Chapter Twenty-One
Winter
Without thought, I stood, put my plate on the chair, and rushed over to him. “What happened?”
“What? Nothing.”
I squatted beside his seat, trying to meet his eye. I lifted my hand to move the hair out of his other eye but paused halfway there. I didn’t want to crowd him, and I wasn’t sure he’d appreciate me touching his hair like that.
“Chaos, you have a horribly black eye.”
“What the hell?” Aeson said, staring at his brother with wide eyes. Chaos had even hidden it from him, huh?
“What happened?” Miles asked, coming over as well. He started to squat down beside me, but he must’ve had the same thought about not crowding the kid because he took a seat beside Aeson instead. “What happened? Are you okay? Do you want an ice pack?”
Aeson said, “I can just—”
Chaos cut him off, saying, “An ice pack would be great, actually. I haven’t had a chance to ice it since it happened last night.”
“Sure.” Miles jumped up and rushed into the kitchen. “One ice pack, coming up.”
“What happened?” I asked again.
“Yeah, Morty, all of us would love to know.” I had never heard Aeson sound so pissed before, and Chaos winced.
“It was no big deal.”
“If it wasn’t a big deal, you wouldn’t have tried to hide it from us, and even from your brother, in the first place. I’m sorry, kiddo, but your eye looks like shit.”
Chaos sighed, picking at his food with his fork, still staring at his plate.
“Some guy jumped me when…” He trailed off with a sigh.
“When I went out for a job, Aeson was at work, and Clucky had flown into the yard already. But as soon as it happened, Clucky knew something was wrong, so she came flying out. The guy freaked out and punched me in the face. I, uh, kinda went down—”
“You were knocked out?”
“No. I just fell back on my ass from the force, I guess. But the guy grabbed my bag and ran, but Clucky wasn’t having it.
She went after him. She’s fast in the sky when she wants to be, so she got in front of him, flapped in the air, and blew fire at his feet.
They weren’t far from me, so I told him to drop the bag or she’d set him on fire, and luckily, he listened.
Once he dropped the bag, Clucky squawked at him and chased him down the alley.
It was pretty funny.” He ended with a smile and reached up to pet his familiar, then passed her a piece of fruit.
I gave her some pets too. “You’re a good girl, Clucky. Such a good girl.”
Miles came back in with an ice pack and knelt on the other side of the teenager. He handed it to the kid, asking, “Did you have it looked at?”
He shook his head. “Nah. It’s fine.”
Miles nodded. “You’re probably right, but do you mind if I grab my first aid kit and take a look? I’m not a doctor or anything, but I have some basic medical training, so I should be able to tell if anything’s broken.”
Too bad Maggie’s not here yet… she was a doctor.
“For real?” The kid actually pouted. It was adorable.
Aeson said, “Morty, you know I can—”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Chaos sighed. “I didn’t want you to worry. You’re always… always trying to get me to stop with the necromancer jobs. I didn’t want to make you worry more.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You should’ve told me.”
Miles and I exchanged a look before he interrupted their argument, saying, “I want to take a look, Chaos.”
“Do you have to?”
Miles nodded at Chaos and patted his knee. “Yeah, kiddo, I think I do. It’s better to be safe than sorry, right?”
Chaos sighed. “Fine.”
Miles shot him a smile and stood. “Hold that ice pack on your eye while I grab my kit.”
Chaos did as he was told, and when Miles walked upstairs, Aeson asked, “Was Miles an EMT or something?”
I was about to say no, but paused. “Not that I know of. I think he had to do some training for his old job, though.” It would make sense for him to need basic first aid training when he was a police officer, wouldn’t it?
Aeson nodded and opened his mouth for more questions, I was sure, but Miles came back downstairs with a huge bag. I blinked. I’d expected one of those little red cases full of bandages and things like that. I definitely hadn’t expected a big-ass bag full of all kinds of medical equipment.
Jesus. Maybe he really had been an EMT at some point.
“Were you an EMT?” I blurted.
Miles snorted as he dropped the bag, knelt in front of Chaos, pulled off his leather gloves, and replaced them with either latex or vinyl ones—I couldn’t see the box. “Nope. Just did a lot of extra training for work, and then even more before… before Laney.”
I winced. Right. Made sense. Of course he’d want to be super prepared for his foster kid. He was that type of person.
“Who’s Laney?” Chaos asked quietly as he pushed his hair out of his face and let Miles examine his injury.
Without the hair there, it looked even worse than I’d thought. I winced in sympathy because that had to fucking hurt like hell.
I prepared myself to step in in case Miles needed a save, but he surprised me by answering him. “She was my foster kid. She, uh…” He cleared his throat. “She was forced to go back to her father even though I fought to keep her, and she… she died.”
That was a little bit more information than I’d had before, but it was clearly still only part of the story. Lyric’s eyes met mine over the top of Chaos and Miles’s heads, and I sent them a sad smile.
Chaos stared at Miles for a long moment before whispering, “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Me too, Miles.” Aeson cleared his throat.
My boyfriend sent them each a sad smile. “Thank you. She was a really great kid. I miss her. A lot.” He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, let’s take a closer look at this.”
He began poking and prodding, and even though Chaos winced and hissed a few times, he held still and let Miles move his head this way and that. There was apparently a cut under his eye, so Miles cleaned it really well and closed it with some skin glue or something.
When he finished, Miles said, “Alright, it doesn’t look like anything’s broken, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it, just in case I missed something since I don’t have an X-ray machine. You sure you won’t go to the hospital?”
“I’m not going.”
Miles nodded, letting it go where I would’ve pushed.
But… I trusted him with this. He seemed like he knew what he was doing when it came to kids in situations like this, and I supposed pushing them too hard about certain things would make them pull away.
And we didn’t want that. We wanted to take care of them as much as they’d let us.
“Alright. Then I’m going to give you a few extra bandages and ice packs that you can take with you to have on hand.
I want you icing it for twenty minutes at a time at least once an hour until the swelling goes down.
Your eye itself looks okay, and that cut isn’t terribly deep, but please keep it clean so it doesn’t get infected, alright? ”
“We will,” Aeson said. “Thank you, Miles.”
“No problem.” He sent them both a smile.
Chaos cleared his throat. “Thanks, Miles. I appreciate it.”
That made my guy smile even wider.
Miles took out a ton of first aid supplies, found an old duffel he insisted he didn’t use, and basically put together a very nice first aid kit for the kids. It was a hell of a lot more supplies than they’d need just for Chaos’s black eye.
Now the guy was going to be giving them medical supplies and food all the time. I shook my head, half amused, half feeling like I wanted to offer some help as well.
When he took his kit back upstairs, the twins had a whispered argument—Aeson was so pissed that Chaos had hid it from him—but I couldn’t really make out most of their words.
And I didn’t try because that was between them.
Instead, I got up, made myself another plate so I could pig out, and sat beside Lyric for a little while.
“Is Maggie still coming?” they asked me.
I shrugged. “She’s supposed to, but she hasn’t texted me or anything. They’re over a half hour late already, so who the hell knows?”
They nodded, then reached over and gave my forearm a squeeze. “It’ll be alright, whether she shows up or not. You’ve got family here already.”
That made my chest tighten before warmth gathered there. They were right. “Thanks, Lyr.”
They nodded, then leaned over to pop a kiss on my cheek before they went back to picking at their food. They kind of looked a little nervous.
I was about to ask them about it when Miles returned, and things turned to lighter conversations.
I’d have to check in with Lyric later. Chaos stopped hiding his face from everyone.
I wanted to wince every time I saw his black eye, but I also really, really, really wanted to find the guy who’d hit him and kick his ass. Pay him back tenfold.
At least Clucky had scared the bastard.
When no one else was looking, I kept feeding her pieces of cheese since that was apparently one of her favorite treats.
An hour after the party started, there was another knock at the door.
My stomach twisted and filled with butterflies.
Okay, so apparently there were enough nerves for both Miles and me after all.
I’d half expected Maggie not to show up, especially this late, but I was really glad she did. Glad and nervous as hell, but I tried not to show it.
Miles and I both reached the door, and before he opened it, he turned to me, asking, “Are you ready?”
“Not really.”
“Want me to make them wait?”
I snorted. “No. Go ahead.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then gave my forearm a squeeze before whispering, “If you need me to ask them to leave at any moment, just let me know, okay? I’ve got your back.”
That made me smile. “I know you do. Thanks. I’m ready.”
He gave me a nod and opened the door. “Hey, Maggie, it’s nice to see you again.”
Her voice said, “Right back atcha, Miles. I’m so sorry we’re so late. I got stuck at work with a difficult case, and it was a whole mess.” She waved that off. “Anyway, I’m really sorry.”