Chapter 38
HATCH
For six whole minutes after I open my eyes, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
Salt clings to the air inside the houseboat, mixed with the faint scent of cherry body wash and rose-hip tea. The boat rocks gently beneath us, and the pale, early sun shines through the porthole like a faint spotlight across Lucy’s bare shoulder.
She’s curled against me in her white nightgown, her cheek resting on the inside of my tatted bicep heavy enough that the arm lost feeling before I woke up. I don’t care, though. That’s her arm now. Do what you want to with it, baby.
I never realized what a pain long hair could be, though.
Hers is everywhere, strawberry strands caught between us, stuck to our skin, falling across her face in messy waves.
Pretty sure I got some in my ass crack during our shower last night while I was washing my boxer briefs, but again.
I don’t care. She can do what she wants with my ass too.
Maybe.
Within reason.
Her breaths are slow and deep, and the weight of her in my arms makes my chest ache.
Okay, yeah, I’ll go back to my first instinct. Lucy McKennon can do whatever she wants with me. I’m fucking hers.
I’ve never woken up like this. Never let anyone but my family and tattoo artists close enough to know what my skin looks like in daylight, close enough to trace the scars and the ink without flinching. I’m laid bare for her, almost as vulnerable as she was with me last night.
She told me about “Princess Alice,” sharing with me the deepest, darkest parts of herself the only way she could. Through story.
And fuck me, I held her on that frozen beach until she was finished, crying like a goddamn baby into her hair and not giving a shit that the numbing, high tide had swallowed my legs.
Because she chose me.
Me.
She chose me, knowing the madness I wield, that I’m totally fine with interrogation, torture, and murder. Would she have chosen me if she knew who I am? Would she choose Hatton Fury?
Probably not.
Which is why I’m still here, cuddling her in bed like I’ll never get to again.
But come on, being engaged to me can’t possibly be worse than literal torture, can it?
Note to self. Never ask her that.
Upon that shitty come-to-Jesus-moment, our harsh reality slowly darkens the bright porthole spotlight shining on my morning.
Dash hasn’t answered me in two days, and I’m pretty sure Orion voice messaged me last night right when Lucy came out of the shower, and now it sits in my texts like an ticking time bomb.
And while Lucy knows me, she doesn’t know who I really am.
Which means every minute I spend in this bed with my face buried in her hair is another minute I’m choosing to be a selfish bastard instead of an honest one.
I just need one more.
A hinge above us squeaks, probably the wind against the porthole.
I frown at the feel of the mattress sinking at the far corner, but I’m too lazy to open my eyes, and I don’t hear anything so I allow myself to drift back—
Something warm and rough drags across my split knuckles.
“Shit,” I mutter, flinching, then crack my eyes open to find that ornery striped cat, Chessy perched by the pillow near my hand, his coarse tongue working over my cuts with single-minded determination.
“Shoo,” I whisper and flutter my fingers to get him to go away, but the mean bastard just puts a heavy paw on my forearm and keeps licking.
My teeth grit as I try to figure out how to stop him. But unless I want to wake Lucy and burst the fairytale bubble I’ve trapped us in, my options are limited. Judging by the way the evil tomcat’s little maniacal eyes laugh at me while he abrades a particularly deep cut, he knows I’m stuck too.
But then the bridge of my nose tingles, and my knuckles begin to itch something fierce. All it takes is accidentally looking at the porthole and a sneeze racks through me. I do my best to catch it in my pillow, turning to muffle it, but it’s still loud in the small cabin.
Lucy groans lightly, and Chessy, seemingly satisfied, flicks his tail in judgment and settles onto a pillow in the corner to glare at me from there.
Ooooh Dinah is sooo much cuter than you, you little jerk.
Shit. I need to tell Lucy I have her cat. Add that to the list of things she’ll probably hate me for.
My phone buzzes somewhere in the sheets. I almost ignore it, regretting that I even saved the thing from high tide last night, and sink my nose back into Lucy’s hair to let the world wait. But it buzzes again, slowly dragging me back.
Is Dash finally reaching out? Considering what he thought the Wildes had planned, I don’t know if that’s good or not.
Chessy howls from the kitchenette, and my damn sinuses answer back with another sneeze.
“Mm, you really are allergic, huh?” Lucy mumble-laughs softly.
“Ugh. Told you I wasn’t lying.” I rub my nose, annoyed that my eyes are already watering from Chessy’s proximity. “I usually take another dose in the morning.”
She hums and shifts away from me, drawing out my grunt in protest. The nasal sound makes me sneeze again and she snorts as she rolls back to me.
“Here.”
She places something in my hand, and I frown at the familiar feel of it, not even needing to fully open my eyes to confirm.
“You have my medicine?”
“Mmhm. I accidentally stole it that first night, remember?”
“Nope,” I admit honestly, my words muffled as I uncap the syringe blindly, knowing the drill by fucking heart. “But I do now.”
I sink the needle into my thigh and wince. It isn’t until I’ve finished depressing the plunger that I open my eyes and see Lucy laying next to me staring at the injector.
My eyes go wide, and the cap falls from my mouth.
“Fuck, Lucy, I’m so—”
“It’s okay.” She shakes her head and picks up the orange top, giving me a small smile. “Just… cap it. Please?”
“Yeah, of course.”
I take it quickly, capping the needle. By the time I’m done, she’s opened a hidden compartment at the foot of the bed between the kitchenette and the bedroom with a trashcan inside.
“Nifty.” I toss it in and lay my leg over her in the pretense of stretching to shut the cabinet.
She giggles as I hook my leg around her lower half and wrap one arm around her waist to pull her into my chest.
The smile she gives me is sleepy but pure, almost making me forget everything that’s bearing down on us.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.”
“Good surprised or…?” My brow raises.
Her grin widens. “Good surprised.”
“Good.” I smile back and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She leans into my palm like a cat, and my heart squeezes. “You know, I could say the same about you, bunny. You didn’t run.”
I give her a pointed look and her brow furrows after a moment, the real world filtering in behind her hazel-blue eyes.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admits sadly. “There’s a lot to figure out. Castle, the club.” She winces. “Don’t you still have a body at your apartment?”
“Unless Harry took care of it…” I grimace. “Yeah.”
She sighs. “Yikes. Okay, so yeah. All that, and…” She blows out a breath. “Leaving is complicated for me, Hatter. In the past I would’ve been gone the night Castle assigned me to the Smoke and Mirrors Room.” My jaw ticks, though she doesn’t notice.
“But I thought being here was helpful. And there was you, and for the first time, I didn’t want to just disappear on someone I l—” Her eyes dart up to me and she clears her throat. “Anyway. Leaving isn’t just about whether I want to go. Neither is staying.”
My heartbeat skipped a few times at the thought of whatever almost-confession she made, but I leave it for now and find her hand under the sheets to hold it.
“Trust me, bunny, I know complicated. But I promise I’ll make all those complications way more complicated if you try to complicate things by leaving me again. Understand?”
“Oof, I don’t know.” She sucks her teeth. “Sounds complicated.”
“See? I’m already doing it.”
She chuckles and squeezes my hand once before rolling away to sit up. My phone begins to buzz again somewhere on this bed, and I start patting around me, searching for it as she replies.
“I’ll see what I can do, hm?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say “hell no, gorgeous, that ain’t good enough,” but she hums in thought.
“That’s strange. My friend has a tattoo just like that. What a small world.”
“Huh?” I frown and stop searching to face her.
My stomach plummets.
She’s tilting the phone toward me, squinting at the lock screen. “This tattoo. This sounds crazy—I’m probably not awake enough—but your background looks exactly like my best friend, Luna’s…”
She gasps, and my heart stops.
“Oh no, it’s not a background. It’s a call. Annnd I made you miss it.” She glances up at me with a guilty grimace, and my pulse hops back on track.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t have a smartphone, but it’s still a habit to look at the screen, and then I saw the tattoo—”
“It’s okay,” I chuckle. “No worries.” Trying to laugh this off should get me a fucking Oscar, because holy shit that was a close call. Literally.
“Here, I’ll take it.” I hold out my palm, but it buzzes again in her hand, and her eyes dart down to the screen.
Her whole body freezes. The air around us goes still, like the way air molecules seem to thicken and charge before a storm makes landfall.
“Baby, hand me the phone,” I say slowly, gently.
And way too fucking late.
“Text from… Orion.” She reads the full name like she’s tasting something bitter. “Orion… Fury?” Her eyes come to mine, and the confusion there is already hardening at the edges. “Why does Orion Fury have your number?”
I sit up and reach for my phone. “Lucy, baby, I can explain.”
She pulls it back, a small, instinctive movement keeping it out of my reach.
Her expression shifts, pieces sliding into place with the precision of a woman raised by the King and Queen of Las Vegas, taught to read people the way other kids learn to read books and the Furys and Wildes were trained to read prey.