Chapter Thirteen Shea #2
The quiet is ruptured by the sound of the bathroom door flying open with enough force to crack tile. The curtain wrenches back and Lys sails off her with a yelp, the base of his spine slamming hard into the sink. He crows out a laugh, righting himself.
“That was a very exciting entrance, Sunshine.”
In the open door, Asher stands with his shotgun slung over one shoulder. He’s in an orange ball cap and a fleece-lined jacket, the cold wafting off him in waves. Shea scrabbles to her feet, humiliated—an explanation at the ready—but Asher isn’t looking at her.
“You need to feed on someone, feed on me.”
“Tempting,” says Lys. “Although I’m not so sure you’d be appetizing.”
“Then starve. I told you, Parker’s off-limits.”
Anger drives away the sting of embarrassment. She clambers out of the tub, her socks slipping over tile. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room.”
Asher rounds on her, primed for a fight. “You want to be included in the conversation? Great. Let’s talk about it.”
“Let’s,” she hisses.
“What happens if he forgets to stop, huh? I bet you haven’t even thought about that. If he loses control during a feed, you die.”
“Ease off, Asher. Nothing happened. We were just talking.”
“Oh yeah?” Asher flips the brim of his cap around, driving nearer. “You were just talking?”
She doesn’t trust the look in his eyes. “Yes.”
“While straddling? In a bathtub?”
“God, how old are you? We weren’t straddling.”
“Looked like it to me.”
“Get your eyes checked then,” she snaps.
He doesn’t back down. “You ever see one of them rip out someone’s carotid artery? Because I have. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t quick.”
“Are you trying to intimidate me?”
“I’m trying to wake you up!” His shout cascades along the tile. All the air rushes out of the room. “You’re acting like you’re in control, but you’re as lost to the Gravewood as Camellia.”
Her voice is icy. “I’m not lost.”
“To me, you are.”
He looks immediately regretful, as if he hadn’t meant to say something quite so vulnerable. For several seconds afterward, neither of them can think of a single thing to say. It’s Lys who breaks the silence, a smile creeping in at the corner of his mouth.
“That was thrilling.” He stands against the sink, his eyes gleaming. “For the record, Sunshine, I’m rooting for you.”
Asher’s expression is murderous. “Don’t start.”
“No, I mean it.” Lys’s smile widens, and for a moment he looks truly monstrous.
A grinning devil, his stare black all the way through.
“It must be hard. You shipped out to basic and spent the next year doing the sorts of things that would break a lesser man’s spirit.
I’ll bet some days, the only thing that got you through was the thought of coming home. Am I right?”
“Go to hell,” says Asher.
“Did you think she’d be waiting for you? You did, didn’t you? What a fucking cliché, going after your kid sister’s friend. You must have thought it was a done deal.”
Asher takes a steadying breath, but Lys isn’t done.
“I’ll bet it really pissed you off when you found out she hadn’t waited for you after all.”
The silence blisters. Asher’s eyes jump to Shea’s.
Seventeen years of serendipity passes between them.
Fletcher’s field in the spring, his face turned to hers.
The Thorley kitchen in the dead of night, his fingers grazing hers as he handed her a glass of water.
Her foyer in the late fall, mistletoe in her hair and her stomach in knots: You can stay, if you want.
And then, though she doesn’t want to, she thinks of Camellia with her head thrown back beneath a winter sky, catching snowflakes on her tongue: Do you think we’ll be sisters someday?
“I brought food,” Asher says flatly. He’s not looking at her anymore. He’s staring at the floor, the tile webbed in cracks. “I’d eat and get some sleep. We’re back on the road by sunset.”
The door shuts soundlessly behind him. Shea rounds on Lys the moment he’s gone.
“What’s wrong with you? Why would you say that to him?”
“Because it’s true,” he says, digging his thumb into a crack in the tile.
“It’s mean .”
He looks right at her, his expression cold. In the bathroom’s sordid dark, he really does look like a wolf—carnivorous and cruel, no light in his eyes. A predator, down to his core. He contemplates her for a long time before speaking.
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Just a few minutes ago, you were so sure I wouldn’t hurt you.”
She exhales sharply. “Asher’s right. You can go to hell.”
“You say that now,” he points out, “but you’d still let me feed on you if I asked.”
He anticipates her slap, tugging her effortlessly into him. They collide inelegantly, her wrist shackled in his grasp.
“I guess you have a little fight in you, after all.”
“Screw you.”
He smiles. “Maybe someday.”
She thinks of his voice in the bath, the edges hard and wanting: It’s making me fucking crazy.
“You’re feeling it right now,” he guesses. “A rush of blood to your head. An ache in your stomach. Your brain has tricked you into thinking it’s an infatuation, but it isn’t. It’s your body telling you to run.”
Her heart beats off-kilter. “How the hell do you know what I’m feeling?”
“Because I feel it, too. I feel it every time I’m around you. Every time you get close.” He swallows up her space, his head ducking low. “But it’s not telling me to run. It’s telling me to sink myself into you until the aching stops.”