The Things We Water

Chapter 19 #3

Dominic’s lips parted even more, and I caught him licking them, caught his gaze moving from one of my eyes to the other. And I didn’t imagine that his voice wobbled, “But… you get people pregnant….”

He was finally seeing the full picture.

“Most people don’t know there’s a very, very fine line between life and death. Between creating and erasing. One of them is easy to control, and the other one… not so much. Want to guess which one is which?”

A harsh breath left the man in front of me, but I wasn’t done.

He’d had his chance to walk away, and now he was going to regret not taking it.

“I want you to think about that the next time you threaten someone that you think is weaker than you. That you think can’t stand up for themselves or won’t retaliate. Because maybe they can’t, or won’t, but someone else might. Someone else would. Maybe someone else might feel a little bad about doing what they have to do to protect their loved ones, but at the end of the day, they’ll be able to sleep just fine,” I warned him softly.

Because like I’d told Shiloh, you didn’t have to be big and have sharp teeth to be scary.

Then I gripped my magic even tighter, and I showed him, just a little, just enough. I brought it to the surface.

He saw it. I let him get a real good view of it too—of the other side of my parents’ gifts. The opposite of life. I showed him the death that ran through my veins, in my eyes. Some might think it was cold, but it wasn’t, pulling at it was like tugging at an inferno in my chest, in my soul. I could crush the life out like a crumpled piece of paper: that was what he saw. Color drained from his face in a split second, and there was something in his eye that would have made me feel awful if he’d been anyone else.

But I was sick of his shit, and I was done playing nice.

Sometimes good men could be misunderstood men, the same way good women could be. But he was not a good man. He was jealous and petty, and it went against a werewolf’s nature to not care for those weaker.

He might be under the impression he was still the baddest fish in this pond, but I was the box jellyfish here and everywhere.

And this was no competition.

I took a step closer to him and softened my voice that much more, even as that dark, ancient magic that coursed through my body flared throughout it. “I want to make sure you understand this isn’t a threat. I’m only sharing a fact with you, and you can share it with whoever you want.” My nostrils flared as I thought about my friends at the nursery and the wounded look on Agnes’s face and remembered the way Phoebe hadn’t wanted to be overheard when she’d told me about him.

“Tell whoever needs to hear it: death isn’t one person. Death doesn’t walk around with a scythe and a robe. Sometimes it has long hair, sometimes it has short hair. Sometimes it comes in an accident, and sometimes in the middle of the night when you’re asleep.” I dropped my voice and looked him right in the eye. “And sometimes it likes wearing a fanny pack.”

Dom swallowed hard.

Very, very hard.

His coloring went even more pale when his gaze dipped to my waist, where a brand-new silver fanny pack rested around my hips.

He blinked.

I felt like I was in a daze as I watched him leave the kitchen without another word. Some part of me recognized that I had to tell Henri what had just happened. What I’d admitted.

But before all that, there was another conversation I needed to have first.

For all of a disappointment as Dom might be, he was still Agnes’s dad, and she was still too young to process why people were the way they were, and maybe I shouldn’t have handled this in front of her.

Spinning around, I took in the features I’d gotten to know. It was the same level of serious as it always was. She didn’t seem mad, but….

“Mini Wolf, I’m sorry for talking to him like that in front of you,” I told her, ready to apologize some more, ready to figure out how to explain just what I’d implied.

But in front of my face, her eyebrows knit together, and she shrugged in a way that seemed familiar. Then she shocked me for the third time in a matter of minutes. The girl who’d tried to bite a green river crone shrugged. “It’s not my fault he’s mean.” She even blinked while she said it.

My eyebrows shot up my forehead, and I blinked right back at her. “No,” I agreed, “it’s not.”

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Duncan look back and forth between us, and I had to fight the urge to smile when he was looking up at me like that.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, taking in all those small features for signs that she might be traumatized. But… there weren’t any?

“Yeah,” she scoffed, like I was dumb for asking, right as Henri and Franklin both walked in.

What were the chances he didn’t smell Dominic’s presence in the room?

“Morning, Franklin. Morning, Henri,” I piped up, taking in Henri’s uniform. He had the black on black again, black tactical-looking pants, and a short-sleeved black polo. If someone was going to twist my arm, I’d say it was my favorite of all his outfits.

Other than his sleeping pants one with no shirt.

Henri stopped dead smack in the middle of the kitchen, halfway to the island and the range. His expression was already suspicious. “What’s going on?” He drew the question out as his eyes narrowed. “Why was Dom in here?”

I was too busy trying to think of an appropriate response when Agnes answered, “He made Nina mad, and she was gonna kick his ass.”

I choked on freaking air.

But before I could laugh—or do anything else—Henri replied, “Thank you, Ladybug.” He paused. “Say ‘butt’ instead, okay?”

“Okay,” the little girl agreed in a cheery voice.

I almost didn’t want to glance in his direction. I didn’t need a good nose to know he was mad. But I peeked anyway. I had just been thinking about telling him everything that had happened.

And from the barely contained expression on those sharp features—he was definitely mad—there was no time better than the present.

I scratched my cheek and reminded myself that I’d done the right thing and now I had to live with it. “Henri, can I talk to you for a minute?”

His attention shifted toward me, his mouth flat, that cheek muscle popping, but he nodded. It was his slow nod though. His angry one. He was already expecting the worst.

“Franklin, do you mind watching Duncan for a few minutes?” I asked.

The elder looked like he had no idea what was going on as he stood by the main island, but he nodded.

Now or never. “Duncan, stay here, okay?” I told my puppy, who was still standing beside his friend.

“Yes,” my boy answered.

It made me feel like a coward, but I purposely avoided making eye contact with Henri as I walked over to him, and neither one of us said a word as we left the kitchen. Out the front door, we went as I led him to my trailer. It wasn’t much, but something was better than nothing. I opened the unlocked door and waved him in with a small, uncertain smile, not sure how he was going to look at me after this conversation.

Henri reached over my head to hold it open, and he tipped his chin toward the inside of the trailer. I went in, and he followed. I took a seat at my dining room table, and he stood in front of it instead, arms crossed over his chest in a way that reminded me of my first day here.

“Wanna tell me what happened?” The werewolf didn’t bother wasting time. He’d smoothed his features into that neutral expression that was my least favorite version of Henri.

“Not really.” I hesitated. “But I need to.”

That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting from the way his eyebrow went up a millimeter like usual. “Why don’t you want to?” he asked.

I squirmed in my seat. “Because I don’t want you to look at me differently.” Well, more differently than he already was, avoiding me, and just… retreating.

But maybe this would be a good thing. I didn’t want to hide myself from whoever I ended up with. It was bound to come out anyway. And maybe I’d have a better excuse as to why Henri would pull back and stick to being polite with me from now on.

That would make things easier to an extent. Moving on, that was.

I didn’t think he liked my answer, though, from the way he frowned.

“Dominic was rude to Agnes, and I said some things I don’t regret, but I’d rather you hear it from me than from him,” I told him, crossing my arms over my own chest, hugging myself. “I owe you that much.”

His face went even broodier. “Was he rude to you too?”

“I don’t think he knows how to be nice. From everything I’ve heard, he’s mean to everyone,” I explained. “But I got mad, and I may have threatened him a little.” A grimace shaped my mouth.

“A little?”

I nodded and held up my index and thumb apart. “Little bit.”

“How?” Henri asked, his tone cooler and flatter.

I bit the inside of my cheek, but I had to own it. Nobody had made me do what I’d done. “He got in my face for telling him to leave after he got an attitude with Agnes. I may have said that he can bully some people, but there are other people who wouldn’t put up with his BS.” I swallowed. “Other people who might make him pay for his actions.”

Henri shifted his weight, his expression still sober. “Make him pay how?”

I scratched my cheek, but there was no hiding me. No hiding who I was, and this was something else I shouldn’t be too ashamed over. Did I wish it was different? Absolutely, but I was the knife, and I could cut a cake, or I could stab someone. And I’d warned Henri already in bits and pieces. There was a good chance he might have already deduced what I was about to admit.

I could only hope.

“You probably already have an idea,” I said. “I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone else in a really long time….”

I couldn’t say it. It was one thing to threaten Dominic. To insinuate heavily. But it was a whole different ball game to tell Henri. To tell anyone, I wanted to believe. Matti knew because he was Matti. I trusted him more than anything and anyone. He would never look at me differently, and because of that, his reaction could never have been devastating.

If Henri did….

Why had I done this to myself? Why had I given another person so much power over my feelings? Was it because I wanted him to like me? Was it because I more than liked him?

Amber eyes burned a hole straight into me. “You can tell me anything,” he claimed, like he could read my mind.

I lifted both my shoulders, pressing my lips together.

“I’m not scared of you. I thought we went over that already,” he went on, steadily.

But I still hesitated.

Sure, he thought that. Sure, we’d faced two bogeymen and he hadn’t batted an eyelash with them or with Spencer, and who knew what other beings he’d come across in his life. But… that was different.

His thick throat worked, and I didn’t think it was disappointment that came over his features, but it might have been something close to it. “You don’t need to tell me if you aren’t ready.”

Would I ever be?

Planting my elbows on the table, I palmed my forehead and released a low, long breath. “You’re going to hear about it. I don’t think that bigmouth is going to keep it to himself, and you don’t deserve to find out from someone else.”

His voice was so deep. “Tell me then.”

I closed my eyes. “Remember I told you about those people who tried to kidnap Duncan? How they had brain damage?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. He wouldn’t have forgotten, it was a stupid question, and I was trying to avoid getting to the point, so I kept on going.

“I know about their injury because I called the hospitals in the areas where we were and pretended to be related to them. They’re all at the ICU, or they were last time I checked, which was a month ago. I didn’t know for sure when I did what I had to do, that that’s what would happen if I used my magic on them. I honestly thought they would have a heart attack, if anything.” I pressed my forehead tight into my palms. “I took a little bit of their life away from them.”

Silence stretched long in the trailer between us.

Until, “How’s that?”

I couldn’t hear anger… or disgust… or anything that would’ve inspired me to risk looking at him.

What if he seemed disgusted? Or afraid? Or some other emotion I wouldn’t be able to forget?

“I think”—saying that I was sure made it feel too real even to me—“one of my parents is some kind of death god,” I blurted out for the first time in my life. It wasn’t a relief to announce it exactly, but I still had to fight the urge to peek through my fingers when he didn’t respond immediately.

There was a long moment of silence. The breath he let out was loud. “A death god?” was what he chose to repeat in a nearly emotionless voice.

I nodded, still refusing to open my eyes. It was easier this way, not knowing how he felt, and for the first time since moving here, I was grateful not to have a werewolf’s nose. “I realized it right after my magic manifested itself. I hugged my dad and let my magic go a little, and I saw… I don’t know how it works, but I… I told Dom that life looks like a flame. Like this light that I can see with my magic, and I can pinch it off if I try hard enough.” That made me drop my hands and lift my head. “Not that I have! Not all the way, but….”

Henri had uncrossed his arms at some point. His face was clear and open, so carefully neutral. His muscles weren’t bulging. He wasn’t sweating or pale.

Was that a good thing?

I leaned back and hugged my arms tighter around myself. “But I can. I know what it means if I do it; I can feel it. I saw what it meant when I did it to those men, and I didn’t go to ten even though I had sort of wanted to. But I always… knew, Fluff. Henri. My parents and I talked about it, and they both agreed. Doing it feels wrong, but I can, if I have to.” Easily.

Shaking my foot beneath the table, I watched him stand there, the Great Wolf heir, the leader of this community, as I kept talking. “I showed that to Dominic, a little bit. I know I shouldn’t have. I know I was picking on him, the same way he bullies everyone, but you know how people like that are. They think they’re tougher than everyone else. They think no one would ever stand up to them, and I’m sick of it, and I’ve only been here a couple of months. Now I’m worried I might have made things worse. I should’ve told you before anyone, but….”

Henri’s nod was slow. Too slow? Was he disappointed in me?

Please no.

Planting my elbows back on the table, I cupped both sides of my neck. I shouldn’t care so much what anyone thought about me. I couldn’t help myself though. He was the one person at the top of the list that I didn’t want to run off. I wanted Henri to like me. To keep liking me. Even the parts I kept hidden from just about everyone.

And I felt that reflected on my face—fear, hope, earnestness—as I caught his attention and held on. “I’m sorry, Fluff. I shouldn’t have taken it that far. But that’s why I scare people off. They can sense that there’s something wrong in me.”

Henri’s whole body jerked, and his voice came out harsher than I’d ever heard it, a scowl storming over his mouth and eyes and his whole body. He even took a step forward. His tone was sharp. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Nina.”

My lips parted, my heart was touched, but… realistic. Maybe I tried to sometimes live in a fantasy world where I hoped for the best, but I could be real too. I could. “You said it: I scared a child-eating crone.” My voice cracked just a little. “Spencer hates me.”

“Spencer hates everyone,” he snapped almost as ferociously as he had a second ago.

I shook my head. “I’ve had holy water thrown on me, Fluff. Henri. I’m not under any delusions?—”

If I thought he’d been mad before, I would’ve sworn death rolled over his face right then. Tight skin over striking bone structure, eyes narrowed, neck muscles tense. “Who…?” His nostrils flared. “Who did that to you?”

“It’s fine.” I waved him off. “Some lady. But that’s why I stayed away from other beings for so long. Because I don’t know how they’ll react, and I can’t be mad at them for being scared. I don’t even use my magic anymore to look at people’s flames unless I have to. I can see when people are really sick—terminally ill—and it’s terrible. The coloring changes, the flames get so weak…. It all seems like an intrusion to me now. It feels so personal to see it. To know that kind of thing. Maybe I’m a coward, and maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but I don’t want to know when someone is dying.” My face went hot at admitting this to him, at giving him every reason to shun me, too, like so many others had. Even my eyes started to sting a little, as I thought about the fear I’d witnessed from all those people before. As I thought about how sad it had made me to know someone was coming to the end of their life. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

My voice cracked, and I had to swallow to reset it, hating that it still didn’t come out normal. “I wish this wasn’t in me, but it is. I’ve tried to come to terms with it, you know? This is who I am. I can ignore it, but I know it’s there. I just… I thought you should hear it from me, instead of that asshole.”

The vein at his temple started throbbing as his jaw got even more pronounced.

“You know the kids hate him? Even Phoebe mentioned he was a jerk a long time ago. He had the nerve to raise his voice to Agnes,” I tattled.

Henri stood there, staring over angrily. There was no clear sign if he was mad at me for what I’d done, mad at the fact no one might have told him how much of an asshole Dom was, or at Dom for being Dom.

Or at me for being me? Just thinking that broke my heart and made my eyes sting. But it was what it was, and even if I cried afterward, I was going to hold my head up high. Apologizing for my magic would be like saying I was sorry for not having blue eyes. Wasn’t that what I would tell Duncan if he ever worried about what he looked like and who he was?

Even if Henri couldn’t love me or appreciate me, that didn’t mean no one else could.

Henri lifted his hand and scrubbed it down his face before pinning me with a look that made me want to squirm. His voice was thick. “First off…,” he began, and I braced myself, “there is nothing wrong with you. Do I need to say that again?”

I held my breath and shook my head.

He was just getting started. “You, of all people, should know,” he glared at me hard, and I mean hard , “without life, there can’t be death, Nina.”

I swallowed and stared right back at him, wanting to hear what else he had to say, but I was scared too. Scared he might break my heart without even knowing it. Without meaning to. Scared he would make me second-guess myself more than I already had so much of my life. Scared he would make me regret moving here, and I didn’t have the luxury of feeling that way.

But he was on a roll, and he kept going, his hands forming fists under his armpits as he crossed them over his chest again. “We don’t need to talk about that right now. It wasn’t my place to bring it up before, but it is now. Tell me exactly what happened with the people who tried to kidnap Duncan.”

Dang it. I should’ve known he was going to ask for details. I would have too.

And of all the crap I’d just brought up, this was what he wanted to focus on? It wasn’t like I could argue with him over it. I leaned back and squeezed my arms to my chest, and I told him.

I told Henri about being at a campground in Oregon and having a group of men carrying obsidian come over while Duncan had been peeing.

I told him about how they’d snuck up from behind and gotten me in a chokehold, a knife to my throat, while they had grabbed my boy as he did his business.

How I’d magically pinched and I’d pinched, and I’d pinched again, not fully, but enough when that knife had grazed my skin.

Then I told him about how almost the exact same thing had happened again about a week later, at a different campground in rural South Dakota. Instead of a knife, it had been a gun. Instead of three men, there were two.

Another pinch and another.

And while I told Henri about it, I watched his face. It stayed plain and grave. His only movement had been a bob of his throat. And only after that, after he’d blinked at the end of my story, did Henri murmur, “You did what you had to do to protect your boy. There’s no shame in that.”

I shrugged, aware he was right and not regretting my actions but still wishing I hadn’t put us into that situation in the first place. It was still something I was probably going to have to think about from time to time for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t like I had made those people do what they’d done.

That didn’t make me feel any better.

And as he stood there, I also wished I hadn’t needed to tell him everything.

Despair, discomfort, and sadness at the idea that this might change what was left of our friendship after I’d been pushy with him the other night made my stomach feel funny. I hugged myself even tighter, like it would help the rest of me stick together as I laid out piece after piece for inspection. Hoping I measured up.

And it was with that thought in my head that the vein at Henri’s temple got even more bulgy as he shifted his weight in front of me. By his armpits, his hands opened and closed. “I don’t like how you’ve been smelling since we left the kitchen,” was what he stated.

Here we go again.

But before I could apologize, Henri opened his arms.

I blinked.

He opened his hands next, doing another “come here” gesture.

He didn’t look happy; he didn’t look sad. He didn’t look disgusted or even inviting, apart from his waiting arms.

I lifted a shoulder that sagged back down just as quickly as it had gone up. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I sort of whispered, sort of sighed.

His face went wary, but his right hand did that thing again. “You need a cuddle,” he told me, just to be clear.

Maybe a stronger person would have insisted that they were fine. Anyone would have been nervous to admit what I’d just told him. But I thought I was strong. Strong enough to admit that I did need a hug. That I had done something that went against every instinct in my body, and I felt vulnerable and maybe upset because of it.

I needed that hug though.

From him especially.

That’s why I didn’t hesitate more than another heartbeat before I got up and went straight for him, slipping into those arms that became a blanket of muscle as they closed in around me.

I let Henri hug me. Cuddle me. Let him soothe my nerves with his rain and cedar smell and the vibrant energy emanating off his body and his soul that seemed to overpower mine in a way.

A leader and a protector, that was him.

And for the last time, because I swore it would be, I really did—I wasn’t going to think it anymore—I wished that he was mine as I hugged him tight.

I wished things were different.

I wished….

The familiar sound of his ringtone went off, and it was me who pulled away first. Henri’s eyes briefly met mine before he stared at the screen for a solid five seconds before saying, “Hold on.” His eyebrows scrunched. “I need to take this.”

“Sure.”

His finger swept across the screen, and he brought his phone to his cheek, answering, “Henri.”

Turning around, I faced the window behind me, where the sink was, and pretended not to listen to him talking, saying things like “yes” and “someone can come out” and “you want me to?” So when he hung up, I already had an idea of what was happening.

I just wasn’t expecting him to say, “There’s something I need to deal with. Want to come with me?”

The “yes” was on the tip of my tongue, on the edge of my heart. This was his olive branch. His way of telling me things were okay.

But I didn’t know who was more surprised when I replied, “That’s okay,” instead.

I might as well have punched him in the stomach from the face he made.

“Maybe some other time. Thank you, though,” I rushed out, forcing a smile that he had to know wasn’t genuine.

The truth was, I wasn’t ashamed of my feelings for him, but that also meant I needed to be realistic about things between us, once and for all.

I’d tried getting my way, I reminded myself. I’d brought it up enough. Wished for it enough.

But just because you really wanted something, didn’t mean you were going to get it.

Which meant that now, I had to go with plan B.

Not that I even knew what it was… other than it didn’t include Henri.