Chapter 22 Kali #2
“I’m still mad at you,” I admitted. “More than you know.” I still struggled to wrap my head around his reappearance. About the lies. About the fact that Zion had known there was a possibility Gedeon was alive.
Gedeon ran one end of a towel under the tap. “Then why did you stay in bed last night?” he asked, wringing out the fabric.
“I was afraid Shadow would feel lonely.” Yup, the person who’d scolded him for lying to me was now lying her ass off herself.
“Shadow?” He quirked a black eyebrow—a sign he hadn’t missed how I’d breached the deal we’d forged. The bargain stipulated we would speak the truth and only the truth.
I picked at my cuticles. “Our kitten.”
He dabbed the damp cloth along my hairline, wiping away the sheet of sweat. “You mean Darkness.”
“What?” I frowned. “No. His name is Shadow.”
“First of all, he’s a girl. Second…” Gedeon paused. “Her name can be Shadow. I will concede to that. It has a nice ring to it.”
“He is not a girl,” I puffed out. A month had passed since we’d brought back the most adorable creature in the universe. Zion would have pointed out its…genital situation by now if he’d been wrong to assume our cat was a boy.
Rinsing the towel, Gedeon pushed, “Have you checked?”
Reluctantly, I confessed, “Shadow won’t let me.” The kitten had freaked out the first time I tried, and I hadn’t dared to attempt it again.
Gedeon glanced over his shoulder. “He didn’t tell you?”
Leaning against the door frame, Zion grinned. “Was I supposed to?”
“It’s a boy,” I pressed, hoping it would set the fact in stone. “If you need another girl that badly, I can turn you into one,” I proposed to Gedeon.
“Can I go first? I can’t say no to multiple orgasms,” Zion piped up. He tugged his white t-shirt down to cover the sliver of sandy skin above his jeans. The rips in the pair were one of the things I hesitated about inquiring.
Their origins had to be disturbing. Other kinds didn’t exist with Zion.
Gedeon gestured to the small plastic crate sitting in the corner. “What is that monstrosity?”
“It’s a litter box.” I leaped off the counter. “Zion said we needed one.”
We’d filled the box with special, bean-sized grains that absorbed whatever Shadow excreted. Although it did stink up the bathroom sometimes. Apparently, our kitten’s butt produced poop of the mightiest strength.
Gedeon pinched the bridge of his nose. “I should not have gotten you that cat.”
I froze in the middle of the bathroom. “What did you just say?”
“How do you think the kitten ended up in your car? It could barely jump a foot, yet you found it in the back seat.”
Pushing the dawning realization away, I stood my ground. “I don’t know. It’s a cat? It did its”—I waved my arms—“thing.”
“Its thing?” Gedeon echoed.
“Yes,” I went on. “I’ve never had any pets. How should I know what it’s called?” My forehead creased at Zion snickering, and I whipped my head to face him. “Did you know?”
He scratched his chest. “Gedeon might have told me earlier today.”
I zeroed in on the culprit. “Where did Shadow come from?”
“I found her on the fringes of our compound. She was trembling on the side of the road, and my conscience wouldn’t let me leave her to fend for herself. We followed you to that mountain. She spent half the way sleeping on my lap,” Gedeon said with a soft smile.
My frown deepened. “Then why did you give her up to us?”
“Because I couldn’t take care of her myself and thought you two would give her a home she deserved. Though it seems nobody has told you what cats actually require.” He smirked. “And you just said Shadow is a her yourself.”
“Shadow is a boy.” I rubbed my temples, exhausted of his insistence otherwise.
“Allow me to prove you otherwise.” He spared a second to touch Zion’s cheek before disappearing into the bedroom.
Squeezing past Zion blocking the doorway, I huffed at him looking me up and down. I needed some clothes, or he was going to follow me like a puppy anywhere I went.
Opening the closet door, I glared at my meager wardrobe. There was nothing I wished to wear in it. I wanted the hoodie I’d stolen from Gedeon last night and had flung across the bathroom this morning.
Resigning to suffering through the day with non-Gedeon clothing, I pulled on some underwear, shuffled into a pair of black cotton leggings, and wiggled into Zion’s pale-blue hoodie I’d found in the laundry hamper. The fabric still smelled like him.
Perfect coziness.
“It’s pretty.”
I leaped out of my skin.
Twisting around, my pulse roaring, I found Zion observing me. He had the ability to sneak up on someone undetected, and I longed for the day I could do the same to him.
“The length suits you.” Zion tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Short enough to get all messy from the wind, but long enough for me to fist it.”
It was probably the strangest compliment I’d ever heard, but I still blushed.
He leaned in, running his nose along my temple, and it lulled some hidden part of me. “Cherry,” he said approvingly, and my smile erupted to match his.
“Here.” Gedeon spoke up from the bed. He’d coaxed Shadow into laying on his back, the kitten’s claws high in the air as he tried to catch Gedeon’s hand. “Look.”
As I padded over to them, thick socks muffled my steps. “At what?”
Gedeon wiggled his fingers above our cat. “What do you see low on Shadow’s belly?”
Fur. Dark fur. One that had managed to coat every single item of our clothing. “Nothing.”
“Precisely. No tiny balls, no pinkie-sized dick. He’s a girl.”
Was Gedeon right about Shadow? Yes, he was.
Did it irk me? Also, yes.
Would I have to ignore my pride and admit it? Unfortunately, another yes.
So, as the most logical choice, I strode to Zion leaning against the gray dresser and laid the blame on him. “It’s your fault.”
“Are you saying you want to punish me?” He tugged me closer by the neckline of my hoodie. “Because I’m totally down for it.”
I huffed and snorted at the same time. Foolishness had to have taken hold of me. I couldn’t have expected a proper response from him otherwise.
Laughing, he pulled me into his arms, and my own flew around his neck. More than half a year had ticked by since he and Gedeon had forcefully extracted me from Ilasall, but I still hadn’t grown tired of their affection.
I needed it like air.
I needed it as strongly as I craved the truth.
Stroking Zion’s nape, I asked what was bothering me. “Why didn’t you tell me about Gedeon?”
Like a light switch, all fun and games abandoned him.
Seriousness took their place. “At first, because I’d promised Gedeon.
Later…I had figured it’d be easier. I—” He crushed me in his embrace.
I relaxed, allowing him to mold me to him however he wished.
It soothed him. “After I’d dropped Gedeon at the doc’s house, I ran away. I couldn’t watch them operate.”
My eyebrows pinched. “You didn’t stay?”
“No. I made the doc swear not to tell me the outcome. Because if the answer would’ve been the one I feared, I—” Zion’s voice cracked.
“I don’t know if I would’ve been able to stand by your side while you stepped into Gedeon’s position.
I thought if I didn’t know, there was a chance he was alive. But if I did…”
“It could’ve meant he was dead,” I finished for him.
“Yes.” His grasp on me loosened. “I’m not as strong as you. Not knowing whether Gedeon lived or not killed me. That’s why I envied you. You tried to move on while I remained stuck.”
Before, I’d considered yelling at Zion. He’d made me feel betrayed by hiding Gedeon’s situation from me. Particularly when Zion was the one who’d brought me to Damia’s compound to get my second tattoo, the blackbird under my collarbone.
But he was also as broken as me. And despite his pain, he’d found the strength to support me through my breakdowns.
So I didn’t shout.
I chose the path of making peace with it.
“I understand your reasoning, Zion, I do, but it still hurts,” I said. “I’m not okay with you keeping secrets.”
“I’ll do whatever you want. Just…” He searched my face, desperation sculpted into his features. “Let me hold you for a little longer.”
Seeing him panic at the prospect of losing me thawed my heart. Locked in Zion’s arms, I twisted to face Gedeon. “So what’s going to happen now?”
Sitting on the bed, he rested his elbows on his thighs. “Now we play the martyr game.”