Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Lucy
Iwoke up to Felony sitting on my chest like a small, furry brick wall with an attitude problem.
For about three seconds, I didn’t know where I was.
The ceiling was wood beams instead of plaster, and the light was coming from the other side, and the sheets smelled like a laundry detergent that wasn’t mine.
Underneath that, faintly, there was a scent that was warm and clean and male that made my whole body go, “yes please!”
Right. Warrick’s cabin. Warrick’s bedroom. Warrick’s sheets that smelled like Warrick … which was information I was choosing not to examine at eight in the morning.
Felony yawned in my face. Her breath was terrible, but I loved her.
“Good morning to you, too.”
She blinked once, slowly, which in cat language is either “I love you” or “I’ve decided not to kill you today, and you should be grateful.” With Felony, both were equally likely.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Dani: Morning check-in. Scale of 1-10, how r we doing?
Me: 7. Solid 7.
Dani: That’s suspicious. Yesterday u were a 4. Nobody jumps 3 points overnight. What happened?
Me: Nothing happened. Can’t a girl just wake up in a good mood?
Dani: U have never once in ur life woken up in a good mood. U once told me mornings were a hate crime against ur circadian rhythm!
She wasn’t wrong.
Me: Fine. 5. A strong 5.
Dani: Slightly more believable. Felony ok?
Me: Felony is thriving.
Dani: That’s my girl. And ur eating? Actual food, not just coffee and rage?
Me: Yes, Dani. I’m eating.
I was going to eat. Probably. At some point.
Dani: Ok, good. Plans for ur day off? Brian’s covering today.
I almost told her. The words were right there: “Andrew broke into my apartment last night, and I’m at Warrick’s cabin in the middle of the woods, and I don’t know what’s happening, but I slept better than I have in months.”
But Dani would come get me. She’d get in her car, and she’d drive here, and she’d bring the baseball bat.
She’d plant herself between me and whatever she thought was threatening me, because that’s who she was.
That’s who she’d always been. And I couldn’t let her do that.
Not because I didn’t trust her, but because I didn’t need rescuing.
I was somewhere I’d chosen to be. So I lied.
Me: Sleep, food, and TV. Love you. Gotta go. Felony is demanding breakfast, and she’s getting that look.
Dani: The murder look or the guilt look?
Me: Both. Simultaneously. It’s impressive.
Dani: That’s my goddaughter. Give her a kiss from me. And eat something!!!
I put the phone down and went exploring in my thigh-length white-and-baby-pink nightie and rainbow-colored woolly socks.
The cabin was bigger than I’d expected. It was open-plan with a kitchen along the back wall, a heavy oak dining table that looked like it had survived at least one century and several arguments, a couple of leather armchairs angled toward a woodstove that was still ticking with heat.
One bedroom, one bathroom, a covered porch that I could see through the front windows.
Dishes in a drying rack. A coffee maker that looked like it had been used roughly four thousand times and loved for every single one.
The whole place was warm and lived-in and not at all the type of place I’d thought Warrick would be living in.
Bookshelves ran the length of one wall, floor to ceiling, and most of those were what I’d expected from a PI: case files, reference manuals, a couple of paperbacks. Normal. And then, on the far end, a section that was not normal.
Interdimensional Gate Theory. Quantum Bridging and the Portman Hypothesis. Stable Wormholes: A Mathematical Framework.
I pulled one out. Heavy, academic, the kind of thing you had to special-order. The spine was cracked, and the margins were full of handwriting.
I put it back. Carefully. Exactly where it had been.
So. The private investigator I’d let drive me into the woods owned a personal library on interdimensional wormholes. Cool. That was fine. Nothing about that was concerning at all.
The couch was empty. The blanket he’d used was folded on the arm, military-neat. I stood there for a second, listening, and then I heard it: a steady, rhythmic crack coming from outside. Wood splitting. I moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside.
Warrick Kassar. Eight-fifteen in the morning.
Chopping wood in the cold October air like it was a personal grudge match between him and the log pile.
His T-shirt was black and tight in a way that should have been illegal.
The fabric stretched across his chest every time he lifted the axe, and when he brought it down, it rode up just enough to show a strip of muscular stomach that I had absolutely no business noticing.
His shoulders were broader than they had any right to be, and his arms looked like he could pick me up with one finger.
There was a scar that ran below his elbow to his wrist in a curve that looked like teeth.
His hands were big and sure on the ax handle, and when the log split clean, his whole body moved with it, controlled and easy, like the weight of the thing was nothing.
He paused. Rolled his neck. Pushed his hair back with one hand, and I watched the shift of muscle under that T-shirt.
Oh boy, was I in trouble.
I let the curtain drop and went to pour some coffee.
He came in ten minutes later, slightly flushed from the cold, and stopped when he saw me at his counter.
“You found the coffee.”
“I found what you’re calling coffee. We need to have a conversation about how to make proper coffee.”
He grinned as he took the mug I offered him and leaned against the counter across from me.
We stood there in his kitchen drinking bad coffee while the morning came in through the windows, and it was … nice. Ordinary.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Five years.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Any neighbors?”
“There’s a family of raccoons who think my shed belongs to them. I’ve relocated them twice so far.”
“You relocated raccoons?”
“I escorted them off the property.”
“Warrick, you cannot escort a raccoon.”
“You can if you’re …” he paused, just for a beat, “um, patient.”
I had a feeling there was a story behind that; that there was no way he had been going to say “patient,” but I decided not to push.
“So what’s with the portal physics section?”
He studied my face. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Soon. Not today, though.”
“Soon, like tomorrow, or soon like when you’ve run out of raccoons to relocate?”
“Somewhere in between.”
“I can work with that.”
He reached past me for the coffee pot. Close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, could smell the cedar and cold air still clinging to his skin. His arm brushed mine, and he pulled back like he’d touched a stove.
He did that a lot. The pulling back. The careful distance between us; he was always making sure I felt safe.
And just like that, as soon as I realized this, my brain stopped doing the thing it always did—the constant questions.
The “is this safe? Is this smart? Is this going to blow up in my face?” And instead of all the noise, in the silence where my fear usually lived, there was just one thing.
Clear and simple and loud enough to drown out everything else.
I wanted to feel Warrick’s lips on mine.
I wanted it more than I wanted to be careful.
More than I wanted to be smart. More than I’d wanted anything in longer than I could remember.
“Warrick.”
He turned. His eyes found mine and held, and the look in them went through me like a lit match, slow and hot, all the way down to places I was not going to name in his kitchen in the morning. My breath caught. My skin prickled. Every nerve I had sat up and paid attention.
“Mmm?” Low. Liquid. A sound more than a word, and it vibrated through me.
My voice came out soft, “Please kiss me.”
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes widening, and I had the feeling I’d surprised the hell out of him.
He didn’t rush. He crossed the space between us, pressing close to me.
His hands came up to my face—slow, deliberate, giving me time to change my mind.
His thumbs traced my jaw. His fingers slid into my hair.
Then he kissed me.
It was soft. Careful. And for about half a second, I let him be careful, let him hold himself on the tight leash he kept —
Then I grabbed the front of his T-shirt and pulled him closer to me.
Something in him broke open. His hands tightened in my hair, and he kissed me harder, deeper, and the sound he made against my mouth was low and rough.
He backed me into the counter. I felt the edge press into my spine, and I didn’t care.
His hands were in my hair, his body was pressed against mine, and he was everywhere—the heat of him, the size of him, the way he kissed me like he’d been starving for it.
I fisted his shirt tighter. Warrick made another sound, something between a groan and a growl, and his hands slid from my face to my waist. He lifted me onto the counter like I weighed nothing.
I wrapped my legs around him, my nightie riding up so the only things between the long, hard length that was bulging in his jeans and my very hungry lady bits were my panties.
His hands found my hips, thumbs drawing circles on the bare skin, and each circle sent a line of heat straight through me.
And that was when his phone rang.
Damn it! Whoever it was had no sense of timing.
I pulled back. Warrick didn’t move, though the scowl on his face told me he was having the same thoughts as I was about whoever was on the end of the phone.
The phone rang again, sharp and insistent.
“Fuck!”
Yeah, he was not happy. Except it wasn’t his phone. It was mine. I fumbled for the phone next to me on the counter. I saw the screen. Brian.
For a solid three seconds, I looked at Brian’s name and then at Warrick’s mouth, thinking, “No, absolutely not, whatever it is can wait.” But Brian wouldn’t call unless something was actually wrong. Or unless he couldn’t find the spare mop. Both, in Brian’s world, constituted a genuine emergency.
I answered.
“Brian, this better be—”
“Lucy. Lucy, oh, thank God. Okay, so don’t be mad, but someone just left a box on the front step, and I opened it, and there are …
I don’t know—eight? Maybe ten? They’re really small, and they’re moving, and I’m pretty sure they’re tortoises?
Like, baby ones? And I don’t … Lucy, I don’t know what to do with a baby tortoise.
Do they bite? Can they run? Because one of them is moving faster than I’m comfortable with.
I put them on the desk, and one of them just walked straight off the edge.
It’s fine, I caught it, but Lucy, they don’t have any sense of self-preservation.
I think they might be suicidal. And I tried Googling, but the internet is telling me twelve different things, and one website said they can live to a hundred and fifty, and I am not signing up for that kind of commitment. ”
I closed my eyes. Warrick’s hands were still on my hips. His thumbs had gone still.
“Brian. Breathe.”
“I’m breathing. I’m breathing, but there are baby tortoises everywhere!”
“Okay, listen to me. Put them somewhere warm and contained. Um, the tub, the big blue one in the back room. No water.”
“What do I feed them?”
“Nothing yet. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
“Forty minutes? Lucy, I have ten … No, wait, hold on, twelve. There’s one behind the printer. Lucy, there is a tortoise behind the printer!”
“You’re doing fine. Forty minutes, Brian.”
I hung up. Warrick was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read; somewhere between frustrated and amused, like he was trying to decide which one to commit to.
“Baby tortoises,” I said.
“I heard.”
“Someone left a box of them on the front step. One of them is behind the printer.”
His mouth twitched. “I’ll drive you in.”
I looked down at where I was still sitting on his counter, legs still open, his hands still on my waist.
“I should probably get dressed first.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us moved for a second. Then he stepped back, his hands trailing off my hips in a way that made it very clear he was not done with this conversation. I slid off the counter and walked to the room on legs that were not entirely steady.
Felony was on the bed. She opened one eye, assessed me, and closed it again.
“Don’t judge me,” I told her.
She totally judged me.