Chapter 30 Arthur, Before #2
We stared at each other, Eva’s chest falling as she let out a shaky breath.
I swallowed. “Do you want me to kiss you there?”
A helpless sound slipped out of her. “I… I don’t know. I want you.”
“You can have me. Any way you want.” The truth of that scared me a little. I’d never felt beholden to any kind of divinity, but kneeling between her thighs felt like worship. I’d do anything she commanded.
“You have me, Ev,” I said again, more softly.
A flicker of vulnerability clouded her expression. “I’m not supposed to want that.”
“Bullshit.”
She laughed wetly.
Seriously, who had told her that? I hated seeing her embarrassed when she had no reason to be. Maybe neither of us had done this before, but I knew with every beat of my heart that it wasn’t wrong. That loving her, learning her, couldn’t be wrong.
I threaded my fingers with hers and bent to press our foreheads together. “It’s just you and me, Ev. Nothing else matters.”
When her lips parted, I watched something change behind her eyes. So I asked again. “What do you want?”
Without breaking my gaze, Eva slowly drew our intertwined hands to the hinge of her thigh. “Kiss me here.”
Heat flamed inside me at the gentle order. I pressed a butterfly-soft kiss to her hip bone, then paused, awaiting further instruction.
“Here.” Eva trailed a fingertip down her leg. She was meant to be savored, and I tried, I tried. But the line of stretch marks on her inner thigh pulled me in like a drug. These thighs. I eagerly kissed a path down to her knee, then higher and higher up the other side.
Eva’s breaths turned ragged. “Where do you want to kiss me?”
“Everywhere, Ev.”
Snarling her fingers in my hair, Eva dragged my face up to meet hers. “Truly?”
“Every inch of you.”
Slowly, her trepidation eased into a smile. Eva bit her lip, then reached between her legs. “Here,” she said softly.
When I closed my mouth on her, the wildflowers lining the bank burst into bloom. I wrapped an arm around her upper thigh and lost myself in skin, in sighs, in summer.
The pond lapped at my toes. Something green brushed my arm, but I couldn’t focus on anything except her. Eva canted her hips, and I muffled a groan against her skin.
No. Not wicked at all. A rush of validation swept through me.
This was worship of the softest kind, a prayer made of touches, an altar of flesh.
Her sounds were benediction. When she pulled my hair, I kissed my way back up her body—the dip in her waist, the crook of her neck—finally sealing my mouth to hers once more.
I loved that she kissed with her teeth. That I, too, was something to devour.
When I broke away, Eva laughed, breathless. “Wow.”
“Wow.” I grinned down at her.
Like this, our bodies were almost perfectly aligned. Eva’s bright expression changed, growing more heated as she set her palms on my hips and urged me closer.
“You sure?” I whispered.
Before she could answer, the sound of voices in the trees startled us both. Eva and I jolted apart. They were coming down the path to the pond. I identified the low rumble as Jack Moreau’s voice.
“Shit.”
Eva pulled me back into the water. “Under the dock!”
We didn’t have time to dress. Bubbles licked my ears as we submerged, surfacing beneath the dock’s gooey underside. A green film dripped water onto my nose. “You didn’t mention the slime,” I muttered.
“Shh.” Eva peered through the slats as the voices drew nearer. Although we couldn’t make out the figures themselves very well, I did catch a glimpse of my camera, and realized too late that we’d left it and our clothes on the dock.
“Please, Jack.” The voice was familiar, and after a moment I placed it as belonging to the older Walker brother, Dane. “Lenny’s a good kid. He just needs another chance.”
“Another chance?” Jack’s voice was low, and terrifying.
“I thought you would understand that.”
“Chances go to those who deserve them,” Jack roughed out. “Not to those who brag about their exploits.”
“Len wouldn’t hurt her—”
“He sure ran his mouth off like he did!” Jack’s voice, usually so warm, went hard and cold with anger. “You think Izzy would lie to me?”
Eva gasped.
“No,” Dane said softly. “No, she wouldn’t.”
The color drained from Eva’s cheeks. I don’t want to be another thing my neighbors talk about, she’d said.
And now she was anyway.
I found her hand under the water, a knot forming in my throat.
Gone was the giggling girl I’d run off the dock with.
Gone was the pleasure she’d worn like the sun in the grass.
This was the girl I’d seen in the Honey Shoppe, scared to be seen.
The coating of slime on the dock’s underbelly washed her in a sickly green, droplets streaking down her cheeks.
My heart tugged as I thought of Lenny Walker pushing her against the counter.
How many times had something like that happened and no one noticed?
How many second chances had he already wasted?
“Dane,” Jack said wearily. “This isn’t who you want to be.”
The words might as well have been an arrow straight to my own conscience. I’d made the wrong choice. I should have been the one to tell Jack what had happened in the Honey Shoppe.
There was a painful beat of silence. “I know,” Dane finally said, sounding defeated. “But Jack… What am I supposed to do?”
“What you do for any other assault, Deputy,” Jack said flatly. “Report it.”
Dane’s voice was raw, young. “He’s my only family left.”
The words hooked something deep inside me. Sometimes I couldn’t chase away the panicky feeling that I was all alone in the world, that the heart of my family, my only family, had walked away from me without so much as a glance back.
The monster pulsed inside my chest. “You have me.”
When a shadow fell over me, I squinted through the slats, trying to get a better look at the men on the dock. The rustle of fabric and clasping skin made it sound as though Jack had drawn Dane into an embrace. “You have us.”
Dane let out a shaky, humorless laugh. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this shit anymore,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “You’ve done so much for us already.”
Under the water, a fish brushed my calf as it swam by. The slimy touch sent an unpleasant current of feeling up my leg before my deadly touch sucked the life from the creature.
“I don’t know what to do with him, Jack.”
“Yes, you do.”
Eva’s grip on my hand was starting to hurt. She had her eyes fixed on one of the dock floats, and I watched a tear slip down her cheek.
Jack’s voice was firm. “Show him how to be a better man.”
After Jack and Dane retreated, Eva and I hurried out from under the dock and quickly dressed, eyes on the trail they had taken.
I lifted my Minolta from the dock and slung the strap over my shoulder.
Had Jack, on seeing the camera and our discarded clothing, put two and two together?
My stomach twisted at the thought. I wasn’t sure I would’ve survived his discovery of his daughter and me under the dock in nothing but our skin.
“Are you okay?” I asked Eva.
“No.”
I took a breath. “Did you tell Izzy?”
Eva stiffened, then slowly shook her head.
I could have left it there. But something was gnawing at me. I swallowed. “Maybe we should have.”
Eva whipped around to face me. “What?”
“You have to be safe, Ev. That matters more.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?” I whispered.
Her eyes flashed, and she turned from me and stomped away.
Every step up to the house was a weight. When I caught sight of Eva’s silhouette in the greenhouse, I angled toward it.
“No,” the monster said. “Give her a moment.”
“I just—”
“A moment, little death-touch.”
Dejected, I stuck my hands in my pockets and passed the greenhouse over, leaving Eva to fume. When Hyssop saw me from where she was playing in the yard, she made a dash for the bushes.
I slipped inside and toed off my shoes in the mudroom.
“Arthur?” Jack’s heavy steps made the floorboards creak as he peered down the hall.
I stiffened and tried to smooth my features. “Yes, sir?”
“We need to talk.” Jack’s low-drawn brows did nothing to reassure me as he nodded for me to follow him.
Shit.
I hesitated in the doorframe to the kitchen. The fixings for tea were out, splayed across the countertop. The kettle, the jars full of multicolored petals. Honey, gleaming in the light. I didn’t know what it was about their honey I found so alluring, but my mouth watered at the sight.
Jack sat on the edge of a chair, frowning. “Take a seat.”
I sat stiffly, my camera banging against my thigh. Jack’s eyes dropped to it.
He’d seen our things at the pond, hadn’t he? He’d seen our things, and now he was deciding how slowly I should die.
He passed me a cup of tea. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Eva this summer.”
I choked on the scalding liquid. “Y-yes, sir.”
“Hmm.”
So, this was how it ended. Over tea.
“Maybe he won’t mind that you were… you know.”
My neck burned. Maybe Jack did care for me, a little, but that didn’t mean he’d let me stay if he knew I was sneaking around with his daughter. Why had I risked everything?
There was more on the line than a crush or a kiss.
This place was a home. As long as the Moreaus let me borrow it, I could pretend to belong here, just as starlings did whenever they found a suitable nest. The Moreaus had burrowed through my defenses and shown me what a family could look like.
I didn’t ever want to give that up. I wanted to be here, on the farm.
I wanted to feel, even for a summer, like I belonged somewhere good.
“I’m glad she has you,” Jack said, and I blinked, surprised. “It’s hard for a girl like her to grow up in a town this small.”
I nodded cautiously, still waiting for my lecture.
Jack reached for a shoebox in the middle of the table and handed it to me. “I was saving these for you,” he said. “For Dane and June’s wedding.”
I blinked in confusion, then gingerly lifted the lid. Inside, I found a pair of men’s dress shoes exactly my size. They glistened, unscuffed. Perfect and new.
“There’s something else.” Jack fished a slip of paper from his front pocket. He looked strangely nervous.
What was going on? Why wasn’t he yelling at me?
Jack set the paper on the tabletop. “I wasn’t sure when to give you this.”
My stomach did a little flip when I recognized my mother’s handwriting, and I snatched it off the table.
“You can stay, if you want. You’re always welcome here.” Jack shifted in his chair. “I just want you to know that you have a choice.”
I stared at the phone number scrawled on the wrinkled page, the careless loops of a name written in the bottom corner.
Lottie.
My throat got very tight, and I was taken back to the day she left. She’d written something down for Jack. Had he known how to reach her this whole time?
With one hand, I closed a fist around the paper and held it to my chest. With the other, my fingers beat a rapid rhythm against my thigh.
“Excuse me,” I rasped, shoving to my feet.
“Arthur, wait.”
I couldn’t look at him right now. I didn’t turn around, and in my frantic state I nearly barreled into Izzy as she turned a corner.
“Whoa!” she cried out in surprise.
The monster yanked me sideways, our shoulder slamming into one of the golden picture frames. Adrenaline beat heavy in my chest, flooding my body with panic.
But Izzy only laughed. “Sorry, Fairy.”
When I realized what she was holding, my horror dissipated, replaced by hot embarrassment. Izzy extended a box of condoms with the cool arch of a brow, her quicksilver grin laced with danger. “Don’t hurt my sister,” she chirped politely, “or I’ll peel your skin off from nail to armpit.”
I blanched. “I… We’re not—”
“Very subtle,” Izzy finished firmly.
Heat crawled up my neck, but I accepted the box and ducked past her into the old sewing room. Then, slowly, I unclenched my fingers from around the crumpled paper. My chest hurt from too much swallowed feeling.
“Well?” the monster prodded me. “Are you going to call?”
“I don’t know.” Saying even that aloud felt like a betrayal. It should be easy, obvious. Yes, of course I was going to call. That’s what I’d wanted all summer long. My home was a person. My home was her.
The monster turned our neck to look out the window, where a sea of coneflowers rippled across the hill leading down to the hive boxes. “Or maybe,” it hedged, “home is here.”