22. Penny
Penny
I didn’t remember moving from the kitchen to the living room floor, so I couldn’t explain it to Kit when he crouched beside me, shaking me so hard it made my insides slosh.
“Penny, what are you doing?” he demanded.
Peeling my eyes open, I found Kit’s face twisted in concern. His handsome face, Rosie had said. Didn’t I know it.
“Are you all right?” Kit asked.
I lay belly down on the wood floor, more aware than ever of the spots I’d missed when sweeping up the place. My cheek was slick with drool and studded with grit as I craned my neck in a tentative move toward sitting.
“I’m fine,” I replied, struggling around a tongue that felt twice its normal size. I tried the words again, rolling them in my mouth like they had a flavor. But I tasted nothing except the whiskey gone sour and making my stomach roll.
Kit’s nose wrinkled as he sat back on his heels. “You’re drunk. ”
My head thunked down onto the floorboards, and my temple raked across them as I nodded. “I drunk it all, Kit.”
“ Drank it all.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t even gone that long.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, relishing the dark quiet behind my closed lids.
That was why I got the liquor in the first place.
To silence the clamor of my brother’s accusations and my own doubts.
I chugged until I couldn’t remember being sad in the first place.
But if that was true, where were these tears coming from?
“Let’s get you off the ground, at least,” Kit said.
I sprawled, limp, while Kit tugged on one arm then the other, succeeding only in sliding me across the floor. At last, he sighed and rolled me onto my back. My gut gurgled in protest, driving out a wet belch.
Kit’s nose wrinkled and he straightened, standing overhead with his arms crossed over his chest. “You better warn me if you’re going to be sick.”
I nodded again, scrubbing a hand over my face as Kit crouched beside me.
He slipped one arm beneath my knees, the other bracing my back, and the next thing I knew I was pressed against his chest. Heat rushed up my neck, flushing my face at the sheer indignity of being carried like a damsel.
But the warmth fled when Kit reached the couch and unceremoniously dropped me onto the cushions.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get you some water.”
He was gone and back in the span of a blink, holding a tin cup in one hand while tugging on my shirt collar with the other.
“Come on.” He pulled me into a sitting position.
“Not thirsty,” I protested.
The offered cup remained.
Rather than take it from him, I bent in and sipped while it was still in his grasp. The cool water soothed the ache in my throat. I began to slurp greedily, getting more on me than in me while Kit continued to hold the cup aloft.
“I didn't take you for much of a drinker,” he mused once I’d finished it all.
I tested my tongue again, running it along my lips. “I'm not. It just seems the sort of thing men do when they have no other options.”
I’d only seen my father drink twice in my life. He claimed it wasn’t prudent to waste money on alcohol, but he’d made exceptions when Sayla was away being treated for the burns that nearly cost her life, and the night Merrick moved out.
“You don’t think you have options?” Kit lowered himself onto the sofa beside me.
The smell of evergreens wafted from him, and I fought the urge to lean closer and breathe it in. Instead, I masked a long inhale with an equally long sigh.
“Not anymore.” I shook my head. “They know I’m here. Merrick knows I’m here. And why. I told you they’d see through me.”
“I thought you did well, all things considered.”
The thoughts I’d tried to drown began leaking into my mind like water from a faucet. They would fill me up again, I already knew. There were too many of them and not enough of me.
“You were right about Father,” I admitted. “About this being impossible. I am a fool. And a simpleton. And now Merrick hates you, too. Because of me.”
Kit huffed an unhappy laugh. “Merrick hating me has very little to do with you.”
“But the rest?” My sight blurred as I looked at him, and I blinked to try to clear it .
“You’re too hard on yourself, Penny.” He bent forward and set the empty cup on the low table. “No one could have predicted this.”
“You did.”
“Not exactly…”
Another exhale slumped me back. I let my head loll onto the top of the couch cushion.
“Well, I’m in it now. I have to stay. And I have to go through the Oaths.
They’re going to burn me, too.” I glanced aside, peering at his chest as though I could see through his shirt to the brand seared beneath.
My hand followed my gaze, and my fingers brushed the soft linen.
He caught my hand and moved it to rest on my knee. I stared at it, studying the bumps and lines of my scarred skin and misshapen digits. While I lifted each finger in turn, drumming them across my kneecap, Kit responded in a steady voice.
“No, you don’t. No one expects you to.”
“ Merrick expects it,” I mumbled.
My brother practically dared me to go through the Oaths. It was a challenge he fully believed I would fail. Because that’s what I always did.
Kit’s brow furrowed. “He was goading you, Penny. He can’t force you to do anything?—”
“I said I’ll do it.” I sat up straight. Though, not as straight as I meant to, and I found myself tipping sideways toward the coffee table.
Kit’s barred arm stopped my fall, then he pushed me back onto the stiff couch cushions. “Why?” he asked, clearly bewildered.
My thoughts were a puddle now, sloshing around in my brain and maybe leaking out my ears. They sounded clogged, and my voice seemed distant as I struggled to explain. “Father trusted me to take care of things. Take care of them…”
Mother expected the same. Her happiness and well-being were left in my hands. Sayla had Warren. But Mother only had me.
“We have to destroy the Bone Men,” I concluded. “It’s the only way. And I owe you.”
Kit recoiled. “What could you possibly owe me for?”
“If you hadn’t brought me here, I would never have known the truth about Merrick.
About any of this. I wouldn’t have had a chance to save the farm.
To do what my father believed I could.” I sagged forward again, this time slumping against Kit’s chest and nearly knocking my head into his chin.
His warm, woody scent overwhelmed me, and I hummed a happy sound.
“You smell nice, Kit,” I told him. “Everything about you is nice.”
He pitched back, grabbing me by the arms and trying to right me, but my body stayed limp in his grasp. “All right, all right. We can talk about this when you're sober. There's no rush?—”
“Kit.” Squirming free, I stabbed my finger at him. “Kit,” I sputtered again. “Your father was a bad man. And he did terrible things, but he’s dead. My brother is very much alive, and I think…”
What did I think?
I stared wordlessly at Kit’s eyes. When the light caught them just right, they had the slightest tinge of gold.
But now they were bottomless pools, and his long lashes fanned around them.
He was handsome, and strong, and good at everything I wasn't. He would be quite a catch, but not for me. Maybe for Tessa, whoever she was.
My thoughts circled around, and I regained myself with a nod. “Merrick is a bad man, too. If I can stop him before he does the terrible things… You would have, if you could.” My head seemed to bob of its own accord. “You would have stopped it before it happened. To save others. Save yourself.”
I was still nodding, so it was hard to decipher Kit’s expression, but the gravel in his voice made it clear he was quite serious as he answered. “You could die. We both could. What would that prove?”
I could think of no further argument, so I clenched my fists and met his eyes. “I'm going through the Oaths, Kit. To prove Merrick wrong. To prove my father right.”
Kit worked his jaw for a moment, and I thought he would protest. Instead, he dipped his chin and then took hold of my elbow.
“I think you need to sleep this off,” he said. “If you feel the same in the morning, then I suppose I’ll have to accept it.”
My head wobbled again before I looked up at him. He was kind. And nice. And his sweetly piney scent was intoxicating as he pulled me up and threw my arm across his shoulders. I pressed against him, tucked to his side in a way that made me feel like I fit.
I leaned back, listing more heavily than I meant to, but Kit quickly snatched me up.
My eyes fluttered through a slow blink. “We’re friends,” I said to the growing quiet. “Aren’t we, Kit?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course we are. I think you might be the only friend I have.”
That meant something. I was more to him than a nuisance or a burden. But, as glad as I was to be his friend, I couldn’t help hoping in time I could become more than that.
When we turned toward the bedrooms, the world spun. I thought I might belch again but, when I opened my mouth, a wet stream spewed out instead. Lavender shortbread and watered-down whiskey made a mess down the front of Kit’s clothes and splattered his boots.
He stumbled back, dragging me along with him while I stammered through apologies.
“Oh, gods, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”
Kit’s chest swelled in a deep breath. When he exhaled, it ruffled my hair. “This doesn't need to happen again,” he said near my ear. “You are not this kind of man.”
I clung to him while he stepped out of his boots and steered me away from the vomit on the floor.
Together, we staggered down the hall and into my bedroom, where he eased me onto the bed.
Another wave of bile surged up my throat, and I tried to swallow it down.
Despite my hand clamped over my mouth to seal it, a bit escaped anyway, dribbling past my chin and onto my shirt.
Kit groaned, and I whimpered while trying to peel the soggy fabric away from my skin.
Crouching before me, Kit grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it off over my head. He wadded it into a ball, then used a loose bit of the fabric to wipe around my lips.
Tears and blushing heat beset me while I stared at him.
He straightened and tugged out of his own soiled shirt. Gripping both garments in his hand, he stood over me, bare-chested and as brawny as I’d imagined. It would have been appealing if he was stripped to the waist for any reason other than me puking on him.
“I mean it, Penny,” he said. “Stay away from the whiskey. It’s a foul drink.”
I wiped my arm across my eyes, trying to dry them before Kit noticed I was crying again. “But you like it,” I protested.
“I hate it,” he replied sharply. “Just not as much as I hate the way I feel without it. ”
A few more tears escaped, and I rubbed them away. “That’s sad.”
Kit heaved another noisy breath as he stepped out of the room. “Get some rest.”
The door clicked closed, and I stared at it for several moments.
When I heard the water pump creak in the bathroom, I groaned and fell back onto the bed.
Sleeping the day away was not likely to change my mind or alter the fact that I’d made a fool of myself in front of Kit so many times that I’d stopped keeping track.
But I could do better. Do more than stand idly by and let my brother be proven right. I could help Kit. Together, maybe we could even be heroes.
My gut roiled. Whimpering, I huddled on my side in a miserable ball.
Heroism would have to wait till tomorrow.