Sasha lying on the ground, blood running from her open mouth, the yellow dress she was wearing last night drenched crimson.
Shame takes over, heavy as lead. I replaced Laura in the nightmare that has consumed my life for a year. That has still lingered up until now, or at least so I’d thought.
My words to Lionel echo in my head.
I won’t forget about her.
Yet here I fucking am.
I extract myself as quietly as I can from the bed, stepping into a pair of sweats as I go.
In my workshop, I check my email. I’ve sent five emails to Lionel over the past four days. I’ve also called him twice and texted him another half-dozen times. Worry ties a knot in my stomach.
I pull out my phone to text Ford, in case he’s heard anything.
But I pause, staring at the image of Sasha and Imogen on the screen.
Sometimes people are so sweet and pure the thought of them existing in this world feels like a mistake.
Like there’s no way to protect them from the cruelness that exists.
I jam my finger onto the phone to clear the picture and shoot a text off to Ford.
Just as the whoosh of the send sounds, there’s a creak behind me.
I turn around on my chair. A sleepy-haired Sasha’s in the doorway to my shop. She’s pulled on one of my button-downs from the closet, and it’s misbuttoned, which only makes her look more perfect somehow.
“Hey,” I say, the terror of the dream flashing back for a moment. I shake it off. “What are you doing up?”
“I was worried about you,” she says, padding over in her bare feet.
Of course she was.
“It’s not clean in here,” I say.
“It’s okay. We could probably both use a shower.”
I smile, and the worry in my chest loosens just a little. She looks around. There’s a stool she could sit on by the bike, but it’s too far away. “Come here,” I say, beckoning her over with a cupped hand.
Sasha sits on me, curling up into my lap. For a moment I let myself live in the comfort I feel having her right here. There’s nothing that can happen to her when I’m physically holding her in my arms.
But she’s only up because of me.
“It’s late,” I say.
“I’ll go back to bed in a minute.”
As I inhale the scent of her, feeling the tickle of her hair against my cheek, I face the truth that I’m going to have to leave again. Soon. Worry for Lionel enters the knot in my stomach. I try to memorize the feel of her against my body. Then I remember what happened earlier. What I said.
I’m in love with you.
I want to tell her to forget it. I was caught up in the moment and the words just came out. But when I open my eyes, I see a flash of yellow in her hand.
She’s holding the little bird.
My throat feels tight, and I can’t quite explain why. I think it’s because this little object feels like it’s…the essence of her vulnerability. Or something.
“Can I see?”
She hands it to me.
I lean sideways so I can feel with both hands. The thing is small, no bigger than a tennis ball from beak to tail.
“It used to sing,” she says.
I run my thumb along its belly. There’s a seam there, and a little dip where a screw should be. “Want me to take a look?”
She nods.
I press my forehead against her arm. “I might need some tools.”
“Oh!” she gets up, laughing softly.
I lead her over to my workbench, which runs along the whole far wall. Cubbies are filled with tools and parts of all sizes, with bigger tools hanging on the wall next to some of the bigger machinery I’ve acquired over the years.
Sasha peers at the wall to where all the external cords for things like my soldering iron and drill mount run together along the base of the counter, fixed with plastic ties every few feet.
“You really thought of everything, didn’t you?”
I grumble as I pull out the box of tiny instruments I use for smaller jobs, flicking on the under-counter lights.
“What happens if you need to get rid of one of these?” She pokes at the cords. “Do you have to tear them all apart?”
“What, is it extra to have them so neat?”
Sasha snorts. “Extra? Have you been watching my favorite shows, big man?”
“Once or twice.” I may or may not have checked out the reality makeover shows I know she watches on the old laptop I gave her. “I don’t know how you deal with all those…conflicting personalities.”
She laughs, throwing her head back.
I have to look away. She’s so beautiful.
“Actually,” I say, considering, “that’s putting it kindly. Those people are all insane. Over pants. Or pant, as you call them.” I flip open the lid of the box of small tools.
Sasha shakes her head at me, her lips pulled into the most beautiful grin I’ve ever seen. “I can’t even with you, Griffin Kelly.”
“Even what?”
Her mouth snaps open, then shut again. “Never mind.”
“To answer your question,” I say, pulling out a tiny screwdriver, “it’s easy to take a cord out of that bundle if I need to.” I stick the screwdriver into the seal of the plastic tie, depressing the tongue. The plastic strap slips off with a satisfying little zip sound.
“Wow. You bring that trick out at parties?”
I scowl. “I don’t like messy shit in my workshop.”
“So I can see.” She looks over more of my neurotically organized shelves. It’s a good thing she likely doesn’t know her screw types. She’d have a field day if she knew they were alphabetized.
I force myself to quit staring at her and examine the bird. I’m going to need to see better. Already knowing she’s going to give me shit for it, I reach for a pair of glasses with a series of lenses on one side.
“Don’t even start,” I say, watching her face light up as I pull on the glasses.
The frames are old, with the kind of arms that curl around the ears instead of resting on top of them. I modified the device with a tiny light on one side, which I switch on before I pull the contraption onto my head.
When I look at Sasha, she presses her manicured hands to her lips.
I narrow my eyes. “Say it. I dare you. I know these things are nerdy as hell.”
She rolls her lips between her teeth, then pops them out again. I can tell she’s trying extremely hard not to laugh. “One of your eyes looks really big.”
I go to pull them off, but she stops me. “No. Don’t take them off.” She smiles, no mockery in it now. “I love it, Griff. I love how you know how you have the perfect tool for everything in here. And how you know how to do…everything.”
I think she might be talking about sex right now, or at least I allow my nerdy-glasses-wearing ass to think that.
I peer down at the bird, adjusting the lens over my eye. I don’t use these glasses for watchmaking or bird fixing, but I can do both.
I pick up the tiny screwdriver again and insert it under a thatch of feathers, removing the miniature screw. I carefully remove the covering plate, then angle the bird to get a better look inside.
“Actually I take it all back,” she says, watching me with rapt attention. “Those goggles are sexy as hell. So is knowing your way around a mechanical bird.”
I fight the urge to preen like one.
“It’s a nice bird,” I say.
She wants to laugh again.
“Well made,” I clarify, grinning. “Usually these things are plastic.” I reach for a penlight and snap it on for her. “See that? That’s where the sound mechanism should be.”
“I broke it.” It sounds like a confession.
“It happens.”
She leans her head in her hand as she watches me, her hair falling over her shoulders.
I try not to look at her as I find the parts I need.
She’s silent for a moment as she watches me work. “You asked me what the bird is for,” she says finally.
I look at her over the glasses.
“Well, the truth is…Sam gave it to me.”
I pause for a moment. I’m surprised by this.
“It was my parents’ wedding. I was five. I knew something bad was happening, but I couldn’t figure out what. It was a wedding, and all the guests seemed happy. But my parents were fighting.”
I keep my eyes on my work, letting her continue.
“I liked to hide in the kitchen—the people there always seemed more…alive than anyone on our side of the doors.” She picks up a little spring lying on the table and squeezes it gently between her fingers.
“I overheard one of them saying she’d never seen two people who hate each other so much getting married.
It was a sham marriage, they said, done because of the girl. ”
My chest aches. She blamed herself. Her child’s mind thought it was her fault two people hated each other and were stuck together.
“Sam found me under there. It must have been hours later. The big lights were out, and everyone was outside. He was eighteen. Too old and busy with his own life to be looking for a lost little girl. But I think he was the only one who noticed I was gone. He said if I came out, he’d let me play with one of these.
It wasn’t special—they were in the wedding favors.
But he’d seen me playing with them earlier, before my mother slapped them out of my hand. ”
She laughs humorlessly. “After he pulled me out, he carried me around on his back for a bit. Said I could stay with him awhile. I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I remember, I was in bed with the blankets pulled up, and Sam was setting the bird on my bedside table. He said it was mine to keep, and that I should make it sing whenever I felt alone.”
I’m just placing a tiny battery in place, so the timing works out well as I tip the bird.
“Like this?” I ask. It gives off a little chirp.
Sasha nods, her eyes springing with tears. “Like that,” she says softly.
I imagine Sam left shortly after he gave her that. Left her all alone in that house. Not that it was his responsibility to parent her.
I come up to Sasha, bracketing her back in my arms. “There’s a little switch here,” I say, poking between the feathers. “You can turn it off if you don’t want it to make noise.”
Sasha turns and wraps her arms around my neck. I unhook the glasses from my ears, setting them down on the counter.
She rests her head against my chest, and a moment later, I feel the soft shake of her body as she cries.
I don’t know how to feel about Sam Macklin. The fact that he was the only one looking out for her back then should put him up a notch. But he put her in so much danger, too. He handed her over to Creelman like a fucking gift.
But I brush those ugly thoughts aside for now.
“Come on,” I whisper into her hair after she takes a long breath. “Let’s go to bed.”
An hour later, just as Sasha’s finally falling asleep in my arms, my phone buzzes. I carefully extract my arm from under her and grab it off the bedside table.
FORD: No sign from Lionel or Creelman. Lost comms on Macklin.
My stomach jolts. Fuck.
GRIFFIN: Are you at risk?
FORD: No. He just ditched his stuff.
I hold the phone still so long the backlight goes off. None of this is good news. Not just because something’s clearly going down.
Because I’m going to have to leave again.
If Sasha wasn’t here, I’d be on my bike right now.
But she is, and I won’t leave her in the middle of the night, especially not after tonight. She said she couldn’t fall asleep unless I was holding her.
Ford’s in Texas now, anyway.
I tap my phone awake again.
GRIFFIN: Book a flight. I’ll meet you tomorrow afternoon.
Ford responds in the affirmative.
Whether or not Sam Macklin took care of his sister back then, he’s not taking care of her now. Which means I need to do it, once and for all.