Chapter Twenty-Two
Who the fuck is Rebecca?”
Launching myself off his bed, I grabbed his comforter. Laken staggered to the door. “She works with me.”
Why was an assassin knocking on the door? And why didn’t they use code names? I could have asked more, but he reached for the door—and it swung open.
Rebecca, apparently, was a beautiful young woman with rippling blond hair and sea-green eyes.
Her shoulders weren’t broad, her muscles weren’t bulging under her tight shirt, but she had a look about her that let me know she could slit my throat.
She didn’t need a fun warrior princess costume; it came from her cold, cut eyes.
She saw me; squinting then turning wide at Laken, she realized. “Oh my Gods—”
Nice. I blew out a breath.
“Out.” Laken shoved her back into the hall and… followed behind her. He closed his bedroom door and left me on my own to suffer my mind’s torturous thoughts, something I wasn’t really interested in doing.
Naturally, I ghosted across the floor and pressed my cheek against the door.
By the time I got there, her voice came first. “I need to know your connections in Gorzon, I have to make a trip.” Gorzon was the island he’d told me about, where criminals ran rapid and apparently, their business was good.
“For an assignment?” I heard a pinch of concern in his tone.
“No, for a vacation. Yes, for an assignment.”
“Do you have a ship and someone to sail it? They have a different currency…”
I pulled my ear off, spinning around to face Laken’s room. A room I didn’t recognize, full of things I never would’ve associated with Laken. In a bland house lacking signs of liveliness, different from everything I knew about him. He had new scars, a new body, a new life.
And I wasn’t sure where I belonged in that.
Welp. Time to go.
Refusing to debate too long on what was happening, I bolted for Laken’s bathroom where our clothes were. Not even this could make me put those leather pants back on. Scrambling to hurry, I grabbed the next-closest thing.
I slipped my boots on unlaced and took a deep inhale before opening the door. A million warnings flashed in my head of what I was about to interrupt. Not even Axron Laken could take away the aching in my chest.
I know better.
And I knew when to leave.
Tucking my chin down, I didn’t look at either of them standing as I shimmied out.
I didn’t listen to their conversation. “Sorry.” I sidestepped between them.
“I’m going to go.” My nose scrunched and I might’ve even laughed as if I’d been the one to walk in on them, despite how much I wanted to rip my skin off and crawl inside of it.
We had a forest nearby… if I lay on the ground long enough, perhaps the spirits and nymphs would take my soul as a sacrifice, leaving me to haunt the world as a decayed corpse.
I could claim the forest as mine and control the creatures living within it, intertwining the roots and vines to give an eerie vibe.
Or I could always—my thoughts came to an abrupt stop as fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“Reece, wait,” Laken pleaded, and regrettably, I spun around at him.
His blue eyes were aimed at me, round with a sad don’t go look pouring from them. His thumb traced over my bones, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay.
Blinking away my hesitation, I offered a pitiful smile. “It’s fine, I’ll see you tomorrow.” I pulled my arm away from him. The feeling of his fingers slipping from mine would torment me for the rest of my days. “Bye, Rebecca.”
And with those words, I bolted.
A very cold and half-naked dragon made her walk of shame.
I’d been na?ve to think I could get Laken out of my system. He was my system. Laken made up the blood flowing in my veins, the shards pricking my heart each breath, the mess in my mind, and the pain in my ass.
Exhausted from a sleepless night, I lifted my decaying limbs from bed.
That’s how it felt, at least. Not bothering to change out of the silk nightgown I’d barely gotten myself into, I laced up my boots and went downstairs.
It wasn’t until I saw the window wall that I realized how early I’d woken up.
A sky of lavender and periwinkle stared back at me, a stranger to its presunrise colors.
Digging my hands under my arms, I figured the hellblazers would at least be excited to see me before the sun for once.
Then again, I probably wouldn’t want to wake up to me, either—unless I brought food. And in their case, I did.
The feeding routine and measurements were branded into my brain after all these weeks of doing it.
Of course, Laken made it easier, but I wasn’t sure when he’d show up this morning.
If he came at all. So I slipped through the door and scooped out the chickens’ feed.
It took two trips. I kneeled for the second drop-off as they huddled around, stretching their feathers.
The exact moment I set out the pellets, I glared up at Fried Chicken. Tiny little chicken eyes burned a hole into my skin, but I stared back. “Not today, you asshole.” Cocking his neck, his feet pitter-pattered away and he left me alone. Even he knew.
Or even he wanted to be farther from me.
Finneas and Finnigan’s feeding flew by flawlessly, but Phoebe wasn’t in her bed or enclosure.
She must’ve woken up early, too. Dreading each of my next steps, I knew it’d take me several trips to carry Butters’s food, but I was a capable and independent woman—who happened to be desperately struggling. Physically and emotionally.
It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Picking up half a watermelon in one arm and a rusted tin bucket of other fruits in the other, I slowly started my walk to Butters. Luckily, his enclosure wasn’t too far.
“Need some help with that?”
I froze. I hadn’t even heard the gate or door open, but somehow Laken had snuck his way into the back with us. Carefully spinning around as I balanced the watermelon between my arm and unsteadily resting against my hip, I faced him while juice soaked my hand. “No.” I shook my head. “All good here.”
The expression on his face said enough. One little hiccup and I’d taken seven steps back. I’d receded back into myself, shutting down, and shutting him out. And he saw it.
Holding his stare as though it held a physical grip on me, I couldn’t turn away. Laken smiled, shaking his head at the ground. Awkwardly standing there, I waited, but he quickly slung his head up and straightened his shoulders.
“Yeah, no. We aren’t doing this.” He closed the distance between us. He leaned in, a whiff of his mint and honey catching my attention as he took the bucket and watermelon from me.
Frowning and empty-handed, I followed him. “What do you mean this?”
He stepped through Butters’s gate, setting the food out. He was dressed back in his brown pants and white tunic, and I regretted watching so intently. “We aren’t doing that thing where you act like everything is fine and shut me out.” He closed the gate and walked right past me.
Fuck. He got me there.
We stomped our way to the food storage. I leaned over to get Archie’s bird feed, but he interrupted me. “No, no, no.” He freed my hands, taking them in his. There was a gentleness in his hands on mine, a softness behind his gaze, the flush of his cheeks.
“Talk to me,” he begged. “Please, Reece.”
I wanted to speak; truthfully, I did. However, my jaw clenched tighter than I could undo.
Those anxiety cords tightened around my throat and I didn’t know where—I didn’t know how to start.
Talking things out when we were young came easy, but that was years ago.
We were different people. What if I made it worse?
What if I did that thing where I say words I don’t mean? Ones meant to hurt him because I couldn’t accept that I might actually be in the wrong? What if my tone came out rude and hateful, making him shrink?
What if he told me things I didn’t want to hear?
“Okay…” He stared. “Rebecca?” He devoutly watched my eyes and lips. “She needed help with an assignment. She’s been to town with me once when I came back last year and bought the house. I swear to the Gods I didn’t know she was coming—”
For Gods’ sake. “This isn’t about Rebecca,” I assured him.
Clamping his mouth shut, Laken paused. “Then what?”
Stepping back and resettling, I swallowed and forced my stare elsewhere. My throat burned and my arms wrapped themselves around my ribs. “I didn’t think you and Rebecca were a thing… but I don’t know Rebecca.”
Laken waited for more explanation.
“I don’t know her, I don’t know where you’ve been, who you worked with, I don’t know anything about your new life.” Once opened, my mouth rambled and rambled. “I don’t know all the ways you’ve changed and ways you haven’t. I”—I tossed my arms up—“I don’t know if you still hate scrambled eggs!”
His brows pinched.
“Frankly, Laken, I don’t know what was real. I don’t know if any of it ever was for you.” My throat strained, the muscles in my jaw tightened, and my lips quivered.
“Because you never let me explain.” He sighed, resigning.
“Because I didn’t want to hear it!” I confessed, heart on my sleeve.
“I didn’t want to hear you left and moved on and fell in love.
I didn’t want to hear you never reached out to keep me safe because that’s absolute bullshit.
” Taking in a deep breath, I readied for the last of it.
“And I damn sure didn’t want to hear that it wasn’t about me, because if it wasn’t… then nothing was.”
Laken stepped back; his face paled. “Moved on? That’s what you think I did during those years? You think I could’ve moved on from you?”
It became my turn to be silent.
“Come on, Reece. You know me.” His emphasis on you know me felt like a blanket being ripped off my body on the coldest winter night. As if he’d been begging me to see him, to realize he stood there, he waited. “I still like my eggs runny and I’d rather starve than have them scrambled.”
My chest rattled. “Good to know.”
“You know I can never say no when people ask me for help. You know I put salt in my coffee. You know I’d sit here and explain every bit of the last three years to you if you asked. And you know I still want you as bad as I did three years ago.”
I felt dizzy. Unsettled.
“You know me, Reece. There are just some things to catch up on.” Laken erased what little space remained between us. “And you know damn well it was real for me. Every second. Every moment with you, and every moment gone.”
His eyes drowned in a sincerity I wasn’t used to. His fingers softly grazed mine until they intertwined. “And I know you.”
I don’t even know me anymore.
“I know you’d rather stay home than go out.
I know you love gushing about your favorite things.
I know you refuse to ask for help and that you have those glass bottles you used to make potions in.
” His hand drifted to my cheek, brushing my hair back.
“I know you love people more than you like to admit. I know you’d rather play darts all night before admitting you lost.” Like stars regaining their fires after burning out in the darkness, Laken’s gaze struck mine.
Moving my hair around to my shoulder, his fingers ghosted over the place between my shoulder and throat.
“I know it kills you when I touch you. I know you have a kink for having your hair pulled”—slightly, but sure—“and I know you love being the one thing in this world that unravels me.” Laken stopped talking, convincing me more than enough that I, perhaps, knew him.
He waited for a cautious moment before a hand cupped my cheek.
His thumb traced my skin, and he moved in slowly—plenty of time for either of us to stop.
But we both knew we weren’t in the place to do so.
The silence between us was sharp enough to slit our tongues.
His mouth collided into mine with a warm welcome home, fitting together perfectly. His hands moved around the back of my waist, holding firm on to my hips. His chest caved against mine.
“It’s been too long.” As if damned and my body offered him salvation—he came back to me.
Suddenly, Laken’s laugh quickly turned into guttural screams. Setting me down, he stumbled back, and pain riddled his face. Vulgar words were shouted, and I’d have asked what happened, but as he whipped around to investigate, I saw it.
The porcupine quills in his ass.
The very lethal deadly prickler’s quills.