Chapter 9 #3
Sighing, I turn and head back outside. Miranda is still sitting where I left her. But I notice immediately that something is wrong. She’s got the wrong bottle in her hand, tilted back, draining the last of it.
I stop.
That was mine.
The beer bottle I’d gotten for myself was a pack brew. Nothing that would register for a shifter. For a human, it hits faster than anything on a commercial shelf. I leap over to her and reach out to snatch it away, but to my horror, it’s already empty.
“Oh shit.”
She looks at the bottle, a smile on her face, and then up at me. “My beer was empty, and yours looked good.”
“They’re the same beer,” I lie, sitting down across from her, feeling helpless.
“Yours was colder.” She shrugs. “Don’t be stingy.”
I look at her face. Her eyes are still clear, but there’s a softness around them that wasn’t there a minute ago. I put the empty bottle out of reach anyway.
“You are so wasted,” I mutter as I watch her tilt her head back, a small, goofy smile on her lips. “This stuff is instant intoxication for your kind.”
“I want this yard.” She turns in her chair to face me and tucks one leg beneath her. Her hair has mostly come loose. “I want to live in this yard.”
“You could.” The words come out before I’ve finished deciding to say them.
She grins. “No, I can’t. I can barely live in my apartment.”
“Tell me something,” I say before I can stop myself. “The doctor.”
She makes a face. “Still on that?”
“What did you actually want from him?” I want to know. I don’t know why.
“I wanted a decent dinner.” She tilts her head back against the chair. “He asked me out. And I haven’t had anyone ask me out in a very long time.”
“How long?” My eyes linger on her profile, the weariness behind the drunk happiness, and my hand itches to reach out and cup her face.
“Since before my mother got sick.” She looks around.
“That whole time, there was no room for any of it. Just work and hospital visits and bills and more work.” She rolls her head toward me.
“When he asked, I thought, okay. Maybe now. Maybe I actually get to be a person again instead of a machine that only works and pays off debts.”
My claws unsheathe, and I have to force my wolf to relax.
“Did you want to sleep with him?” I ask. Why is that important? I shouldn’t care about that. I don’t want to sleep with her.
She wrinkles her nose. “Not really.”
“Not really.” My wolf relaxes.
“He was handsome. I might have considered it.” She says this with the breezy honesty of someone who has temporarily lost their filter.
“But mostly I just wanted someone to flirt with me. To look at me like I was worth looking at.” She pauses.
“For three years, the only thing I’ve been is useful.
Someone who shows up and handles things and keeps going.
” She looks at the sky, her smile fading.
“I wanted one night of being something else.”
The weight in my chest doubles.
“Why not share some of the burden with someone?”
She laughs, a short, dry sound. “With who? You?”
When I don’t respond, she shakes her head pityingly at me.
Then she gestures at the house behind us, the garden, the space of it all.
“You live here, Grayson. This beautiful, majestic house. And I sold my mother’s lamp last week to buy groceries.
” Her voice doesn’t break, which somehow makes it worse.
“I know what I’m worth to someone who has all of this. I’m baggage. I won’t ever be baggage.”
I reach over and pull her chair closer to mine. She lets me. I wrap an arm around her shoulders, and she tips into my side without the usual argument.
“Ethan doesn’t think you’re baggage,” I say, hating the way she talks about herself, hating this vulnerable side of her because it’s making me feel things I vowed never to feel again. “I don’t either.”
She reaches up and pinches my jaw between her fingers, squeezing lightly. “No. You think I’m your nanny.”
“I’d like it if you were Ethan’s.” I smile lightly.
She laughs, still holding my jaw. “That’s the same thing.”
I pull my face free. “I keep telling you. Let me pay off the debt. Nobody corners you in parking lots. Nobody grabs your wrist at dinner.” I hold her gaze. “You stop surviving and start living. You wouldn’t want for anything.”
She pats my cheek. Her hand is warm. “You’re right,” she says. “But my ego doesn’t want to take that from you.”
“Your ego is exhausting.”
“I know.” She sounds almost fond about it. “I’m aware.”
“You’re surprisingly honest when you’re drunk.” I rest my forehead against hers, overcome by affectionate exasperation.
She pulls back to look at me. “I’m not drunk.”
“Miranda.”
She leans back and looks up at the sky. “I used to be fun, you know. Before everything. Get a drink in me and I was the life of every party.”
“I have a hard time picturing that.”
“You’d be surprised.” She grins. It’s different from her usual smile, looser, and it does something damaging to my ability to think clearly. “I was entertaining company.”
“You’re entertaining company now. Just with more opinions.”
“I’ve always had opinions.” She tips her head back farther to look at the moon. “It’s just that no one used to argue back.”
I watch her. The line of her throat. The way the moonlight sits on her cheekbones.
I look away.
“You should go to bed,” I say.
She turns her head toward me slowly. “Are you kicking me out of your yard?”
“You drank a very strong beer, and you’re about twenty minutes from face-planting on my patio.”
She stands, which proves my point because the moment she’s on her feet, she begins wobbling. I quickly grab her and lift her into my arms. Her own go around my neck.
“I can walk.” She beams at me.
“I know.” I sigh. “You can do everything.”
“You don’t have to carry me.”
“I really shouldn’t.” I should also not look at her relaxed face, especially when it’s so close to mine. Sober Miranda has no problem pushing me away if I get carried away when teasing her. This one, I’m not so sure about.
I carry her up the stairs, and she is not making it easy.
She’s decided, somewhere between the patio door and the bottom step, that my collar is interesting. Her fingers find the top button of my shirt and trace along it, slowly and idly, like she’s thinking about something else entirely while her hand does whatever it wants.
“Your shoulders are very broad,” she announces.
“Miranda, I’m trying to get you up a staircase without dropping you.”
“I’m just saying.” She tips her head back to look at my face, her expression perfectly serious. “They’re very broad. Has anyone told you that?”
“Not recently, no.” My voice comes out steady. Nothing else about me is.
Her fingers slide to my collarbone and trace the line of it, unhurried, exploratory, like she has all the time in the world and no intention of stopping. Heat moves up the back of my neck and settles low in my gut.
“You have very good bone structure.”
“Please stop touching my collarbone,” I plead, my self-control withering away with each touch.
She ignores this completely and presses her palm flat against my chest. My wolf, which has been restless since the moment I lifted her, goes very still and very focused. “You’re so warm. Are you always this warm?”
“You need to stop.” I mean it. But I mean it less than I did thirty seconds ago.