Chapter 13
T he sun had just begun to sink below the horizon when Neela finally dusted off the burner phone Brass had given her, pried her nearly frozen ass off the bench outside the arboretum, and made the call.
It had only taken the better part of several hours to realize with an alarming amount of certainty that Rhode wasn’t coming back for her. Honestly, did she expect him to, though?
Did I know what to expect at all?
There was out-of-her-depth and then there was whatever the hell had happened earlier. He had asked her to kiss him, hadn’t he?
Of course he had, because in what world would she voluntarily lock lips with a man who shirked away from her touch as though she had ten kinds of plague crawling all over her?
She’d done what he asked of her. There wasn’t one second of that encounter that hadn’t involved some kind of fight-or-flight thinking on both sides, she was sure of it. It was a literal game of survival, with no power-ups left and no health bar to regenerate.
So she’d kissed him. And he’d promptly left her ass in the snow like a forgotten bag of vegetative waste that would have to endure another freezing winter before the town came and picked her up, moldy and sodden.
Neela’s knee bobbed out an anxious rhythm. She should be furious. Should be gleefully counting off the ticking minutes that took him farther away from her. Or at the very least, basking in the amazing experience of not only having a hand in their rescue operation but calling forth a crucial power that only she could pull off. Her, of all beings!
But instead, all she could think about was the kiss.
More.
The way he’d spoken that word against her lips hadn’t been a simple plea. She’d heard plenty of those in her lifetime and uttered a fair amount of them herself. No, with Rhode, there was a passion to it, painted with some sort of urgent arrogance that belied the devastating look of disgust he gave her before the snow from his boots plopped onto her face as he got gone.
Unfortunately, it was his disgust that made the most sense. Disgust she knew, after all. The concept had practically been her babysitter, let alone the chief motivating factor in making sure that she maintained as low a profile as possible around her sire.
She was used to the stuff, knew its shoe size, and could even make friendship bracelets that featured all of its favorite colored beads.
Seeing it carved onto Rhode’s features, though, after being cradled beneath him, feeling the insistent hardness of his body responding to hers, and scorching against him as the fire she called forth did the same to the branch above them, well . . .
Just because she was used to degradation didn’t mean it sucked any less.
Neela zipped up her coat, not even caring that another one of her curls got snagged in the zipper. It seemed like a small price to pay for the secrets Rhode knew she was holding. Secrets she hadn’t had a chance to reveal.
Maybe that was why he’d bolted when he popped those fiery peepers open and those dawning shreds of realization finally wound their way into his psyche. Regret was no one’s favorite flavor, and he’d looked like he’d just swallowed two scoops of the stuff.
If he ever allowed her to explain, would he even understand, though? Or would it just send him to the skies again?
Had she even earned the right to care about him one way or the other?
A black SUV parted the misting snow, which had only begun to ramp up from flecks to flakes, and parked in front of her. But when the window rolled down, a woman’s long blond braid—which was clearly revolting against the icy precipitation—nearly leaped out of the winter coat collar it was tucked into. The smile that greeted Neela was both soul-shatteringly sweet and just a hair too knowing.
“Please tell me Rhode didn’t abandon you on the side of the, um, road,” the woman said, already grimacing at the unintended rhyme before the words finished coming out of her mouth.
“Please tell me Brass sent you and the heat’s cranking in there.”
“You bet your sweet tits it is.” She patted the outside of the door with her gloved hand, bestowing a curious amount of affection on the inanimate object. “I’m Drea, and you’re cold, so let’s continue this chat inside.”
Neela already had one cheek on the fine leather before Drea finished her sentence, and though Neela’s lips were still feeling the tingle from earlier, that didn’t stop her from orchestrating the best low whistle of her life over her new surroundings.
“If I had a vehicle like this, I’d not only give it a waxed pet down daily but would solely drive it while wearing a pair of those cotton white gloves museum curators have on when handling precious artifacts.”
Drea pulled onto the street and winked a violet eye at her. “I know, right? This was a gift from my soul bond, Chrome.”
Ah. Figured. “What was the occasion?”
“That, by some miracle, I hadn’t fallen through the rusted-out floorboards of my old car or died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the thing’s longer-than-street-legal failed emissions test.”
“Oh, wow. Well, I can say with complete certainty that this is the nicest car I’ve ever been in.” She didn’t need to elaborate that it was also only the second car she’d ever been in and discreetly crossed all fingers and toes the news wouldn’t get back to Molly in some way.
“Really?” Her bright eyes creased at the corners. “I’m going to hold you to that, if you don’t mind. I love Molly like a sister, and we used to live together in what is now her apartment, but she said she gives me one month tops before the back seat is riddled with Twizzler wrappers and I have to explain to Chrome why the leather’s sticky and the vents smell like caramel macchiato.”
“I suppose there are worse things to smell like.”
“My thoughts exactly! Yeesh. If the man thinks he’s keeping me from my iced coffees while he gets to leave his peppermint gum wrappers lying around, he can take his spare set of keys and shove them so far up his?—”
“Hey, you know, I never said thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”
Not wanting to step into any more family angel drama than she’d already waded through, and also not wanting Drea to accidentally blow through a second definitely-no-longer-yellow traffic light, Neela thought it best to steer the conversation in a different direction.
Drea seemed to ease up on the gas at the same rate the heat left her voice. Soon, they were strolling the speed limit with the rest of the lethargic traffic. Because, you know, small towns and whatnot.
“No problem at all. Brass and some of the others are out on patrol tonight. Chrome and Bronze are watching over Molly’s apartment, so don’t be surprised if the next-door neighbor Mrs. Carmine hollers something out her window about too much foul language. Which is so ironic because I’ve heard that eighty-year-old cuss out the UPS delivery guy with more linguistic flair than an auctioneer.” They pulled up to a stopped traffic light, and Drea leaned closer. “I think she secretly loves the guys since they keep seedy people away from the parking lots, but she just maybe resents that she hasn’t been able to keep up with a lot of the younger lingo, you know? The woman’s a doll, but she still has a cable subscription. There’s only so much pop culture and modern vernacular you can glean from that.”
“Seeing as this is the longest I’ve been aboveground in my entire existence and the only man I thought I recognized from before abandoned me in the snow a few hours before nightfall, I can kind of relate to feeling a bit lost.” Neela chewed the inside of her cheek as the car slowly accelerated through the light. Silently and slowly, mind you.
God, it hadn’t even been five minutes, and Neela had already managed to steer the second conversation she’d ever had with a woman straight into shit’s creek.
“Chrome and I found him, you know. Rhode. It’s been— Look, it’s not my story to tell, and I can’t say I love the situation I’m in.”
“What situation?”
The sigh Drea let out was so deep, Neela nearly felt it echo around the hollow in her own chest. “The one where the man who I’d literally do anything for wants nothing to do with the man who, for some reason, let me, of all people, care for him when he had every reason in the world to give up on life.”
Neela tried to absorb that idea but couldn’t reconcile the heat she’d just experienced beneath Rhode’s touch with the ice he’d practically cut her with as he flew off.
“The man gives me whiplash,” Neela admitted. “I can only imagine what it must have been like for you when you were caring for him.”
“Here’s the thing, though—and believe me, it took me for-fucking-ever to realize this—but his circumstances don’t really have anything to do with me. Rhode and I share a connection, sure, and Chrome and Rhode absolutely have a Mt. Everest-sized reckoning barreling toward them at some point, but it’s not my place to try and worm my way inside his past, except to give the hard parts of it a soft place to land when the pieces start breaking free. Look, beyond what the others have already shared, we don’t know more about Rhode’s prior situation. He’s claimed memory loss since day one, and even though Chrome loves to call bullshit on that, I don’t care if that’s the party line Rhode feels he needs to tote to keep himself safe. None of us can imagine what he’s been through and what he’s had to overcome mentally to even fly or fight again.”
I can imagine. Far too well, I can imagine.
When Neela didn’t say anything, Drea flicked on her blinker and pulled them into a strip mall parking lot.
“Why are we here?”
“Because retail therapy does a far better job of topping off the dopamine than bedroom sulking.” Then she jammed the gear shift into park. “Besides, friends don’t let friends wear the same outfit for more than a day in a row, unless it’s, like, the good pair of jeans.”
Shopping. As in, walk through a store, browse the racks, and—Neela’s lower lip curled under her teeth— try on clothes in a fitting room. It was the most mundane of mortal tasks but something she’d always longed to do.
Neela’s throat quivered. “I didn’t know?—”
“Save the questions. We’ve only got another hour until these places close, and if you want to feel like a new woman before gently handing Rhode his ass for the way he treated you, I suggest we walk and talk.”
“Wait.” Neela had already swung her car door open, but her hand froze on the handle. “What are you talking about?”
Drea was out of the vehicle and sauntering up to the first shop, her long braid swaying with canine-like enthusiasm. “I know where Rhode likes to go when he needs space away from the others, and I’ll tell you where that is, if you promise to try on that hunter-green sweater dress in the window. Ooh and the brown calf-length boots!”
Neela barely made it through the boutique’s door before her arms were piled high with garments and gratitude.