6. Cash, GlassAss
CHAPTER SIX
Cash, Glass or Ass
She led me back to the kitchen and pointed to an antique wooden chair she’d pulled out of the formal dining room at some point. “Sit.”
I sat. It was becoming a habit.
“Take off your jacket.”
“You’re bossy, you know that?”
“It’s almost three a.m., I’m exhausted, and I’m efficient,” she said. No apology there. No deflection to try to make herself smaller. I noted that, along with how it had my heart pounding.
I shrugged out of my jacket, revealing the loose long-sleeve shirt I wore beneath it and over my curled-up wings.
Luckily, the jacket had done its job, and everything beneath it was safe.
The sleeve was only stained with blood near my palm.
She hissed a soft, sympathetic sound when I flipped my hand over.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
She nodded. “It’s muted, but there. The bond must not be limited to just emotions. Physical sensations are also shared, at least to a small degree.”
I could practically see her taking mental notes.
“So you’re gonna feel this too, huh?” I watched her hover over the piece of glass, assessing the best way to remove it.
“Apparently.” She pulled a stool up in front of me and set out a small bowl of water and a clean cloth on the counter. Then, after some quick rummaging, she sat down with another poultice in one hand and tweezers in the other. “So try not to be a baby about it.”
“I make no promises, boss.”
Her eyes flicked up at me. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. I felt the small hitch in her chest, quick as a wingbeat. Then her refusal to acknowledge it. It was my turn to take a mental note.
She rolled my sleeve up to the elbow. Her fingers were warm and steadier than I expected, like this was something she did all the time.
She lifted my hand and glared at it with the same focus she’d had in the greenhouse—the same absolute concentration that had made my stomach flip then.
Only now, that focus was on me, and my stomach did more than flip, especially as her warm breath tickled the sensitive skin on my inner arm.
“Sorry,” she murmured when I flinched.
“It’s okay.”
“You’re being very brave.”
“I’m being very still because you’re kind of scary and something tells me you will stab me with those tweezers if I’m not.”
That made the corner of her mouth twitch and something dark swirl in her chest.
“I wouldn’t do that. I’m bossy, not cruel.”
“You laughed at my squeak earlier.”
Her head shot up. “What? No, I…” She trailed off, and so much darkness flooded her heart that I regretted saying it. But one of the few moth aspects I was still sensitive about was my squeak, and clearly, it was still bothering me.
“I assume Gertrude told you—about my curse?”
“Yeah. She did. Not much, though. Said the rest wasn’t hers to tell.”
Her eyes returned to my palm.
“What you heard,” she said, “when you first showed up. The things I said to you after the crash…that wasn’t what came out of my mouth. It was whatever the curse turned it into. None of it was pleasant, I’m sure.
“The same thing has happened to every word I’ve spoken.” She still wouldn’t look at me. “For a long time now. I’m sorry for whatever I said.”
That darkness coiled tighter around her heart.
“It’s okay.” And it was. What kind of guy would I be if I blamed her for what her curse had done? My mouth had gone dry. “How long is a long time?”
“Five years.”
Five fucking years.
I ran the crash back through my head at double speed.
I remembered feeling like her words and her anger were wrong.
It was because she’d been saying something else.
Something I would never know now because the moment had passed, and she probably didn’t remember exactly, either—so used to those words being lost.
I thought about the greenhouse. About how she’d looked, alone in the middle of that circle, crying while a vine wiped the tear off her cheek because there was no one else to do it.
She’d been alone for five years.
No wonder she was so fucking sad.
“Well, I understand you now.”
For just a moment, the darkness in her heart receded, and her light sparked. But it didn’t catch. I pushed away my disappointment.
“Yeah, and you’re stuck here with me too.”
“Been stuck worse places. Plus, you can fix this, right?”
She kept her eyes on my arm. Her cheeks went pink under the freckles. “Hold still.”
“I am holding still. You’re the one who’s—”
“Hawk.”
“Yes, boss.”
Her hand paused on my wrist. She couldn’t shove down the hot flush that bloomed somewhere behind her ribs this time. She could not hide from me, as much as she was trying to.
She yanked the glass out of my palm, and we both hissed. Swiftly, she placed the poultice over the wound, and the pain immediately vanished.
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking it from her hand to hold it in place myself.
“Of course.”
She yawned, and I felt how exhausted she was. After all, she probably wasn’t nocturnal like me.
“Hey, let me grab a few things from my bike, and then let’s get to bed.”