Chapter 28 Ris
Ris
The new space was real now. Not hypothetical. The very real ten-acre plot had been cleared, grass and sod removed, the ground flattened, prepared for the road to be dug out, for the foundations of the house, and for the small parking lot that would be adjacent.
It felt ridiculous to be looking at interiors at this point, when it was nothing but a mud field, but looking at interiors she was, a booklet of color swatches open on the table before her.
Too clay. Too pink. Too beige. She wanted the space to be airy and inviting, at once light and warm. Ris could close her eyes and envision it, right there in the small apartment kitchen where she stood barefoot, stirring honey into her tea, swaying to music that wasn’t playing.
“Whaddya think, Fitzy? Too pink?”
Fitz didn’t lift his head from the couch cushion, his dark eyes rolling to Ris, tail thumping, but he didn’t voice an opinion.
“That’s what I thought. And this one’s too beige.”
The reception area would smell of citrus and cedar, bright but grounded.
The counter would be a natural wood, long and curved, leading into the space beyond — a welcome point, not a barrier.
The big room beyond would hold light like a cathedral, with tall windows spilling afternoon sunlight across sofas and tables, the perfect place to gather, to work, to socialize, to relax.
That was Studio A, according to the architectural plans — the soft place.
Studio B would be where the workshops and classes would take place.
Writing circles, financial literacy classes, and continuing education for women who’d left the workforce to raise children and had never found a way to rejoin.
Speakers, meetings, seminars. Studio C was the fitness lounge, focusing on low-impact aerobics like Elvish liltenu, pilates, and yoga.
Ris was hoping they could eventually have dance as well.
They were having a launch party. The event coordinator at Saddlethorne — the same bubbly human who’d planned Lurielle’s entire, beautiful wedding, they’d discovered — was taking care of everything.
Tents would be set up not far from the construction site, a construction light on a crane shining down on the mud pit as a reminder of what they were doing, with drinks, dinner, dancing, and a silent auction.
When Caleia had suggested the cost per table, Ris had thought she was joking. It seemed absurdly high to her, foolish to even attempt . . . until she’d sought Silva out at her desk, shortly after her return to the office, receiving the shocking confirmation that the number was actually a bit low.
“I know the table cost was higher than that for the fashion show fundraiser I went to before I left, and that was five years ago. I’m sure it’s gone up a bit since.
” Silva turned her face up, pulling her eyes from the screen before her to grin.
“The enclave I just moved from, though, that’s probably more on track for them.
But they were boring and trashy, and thought a cheese tray from the grocery store was perfectly acceptable hors d’oeuvres, so. ”
Silva shrugged, a gesture Ris and Lurielle had simply been calling the “Silva Shrug,” doing it to each other to indicate a reaction in keeping with their formerly bubbly coworker’s indifference to the world beyond her own tiny bubble.
Ris had willingly conceded her opinion, and the table cost was raised to what was more in keeping with the Elvish community in town.
She had been shocked when the tables sold quickly.
Silva had been right about more than that.
Rael Kaspard was itching for retribution; the governing board at Cevanore was his sworn enemy, purchasing several of the tables at the fundraiser himself, for he and his lovely wife, their child, and an extended family of betailed women.
Ris suspected the soft-spoken huldra wasn’t as eager for a fight as her husband.
She only seemed sad at the exclusion, but Silva had been correct — Rael was furious, repudiating the community he’d grown up in, already building a new home on the other side of Cambric Creek, well away from Cevanore’s gates.
They wanted to have a completed vision board on display at the event, color swatches and stonework, the wood grain of the flooring, and the fabric of the furniture.
Artist-rendered drawings of their plans would give the attendees a taste of what was coming .
. . which was why she was working on the color swatches that day.
She looked up in distraction when there was a knock at the door.
The phone hadn’t rung, as it would have if someone were at the street level. This was a knock directly on their door. One of their neighbors.
Ris rolled her eyes, ginning as she crossed the room, assuming it was the troll up the hall, one of Ainsley’s chief co-conspirators in the ill-fated rent strike, who was also planning on vacating the building at the end of his lease.
Ainsley was at brand practice, but she knew he’d go immediately down the hall to find out what new developments he’d missed when he got home.
“I can only imagine what trouble the two of you are cooking up now,” she laughed, pulling the chain and swinging the door open.
She sucked in a breath, feeling as though someone had landed a punch straight to her gut.
What’s wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you peek with the chain first?
She stepped back, panic quivering up her spine, the realization coming a beat later that her movement into the apartment might be regarded as an invitation, stepping forward to crowd the doorway instead.
Her hands were shaking, so she gripped the edge of the door harder to hide the tremor.
It was Tate.
“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve coming here.”
Her voice was low, shaking with rage, as tightly she controlled as Ris was able to keep it.
She told herself a hundred different times that if she ever saw Tate again, she would take a baseball bat to the side of his jaw, back over him with her car, hurt him and make it look like an accident.
The only thing she had at her disposal now was the pepper spray she kept hanging on a hook right next to the door, for occasions exactly like this.
Tate winced, nodding his head. He looked terrible. He was bruised everywhere, a deep, ugly abrasion lived beneath his eye, and she could see that his lip had been split open recently, only just beginning to heal. Good. Someone else beat you to it, but it’s what he deserves.
“I don’t want to cause you any—”
“You don’t want to cause any what?” she interrupted him, her voice rising.
“Any trouble? Any hurt? Any pain? Well, I got bad news for you, you’re too fucking late for all of the above.
” Her hand curled into fist, and she hit the door instead of his jaw.
“I can’t believe you have the fucking audacity to show up here.
To what? Ambush him? Pop out like a snake in a can?
See how much you can wreck him with no notice? ”
“You have ballet on Mondays,” Tate blurted out, before she could continue castigating him. “He goes to a therapy appointment on Tuesdays. He has band practice on Thursdays. Which is why I’m here. Not here to see him. I’m here to talk to you.”
Her whole body was trembling at the thought that he knew their schedules well enough to know exactly when Ainsley wouldn’t be home. “And you didn’t think of calling from the street like a normal fucking person?” she demanded,
“Oh, because you would have let me up, right? Would’ve put the kettle on?”
Her hand balled into a fist again. Not only did he have the fucking nerve to have followed them long enough to know their schedules, but now he was being snide?
He must’ve had the same thought, because his eyes had fluttered shut, and he dragged a hand down the side of his face that didn’t have the giant hole beneath his eye and around his neck. His neck was bruised all the way around, as if he’d been choked. Good. Too bad they didn’t finish the job.
“I’m not here to fight with you,” he went on in a much smaller voice. “I’m not here to disrupt. That’s why I came when I knew he’d not be here. I just need to know that he’s okay.”
Ris hated herself for the angry tears that overflowed from her eyes.
“He is now. But he wasn’t, Tate. He wasn’t for a long fucking time.
Because of you. Do you know what that was like for him?
It’s one thing to lose your best friend.
People die every day. But there was no closure.
No word about where you’d gone, if you were ever coming back.
If you were going to functionally die for him, then you should have fucking done it.
At least given him a body to bury. Why couldn’t you have just fucking died, Tate? ”
She was shouting. Ris didn’t need to turn to know that behind her, Fitz had likely taken refuge in his crate and was cowering at the back of it.
“You made him feel like everything in his life was a lie. He lost his mooring because of you. He lost his sparkle, because of you. You don’t get to come back into his life now, now that he’s finally put himself back together.
You want to know if he’s okay? Well, he is.
He finally is. We have a home. We have a life.
He’s actually happy. And you are not going to come in like a fucking wrecking ball and ruin that.
So go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and lose this address.
You don’t get to come back and wreck him twice. ”
She was shaking like she’d been electrocuted, breathing hard once she’d finished. Tate said nothing for a long minute, tears spilling out of his fire-lit eyes, tracking down his lichen-green skin, nodding jerkily.
“I’m glad.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “That’s all I needed to know. I’m glad he’s put himself first for a change. I’ll not bother you again.”
He’d already taken a step back from the door when Ris slammed it shut, sliding the chain in place. She couldn’t stop shaking.
“Fuck!” Her voice was a reverberation around the room as she screamed, pacing back and forth, feeling like her blood had been replaced with gasoline. Swiping her hand out at the table, she cleared it of her color swatches and notebooks, sending them sliding across the kitchen floor.
A tiny whine behind her brought her back to herself, shame rushing in like a tidal wave, replacing the churning fury as she dropped to her knees before the open crate.
“I’m so sorry, Fitzy.” The sob burbled out of her, the maelstrom of rapid, crashing emotions dragging her down until her shoulders shook and her chest heaved. “I’m sorry.”
Fitz crept out of the crate slowly, pressing his head to her chest, his wet nose bumping her chin, licking at her tears.
Five fucking years. And now he was back, to wreck the tentative peace it had taken five years to build.
No. He doesn’t have to be. She didn’t need to mention this to Ainsley.
Didn’t need to say a word about Tate at all.
It wasn’t as if he were a regular topic of conversation.
His name came up here and there, stories that Ainsley no longer shied away from telling, but certainly not a happy, far-distant past that was warmly reminisced over.
Why reopen a wound that had scarred over, even imperfectly?
He would never need to know if she didn’t tell him.
She had a missed text message from Ainsley, she realized, squinting to see the phone screen through her tears.
Practice running late
I’ll grab Thai
Noodles or curry?
Ris exhaled slowly, closing her eyes again.
Everything was so easy right now. Everything was so peaceful.
He was in a great place. She was working on the future.
They had a happy home and were looking ahead to establishing permanent roots in a community they loved.
He didn’t need this blowing that all up. They didn’t need it.
Curry, she tapped out.
Withholding this from him was the kindest thing she could do. Protection. The purest form of love. Wasn’t it? Yes. There was no need to cut this wound open again when it had already healed. It’s done. Let it be done. Let the ghost disappear for good.
The decision lasted five whole minutes.
She couldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t do that to him.
For starters, theirs was a relationship based on trust. Trust and good communication.
Talking was what they did best, after all.
And if she were to keep this from him . .
. Ris closed her eyes, shaking her head, shaking away the impulse to do so.
If she kept this from him, she would be keeping it from him.
Curating his reality, deciding for Ainsley what knowledge looked like, what he could handle, what he was allowed to know.
. . . Exactly what Tate had done to him.
Ris dropped her head, pressing her cheek to Fitz’s silky fur.
Tate had been trying to protect him. Ris wasn’t sure whether this was the very first time she’d had that realization in the last five years.
Withholding information to protect him, thinking he was doing the right thing.
It wasn’t, and he had left a fucking mess in his wake, but, she thought uncomfortably, she understood the impulse behind his doing so.
This wasn’t hers to keep from him.
He’s in a better place now. He’s in therapy. He goes to group. Your relationship is strong. You can weather this together.
She hoped that was true, when he came through the door thirty minutes later, singing to himself, guitar case over his shoulder, his arms full of takeout.
“The curry smelled so good, I got one as well. But you know I’m a slut for noodles, so I got the pad thai, too.” He set the bags down on the table, turning to her with a huge grin. “So we can share.” He spread his hands diplomatically, waiting for her reaction.
When his eyes landed on her at last, the levity left his face, realizing immediately that something was wrong.
“Ris? Baby, what happened?”
Her tears overflowed once more, entirely without her permission. It was a good thing he’d bought extras, she thought, because it was going to be a long fucking night.
“Sit down. We need to talk.”