Chapter Ten
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I mean technically someone almost dies in this chapter.
Poem
My sisters think they’re hilarious, handing me my bag earlier and listening to me gush gratitude at them while they smiled their sneaky little traitor smiles. They left, exchanging glances I mistook for sisterly love and affection.
I know better now.
Those looks were pure skullduggery, a word Sonnet taught me after she started working for the mayor—a word that perfectly encapsulates her current crimes with Muse as her co-conspirator.
Shivering in the teensiest, skimpiest pajamas I own, I wrap the quilt around me as I navigate by moonlight to the closet in search of warmth.
I don’t know why they chose these for me to sleep in when I have an entire drawer full of better options—warmer options.
I can only assume they had nefarious intentions, and I plan to retaliate accordingly.
Right after I regain feeling in my toes.
Four letter words tumble out of my mouth as I struggle to get a steady grip on the closet door to open it, and I send up a multitude of thanks when I finally manage to get it open. Blessings, my chill is soon to end.
I grab every blanket I see, making several trips back and forth to lay them out on the bed, hoping with my every goosebump that they’ll be enough.
On my final trip to the closet, I find something better than the blankets I’ve been wildly hoarding—something better than diamonds or gold, if you ask me right now.
I find clothes.
Shoved in the far corner of a shelf, previously hidden behind my newly beloved blankets, sits a small stack of large T-shirts. Clearly Fox’s, but freeze if I care. They’re coverage, when I have so little.
I send up more thanks, then slip on the thickest, softest one.
I moan as it falls over chilled flesh, chasing away the frigid touch of air on skin from my shoulders down, all the way to mid-thigh.
I never thought I’d be grateful for the height difference between us, but I could worship his mother right now for producing a son nearly a foot taller than me.
Belinda, you beautiful, beautiful woman. I could kiss you.
As I climb back into bed, I make a mental note to send her a gift, maybe a fruit basket, as soon as I have the funds available for such an expense. I stuff myself under the mound of blankets, and, slowly but surely, my shivering ceases and my eyelids weigh heavy.
Seriously. Bless Belinda.
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Gasping for air, I awaken in the midst of a blazing stake. The staked witch being me, judging by the suffocating, burning sensation that consumes my existence.
I yell, pushing with all my might against the mountain of blankets piled on me, then screech when they move nary an inch.
Craning my head to face the headboard, I work to gift my lungs the merest hint of air despite my self-created prison protesting such a maneuver.
Lungs? the bedding ask. What silly things to possess.
Useless. Here, doesn’t my hug feel so nice without something so egregious as vital human organs to stop me?
A bang sounds from the hallway, then my door bursts open.
Not that I can see it bursting, what with my very busy task of being slowly crushed to death by a million pounds of fabric, but my ears haven’t gotten the memo that we’re dying, yet, so they hear it with perfect precision when Fox blasts through the door, cursing and stumbling on the hardwood floor.
Noise expended, I’m left with only huffs.
I kick sheet-tangled legs and end up further embedded in the horror that is my attempt to combat frostbite.
And then, suddenly, I’m not.
I heave in a ragged, painful breath when Fox pushes the blankets off of me, strong hands going immediately to my waist to drag me up and out of danger.
“How?” he barks once he has me safely upright in his lap, wheezing. “And why?”
I smack his chest weakly, deciding to focus on the longevity of my life rather than a man’s stupid questions. When I get a lock on living, breathing, etc, I puff an irritated, “I was cold,” at him.
His hand tangles in the T-shirt covering me, then, audibly, he gulps. “Where did you get this?” he asks.
I point at the closet. “Where I got every bad thing that’s ever happened to me,” I retort. “There. In the closet of doom.”
He rubs the fabric at my thigh between his fingers. “I didn’t know I still had this,” he mutters.
I aim my eyes down to see what, exactly, he’d forgotten, and am surprised to find a T-shirt that I’m sure to appreciate once I’m finished not dying.
Soft and thick despite its clear age, the logo for an 80s hair band stares back at me from a black canvas.
Holes dot the fabric, including a particularly scandalous one showing off an inch of pink lace at my chest.
“You don’t still have this,” I decide. “This is mine, actually. Always has been.”
He makes a low noise in his throat, not quite a groan, but not really a moan either. Some other, agonized in-between sound.
We’ll just be ignoring what that sound does to my heart rate, thank you.
“I’m not sure what you’re complaining about,” I grump. “I’m the one who nearly died just now.”
“You can’t take my shirt,” he replies. “Even if you did nearly die. Why are you wearing this anyway?”
“I was cold,” I repeat, pushing off his lap. My feet hit soft, plush rug as I cross my arms, hip jutting. “Is there some reason that you turn your apartment into Antarctica when you sleep? Do you sleep, or do you go into a cryosleep instead?”
His eyes roll. “I can’t sleep if it’s hot.”
I cannot fathom what this man’s electric bill looks like. “We’re going to need to find a compromise here,” I reply. “Because I can’t sleep when it’s negative one hundred, and my solution clearly did not work.” I point at the mound of blankets. Exhibit A.
He follows my finger, lounging into the death covers. “We’ll go get you a heated blanket,” he offers. “Maybe steal mine back from Almond. And while we’re out, we can stop by your house to grab you appropriate pajamas.”
“Stopping by my house is a great idea,” I agree, dabbing at non-existent tears.
He freezes, eyes alert. “Why are you crying?”
I sniff. “I’m just so proud. Baby’s first intelligent thought. It’s moving.”
Jaw tense, he rises from the bed. “Just get dressed,” he rumbles. “I need to be back by noon, and it’s already nine.”
My jaw drops. “Nine?” I ask. “In the morning?”
His brows furrow. “Yeah?”
My entire being protests this information. “Why are we up at 9:00 AM?” It registers suddenly that the man is not only up, but dressed. At nine. In the morning! “Why are you ready for the day at 9:00 AM?”
His head tilts. “Because it’s morning?”
Yuck. “Are you always up this early?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Uh, because the bar closes several hours after midnight? And you stay after close to do your whole owner schtick in the office before going home. You’re telling me you do that, staying up until at least three, then you sleep for… what, five hours? Before getting up?”
“I’m not seeing the issue,” he replies.
I can see that he’s not seeing, yes. Baby’s first intelligence does not extend very far, it seems.
I spell it out for him. “You’re getting five hours of sleep every single night, at most, on purpose, even though you could sleep a recommended eight hours, considering you don’t open the bar back up until one.”
“I can’t get eight hours,” he counters. “I do administrative work in the mornings and I have to be around to receive deliveries. Even if I didn’t, though, I wouldn’t be getting eight hours.
That’s a lot of the day wasted.” He shudders, big, broad shoulders quaking at the thought.
“I get up at eight. I experience the day.”
I stifle a yawn. “That sounds horrible.”
“What time do you normally get up?” he asks, already wincing.
A smile tugs at my lips as I consider lying just to stress him out. Then I realize that the plain truth will stress him out plenty. “I get up at about one thirty most working days.”
“One thirty,” he echoes, blinking furiously. “In the afternoon?”
I grin. “Yep!”
“You don’t see the morning sun at all?”
“Sometimes when I work the closing shift, I’ll stay up after work to see the sunrise,” I provide. “Does that count?”
He chokes on a protest, sputtering “Absolutely not!”
“Oh,” I reply. “Pity. I guess the answer is no, then!”
He runs a hand through his thick, dark hair, cringing. “The way you live your life is confounding to me,” he mutters. “How are you always so chipper when you get so little sun?”
Oh, that’s easy. “I am the sunshine,” I retort. “And it’s rude of you to imply otherwise.”
He has no reply to that, I suppose, unless one counts a scowl, a sigh, and turning on his heel to exit the room with haste as a reply.
Magnanimously, I decide that I do count that as a proper response. So generous, me. “Does this mean I can go back to bed?” I call after him with a yawn.
He hollers a negative response, popping his head back in the room to glare at me. “We have things to do, Poem. Things to do for you, specifically. Get dressed. I’ll make breakfast, we’ll eat, and then we’ll go.”
He leaves, and I stick my tongue out at the doorframe.
“Things to do for you, kit,” I mock, nose scrunched.
“Go, go, go. Early morning sun. Errands. Breakfast, a meal that we both definitely eat every day and so I’m not going to ask if you want anything, I’m just going to assume that you do.
Itty-bitty boy brain is running at full speed today. You’re welcome.”
“I can hear you!” he yells.
“That’s the point!” I yell back.
His displeasure whispers through the air, silent and thick.
If only anyone here cared about such a thing.