13. Anani
Anani
Honestly, after the day at school we had, I expected a lot.
Maya in my house making cookies in an oversized hoodie with a messy bun and paint-splattered face wasn’t one of them, but I loved it. We’d only been about thirty minutes behind her and the others leaving the restaurant…how the hell did this happen?
“Peanut?” I asked, and she turned to look at me with a big smile.
“Anani! I missed you today.”
I felt my ears pinken as Henry chuckled, kissing her head in passing.
Wasn’t it crazy how natural this already felt?
The scene was domestic as fuck, Maya wandering around the kitchen and tossing out beautiful smiles.
Upstairs I could hear Marco and Sai talking with the contractors who were finishing up in Maya’s room.
“What’s with the paint?” I asked curiously, and her eyes warmed.
“I got a job today!” she said, Atlas letting out a frustrated sound from the other room.
Henry rose a brow. “Where at?”
“Clara’s Crafts,” she chirped, rolling a cookie in her small, elegant hands.
Interesting. “Are you interested in crafts?”
“Can you put in the cookies?” she asked my brother sweetly.
He nodded like the obsessed fool we all were, Maya dusting off her hands on the dish towel before she grabbed my hand.
I followed her into the family room, instantly smiling at the large easel that stood over a plastic sheet.
My eyebrows rose as we rounded the easel and came within full sight of the canvas.
Well, fuck me.
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” There was no way she had; the others would’ve told me about it.
Maya tilted her head. “No, it’s not really finished.”
Not finished? It was fucking perfect. I wasn’t even a fan of watercolor, but this was a stunning sunset scene featuring a mystical-looking bird pushing through the clouds on a vertical path.
This couldn’t be a fucking coincidence.
“Henry!” I called out.
“It’s not good enough,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “It’s stunning, Maya.”
Her cheeks pinkened as Henry rounded the canvas, adjusting his glasses. As a dragon, he shouldn’t have needed glasses, but he’d suffered an injury early in life that had hurt his vision, so if he wasn’t shifted, it helped him to wear them.
“Oh wow,” he muttered. “You painted this today, sweetheart?”
Maya nodded and twirled a brush. “Pretty neat, huh?”
Understatement of the fucking century.
“Maya!” Marco called from the stairs, Maya instantly perking up. I offered Henry a look and followed her as a group of workmen passed through the front door.
“Why are they here?” she asked softly, almost worried. I realized that to her, it probably looked like we were moving out, considering all the furniture that was being moved about.
“Go check it out.” I nodded up the stairs, catching one of the workers looking at her pert ass as she jogged up. Motherfucker. As Maya rounded the corner upstairs, I threw my arm out to stop the guy in his path, his face paling.
Dumb fucking humans.
“If you want to keep your job,” I hissed through my teeth, “I suggest keeping your eyes where they fucking belong, understand?”
The guy nodded as his boss offered him a dirty look. Then I released my hand and let him go, muttering a curse under my breath. It wasn’t very often that the darkness boiling underneath my skin came out, but with Maya, it felt like a needed quality. A necessity to protect her.
Somehow this felt like the calm before the storm.
There was something about Maya that seemed to elicit intense reactions from others, reactions she usually didn’t welcome.
I would never ask her to change, so I would need to always keep her within arm’s reach.
Which would be exponentially easier if she was living here.
Now that we’d turned the secondary office into a bedroom for Maya, we had seven total.
I walked down the hall and found her standing in the doorway, her eyes wide but face otherwise expressionless.
I could understand her need to process it—there was a lot going on.
Not only did the room have a stunning wall of windows that wrapped around the corner of the room, but her bed was massive, and I didn’t think for a minute that it was unintentional.
All of her clothes from her shopping trip earlier were in the closet, and her extra art supplies were set up in the corner near the forest view.
A soft carpet padded her feet as she walked in.
Instead of asking why we’d done this for her—because I’m pretty sure she was starting to figure it out—she just looked around the room in awe and surprise.
Then I realized she was crying.
Marco had her in his arms. I frowned, approaching, her crying muffled against his shirt as I ran my hands through her hair. “Maya, peanut, what’s wrong?”
“It’s so beautiful.” She sniffled before muttering other words that neither of us could fully understand. I pressed my head against her shoulder and prayed for her birthday to come faster than these next two days. I needed her here, in our house, safe and protected.