20. Laina
CHAPTER TWENTY
LAINA
Istared at my bedroom ceiling in the dark, listening to the shuffle of footsteps in the hallway. Three a.m. My mother was awake and restless, probably making tea she wouldn’t drink. She walked back into her room and shut the door.
I grabbed my phone. Two hours until my alarm. Close enough.
Three days of this and I’d learned to leave before she emerged from the guest room, armed with questions I didn’t have answers for.
Rising, I showered, dressed, and snuck out the door, driving to the rescue operation.
Brovish noticed the moment I walked through the door. He didn’t say anything, just intercepted Sofia mid-launch and handed me a mug of tea.
The tea was already hot and my favorite kind. He’d had it waiting.
Sofia made an affronted sound.
“Good morning,” he said. “You’re well rested?” His expression said he already knew otherwise.
“I’m alright,” I said, which wasn’t true and he knew it, so I didn’t know why I said it except habit.
He waited.
“I’m not sleeping well.” I drank the tea standing in the entryway with my coat still on.
“She asks questions at dinner and then again before bed. Different questions, same subject. Whether I’ve thought this through.
Whether I’ve researched the financial sustainability.
Whether I’ve considered what happens if this falls apart. ”
Sofia had migrated from Brovish’s forearm to his shoulder and was watching me with round, judgmental eyes.
“Last night she asked if I’d looked into positions in Portland before jumping into this.”
“You’re not going to Portland,” he said.
“No.”
“What does she need to understand that?”
“I genuinely don’t know.” I finished the tea in one long swallow that burned a little going down. “She doesn’t seem satisfied with my answers. I can’t tell if she wants to fix something or if she’s still working out why she’s here.”
He took the empty mug from me and set it on the counter.
“You should stay in my cottage while she’s visiting.”
I gaped up at him.
“You need somewhere to sleep. A place to come home to that doesn’t have her waiting. You can walk to work.”
“That’s your home.”
“There’s a sofa in the staff room. I’ve slept on it before.”
“Brovish. You’re over seven feet tall.”
“The sofa is—” He paused, frowning. “Functional.”
“Functional for what? Torture?”
His ears darkened. “I’ve slept in worse places.”
“Name one.”
“The supply shed during a thunderstorm last month.”
“That doesn’t count. I bet you were chasing down mossnibbles.”
“I still slept there.”
“For how long?”
“Twenty minutes. It was a very good nap.”
“Have you measured the sofa?”
His jaw worked, his tusks catching on his upper lip. The decision had already been made, whether I agreed or not.
“Alright,” I said, because arguing took energy I didn’t have, and because a quieter part of me had already said yes.
Sofia peeped.
I spent the day keeping busy, trying not to fall asleep on my feet. I dreaded going home, where I’d have to tell my mother my decision.
She wasn’t there when I arrived; I found a note from her instead, Went to town. Will be back in time to make dinner.
She arrived back while I was unzipping my suitcase, a stack of clothes waiting on the foot of my bed to be packed.
Mother stood in the doorway, her arms at her sides, watching.
“Why are you packing?” she asked.
“I’m going to stay in one of the cottages at the rescue while you’re here.” I placed a cardigan in the suitcase and reached for the stack of pants.
“You’re running. Again.”
Five pairs of socks. My toiletry case. “I’m not getting enough sleep here.”
“You’ve always done this. Found somewhere else to be when things got hard. Just like your father.”
My hands stilled on my clothing.
When I was nine or ten, during one summer, she’d driven us out to the lake.
She bought ice cream from the stand near the boat launch, and we sat on the dock with our bare feet dangling in the water.
She made up names for the tiny fish nibbling at our toes and told stories about their fishy lives with so much conviction that I’d believed her.
Then she’d left us.
“I’m not my father,” I growled out, not looking her way.
“No, but you’re still disappearing rather than dealing with discomfort.
Do you know how many times he ran away from a simple conversation?
He’d come home hours later and pretend it never started.
Refused to give it an ending. It was so frustrating.
Humiliating. As if I wasn’t worthy of figuring it out. ”
I hadn’t known that. My dad had been amazing, taking me camping and to the clinic. Giving me my own child-sized medical kit when I was ten. I didn’t remember any conflict between them.
But that didn’t mean she had the right to ruin my memories of him with problems that should’ve remained between them.
I spun around. “You keep asking me questions I don’t have answers to. And questions I do have answers to that you won’t accept. I am not an eleven-year-old girl anymore. I’m not the same person who couldn’t understand why her mother was leaving.”
Dismay flickered across her face.
Her chin lifted. “You’re still retreating when the conversation gets difficult. That’s Dave all over again.”
“I’m not him!” My shoulders drooped with my sigh. “I’m retreating because you’re being relentless.”
She stared down at the floor. “I just want to be part of your life.”
I slammed the suitcase closed and started zipping it. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
Her inhale echoed in the room.
My eyes burned. My fingers fumbled with the zipper as I looked at the ceiling.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said when my voice worked again. “I don’t know what you’re looking for. I don’t even know why you came.”
She was quiet long enough that I almost turned around, expecting to find her gone.
“I’ll stay here alone, then,” she said. “You go. But I’m coming to the facility during the day. If I never see my daughter, why am I here at all?”
I didn’t answer because any answer I gave would be wrong. She wanted the daughter who’d stayed. One who’d kept the clinic running exactly as Dad left it. A woman who’d never questioned whether inheritance was the same thing as choice.
That daughter was gone.
I hefted my bag and walked past her through the doorway, choosing to leave this time instead of being left.
It didn’t take long to drive back to the rescue facility.
The entire way, I kept seeing my mother’s face when I’d told her it was “a little late for that.” Her expression had shuttered.
She’d left when I was eleven, but I’d just left her standing in my bedroom, and somehow that felt worse.
Brovish had left a key for me under the third stone on the left on the path. I unlocked the door and stood in the doorway a moment before stepping inside, lowering my suitcase to the wide wooden floorboards.
Warmth hit me first, followed by the smell of pine and woodsmoke.
I stepped inside and closed the door.
The kitchen was orc-size, counters at my chest, upper cabinets requiring a step stool. But he’d carefully organized it all. Mugs were grouped by size, and he’d placed tea in small labeled jars.
I settled on his sofa with a sigh. A novel about animal rescues sat on the table beside the big chair, bookmarked halfway through with a folded piece of paper.
A pebble collection occupied the windowsill, arranged in a pattern I didn’t understand but could tell wasn’t random. I got up and studied them without touching. Each stone was slightly different, darker or lighter, and one had a faint pink streak running through it.
I’d seen his cozy home before, but I strolled through it, looking it over from a new angle. I was going to live here for a time. I wasn’t just a guest who came for dinner.
The bathroom was simple. One toothbrush. Soap in a dish. A towel hung in neat folds from the rack.
The bedroom was enormous, which made sense, the bed sized for the male who needed it.
The quilt had been crafted with stitching I’d never seen on anything human-made, smaller and with a pattern running in directions that didn’t follow any grid.
A nightstand stood on either side of the bed, one holding a closed notebook, a half-filled glass of water, and a lamp.
The carved snugglethorn standing beside the lamp had been made by hand. The detail in the wool and the tiny hooves showed someone had spent hours on this. Brovish, maybe, during the quiet evenings he spent here alone.
Krem had mentioned once that orcs carved figures of their favorite creatures as a meditation practice. It was a way of understanding them more deeply.
I picked it up, running my fingers over the smooth wood, and felt like I was holding something private. Something that showed me exactly who Brovish was.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face and changed into pajamas in the bathroom with the door closed, trying to maintain some boundary between guest and intruder. Then I sat on the edge of his bed, my weight barely denting the mattress made for someone three times my size.
Even the quilt smelled like him. My chest ached, and it had nothing to do with my mother.
He’d given me this. His home, his bed, his private space. And asked for nothing back except that I sleep.
After shutting off the light, I lay under the blankets in the dark.
Trees swayed in the breeze outside, their leaves tapping together. A rumbleback purred in the distance.
This felt more intimate than the conference room.
Because he’d done this for me without asking for anything back.
I woke before the birds started cheeping.
By the time I reached the facility, the sky had shifted from black to a deep gray that meant dawn was somewhere nearby but not committing yet. The staff room door sat ajar, light spilling into the hallway.
I heard someone inside and pushed it open.
Brovish lay on the staff room sofa the way a felled tree occupied a trail—his body skewed in all directions.
His legs had given up on the armrest and hung freely in the air.
He’d folded one arm under his head, and the other trailed over the side, his knuckles grazing the floor.
His hair had come partially free from the leather tie.
Sofia perched on his shoulder, rigid, her tail wrapped tight around her body, her posture making her feelings known to the room.
Drogar stood behind the sofa, his eyes gleaming and his shoulders shaking.
Krem stood to Brovish’s right side, tucking a blanket over whatever portion of Brovish he could reach, which wasn’t much because the blanket was made for a human. I wasn’t sure why the blanket was so small except maybe they’d bought a throw somewhere local that didn’t yet carry orc-sized blankets.
Greth stood along one wall, his expression still except for the corner of his mouth, which had curled up.
Brovish opened his eyes and nudged Krem away.
“Good morning,” he announced to the room in general. “Why are you all here?”
“We work here,” Drogar said.
“It’s not even light out.”
“We wanted to make a good start.” Krem lifted a steaming mug of tea off the table and held it out. “Drink this. It’ll wake you up.”
“I’m already awake.” Brovish swung his legs around, sitting up. He raked both hands through his hair.
Sofia’s tail unwound slowly from her tight body. She tilted her head before launching herself at me with enough force that I stumbled back a step. Message received. She’d tolerated Brovish’s sacrifice, but she had opinions about it.
Brovish watched me with an expression that made my skin warm despite the early hour chill. His hair hung loose around his shoulders, and I liked it that way. It made him look less careful. More himself.
“You’re sleeping in your own bed from now on,” I said.
He crooked his head to look up at me. “You’re already in it.”
Drogar made a sound like steam escaping a sealed kettle.
Krem looked down at the tea. “If you’re not going to drink it, I will.”
“It’s yours.” Brovish rose to his feet and stretched, showing acres of glorious muscles. He slept in what looked like a loincloth.
Only a loincloth.
While I’d watched plenty of TV and movies, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever seen someone wearing a loincloth in real life.
It looked good on him. Or he looked good in it.
I dragged my gaze away from his rippling abs before I started drooling.
Greth snorted from where he remained by the wall, and heat rose into my cheeks.
“You’re right,” I said. “I am in your bedroom, but you’re still sleeping there tonight.”
Brovish’s eyes widened.
Krem sucked in a breath.
Drogar grinned.
And Greth gave me an approving nod.
I turned and walked out before anyone could come up with a response.
“At least this way, you won’t be grumpy tomorrow morning,” Drogar said, his voice carrying down the hallway.
“I’m not discussing this with you,” Brovish said.
“What about me?” Krem asked. “Will you discuss it with me, because I need some real-life experiences to document in my guide.”
“You’re still working on that guide?” Brovish asked.
“You’re not the only one who seeks a mate,” Krem said with quiet dignity. “This is very… What’s the word? Dramatic? You made a sleeping sacrifice, and Laina is refusing to allow your suffering to continue forward. Do you believe this qualifies as what humans call groveling?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Brovish said. “There’s no need for me to grovel.”
“This is more what you’d call yearning,” Greth said. “Lots of it going on here from both sides. She knows what it cost him.”
And that was the most words I’d heard come out of Greth’s mouth.
“Does she?” Drogar asked.
I stopped in the hallway, my hand coming up to cover my mouth, holding in my slightly hysterical laughter.
Brovish had known exactly what the sofa situation was. He’d folded himself onto it anyway and sent me to his bed.
My eyes burned in the same way they had in my bedroom while my mother watched me pack. For a different reason, however.
I dropped my hand and straightened my jacket.
Brovish had folded himself onto that sofa knowing exactly how uncomfortable it would be. He’d sent me to his bed knowing I’d sleep surrounded by his things, his scent, and the small pieces of himself he’d arranged in that space.
And tonight I was going to return to that bed, except this time he’d be in it with me.
The thought settled in my chest like Sofia’s warmth against my neck.
I went to check on Cooper before anyone could see the expression on my face.