22. Zuri
ZURI
Iwake up turning toward a warmth that’s still in the hallway. Half asleep, I don’t question it. Then I come all the way awake and understand that I just felt him through a wall.
The door opens, and Jalen walks in, and the warmth arrives with him. It sits behind my heartbeat and leans whichever way he moves. I could find this man in the dark now, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt.
He’s changed clothes again, a fresh shirt and different sweatpants. He’s been up doing things while I slept.
I look down at myself. He cleaned me up.
I’m in a fresh nightgown, my skin is soft with lotion, and there isn’t an ache anywhere on me.
I slept through every bit of that care. All my life, I’ve woken up alone in rooms where nothing got done unless I did it.
Somewhere in this cave there’s a dragon who works while I sleep.
Then I run my hand up my neck, and the memory arrives with my fingertips. At the curve where my neck meets my shoulder there’s a raised mark, two small crescents, smooth and new.
I wait for the panic. Yesterday I screamed at a mirror over less. It doesn’t come. I press my fingers flat over the mark, and all I feel is his.
He crosses to the bed chewing on something, carrying a whole tray of chicken wings. “It’s wing day,” he says around the bite.
Wings aren’t my favorite. But his chewing could fool me into a new opinion.
He sits down on the bed next to me. I sit all the way up, and he hands me a bottle of ice water off the nightstand. I crack it open and drain most of it in one go, and I’m somehow still thirsty at the bottom.
He sets the tray between us and smiles at me. “Hey, baby.”
“Did we just bite each other?” I say.
He laughs and picks up another wing. Then he points down the tray with it. “Lemon pepper. Buffalo. Teriyaki.” He gets to the last row and winces. “Barbecue. All special sauces made by Dorian.”
I look over at the other nightstand while he talks. My tote sits on it, packed neat, with my phone resting on top and the amulet lying right there next to my wallet.
I look back at Jalen. He’s leaned against the cracked headboard, and when the meat is gone off his wing, he eats the bone too. It crunches. I press my palm to my own forehead and wonder about my mind.
He picks up a remote off the nightstand and points it across the room.
“While you slept,” he says, and presses play.
The rig in the corner lights up, and his show voice comes out of the speakers. He watches me.
“CREEK BABIES. And to every den, pack, and city tuning in for the very first time — welcome to Shadow Wolf Creek Diaries. You picked a night to find me. This is my first episode to go national, and it’s my last one ever. One show left in me, and I’m spending all of it.”
Last one ever. He said it to me at the workstation, and I didn’t believe him all the way. Hearing it recorded, finished, already done, my stomach drops. There’s no talking him out of a thing that already happened.
“First, the business. Go look under your sink. Right now. I’ll wait.
If anything in your house says Stillwater on the label — dish soap, hand soap, cleaning solution — bag it up and get it out of your den tonight.
It smells like nothing, it rinses like nothing, and that’s the problem.
That no-smell strips your scent right off your skin.
Dragons have been sneezing smoke all over this valley for a week behind this stuff.
That’s not bad luck. Someone made it do that. ”
I washed my hands with that soap at work. I pull the quilt up over my legs.
“Now the story. Y’all remember the fortune teller from the Moon Festival?
The one I told you we were never doing again?
Same woman. She’s been walking this valley for years in faces that don’t belong to her, and right now she’s sitting at the top of Stillwater Solutions calling herself Hale.
I’ve been pulling receipts on her for two years.
Invoices. Shipping stacks. A break-in at a business y’all know and love.
And a records clerk braver than me, who walked the proof out the front door. I intend to keep her, by the way.”
My eyes sting. I spent a year in that building being no one worth a memo. He just told the whole country I’m the brave one, and now there’s a nation of strangers who know I exist because he’s proud of me.
“Delilah. You’re listening. You’ve been hunting one thing in this valley for years, and you can’t have it, and you know why. The door doesn’t care what face you wear. So come see about it. Anyone in town can tell you where the loud dragon lives. They’ll be glad to.”
The warmth behind my heart holds steady while his voice hands a witch our address. Mine doesn’t. I reach over and grip his ankle through the quilt, and I don’t let go.
“Creek babies. This is the last one. I know half of y’all only ever listened so you’d know if I was talking about you. Thank you for every download anyway. Lock up tonight, and leave your porch lights on.”
That’s when I feel it. The warmth behind my heartbeat dips and aches while his face stays easy. His voice on the recording sounds like someone ending a show. The rest of him, the part only I can feel now, sounds like someone burying one.
Then, for the last time: “This is Messy Jay reminding you—where there’s smoke, I’m probably the fire.”
The speakers click off. I sit there holding on to his ankle with every word of it, and Jalen picks up another wing and doesn’t rush me.
I look at him. “Jalen.”
“I like it when you call me Jay.” He looks over at me. “Feels like a pet name.”
I take my hand off his ankle and turn on the bed until I’m kneeling, facing him. “Why?”
“You, Zuri.” He’s still chewing. “I don’t care about that podcast.”
The warmth behind my heart aches again, the same dip I felt during his goodbye. He does care. He cares so much it hurts him, and he’s sitting there eating wings and lying to my face about it, all so I won’t blame myself for what he’s giving up.
I open my mouth, and he talks right past it. “And before you climb out of your skin about it, I handed your phone to Malachi while you slept. He found Renee. She’s fine, baby. Better than fine. Safe, sound, and cussing us out over the scare.”
I sink back into the pillows. My girl is okay.
I look over at the phone on the nightstand, then back at him.
He picks at the tray and doesn’t look at me. “So you have no reason to leave me now. Right?”
I stare at him.
“Come on, baby, eat up.” He waves at the platter. “You ditched Dorian’s pancakes and slept through lunch. My mate does not skip meals on my watch.”
I look up at him. “You fucked my brains out and bit me.”
He narrows his eyes and points a wing at me. “For the record, you did me first.”
Then he puts the whole wing in his mouth. I hear every crunch of the bones from where I sit, and he swallows and smiles at me.
I sigh and set my water on the nightstand next to my tote. Then I reach across the platter and pick up a barbecue wing.
He watches me start picking it apart with entirely too much interest.
He gets up and disappears into the bathroom. Water runs. He comes back out with a stack of washcloths and tosses them on the bed. “Sorry. I forgot how messy they are.”
“You don’t even like wings?” I ask.
“Not my favorite,” he says. “Human food is a skill I taught my dragon, and he tolerates it fine. But once a month I owe him a hunt, or he sulks.”
Jalen crosses to his equipment. He doesn’t touch it at first. He stands over the desk with his back to me, and the warmth behind my heart aches the whole time.
Then he reaches for the mic and starts unplugging it from the desktop.
I drop my wing in my lap and wince at the sauce soaking in. “No. Stop.”
He looks over his shoulder. “I got more nightgowns and new underwear from Brandy. Change after you finish.”
He goes back to the cord. I set the wing on the platter and grab a washcloth to scrub at my lap. “I bet this thing was expensive.”
He shrugs and keeps wrapping the mic cable. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not something you need to worry about.”
I climb off the bed and cross the room to him.
He sets the mic down and frowns at me. “Don’t be stubborn, angel. Go eat.”
“Stop,” I say.
He grins at me and reaches for the next piece of equipment, and he has it halfway off the stand when I close my hand around his arm. “I said stop.”
He keeps his arm down and looks at me. Up close, with the show turned off, his eyes look tired. I’ve never seen tired on him before.
“Stop,” I say again.
“I already announced it to the world,” he says. “They aren’t hearing from me again, and I meant it.”
I start to say something. He cuts me off with a wave at the whole rig. “Hoarding information, the messy podcast, all of it. It was something to pass the time.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I tell him. “You don’t just throw your passions away.”
“I’m not.” He points one finger at the center of my chest. “You’re my passion. I’ll get into hoarding money like my brothers.” He shrugs. “It’s my nature anyway.”
I keep my grip on his arm. “I don’t want you to give up who you are because of me.”
He shakes his head at me. “But you tried to leave me. My dragon is going nuts inside me, terrified we’re about to lose you. And so am I.”
My mouth falls open at that.
Then I close it, and I grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him down to me. I say the next part slow, so his nose can check every word. “I’m not going anywhere. And you’re not getting rid of your podcast.”
He opens his mouth. I keep talking, right past it. “We’re getting rid of this witch first. We’re making sure my friend Renee stays safe. And after that, you can have me however you want me.”
He searches my face, and I know his nose is working, hunting for the leaving in me. There’s none to find. I made sure of that before I opened my mouth.
The tired is gone from his eyes.
“Deal,” he says.
Then he seals it a better way. He takes my face in both hands and kisses me, slow and deep, and I keep my fists in his shirt and kiss him back.
All the fear he’s been carrying comes out of him into it.
His arms come around me and pull me in tight, until there’s no room left between us for anything else, and my toes leave the floor.
Right when it starts turning into more, he groans and pulls back.
He scoops me up into his arms. “Damn it, Zuri. You have me wrapped around your pretty little finger.”
He sets me down on the bed and points at the platter. “Now eat. Before I spend the night eating you.”
I smirk and grab another wing.