“I’m glad.” He refolded the rag to give me a cooler spot. “She’s a good confidante for you. Not as stellar as me, but not a bad second choice.”
“Friend, Tilt-A-Whirl, mechanic, breaker-and-enterer, and now confidant.” I marveled at the size of his ego. I don’t know how he managed to cram it into the bathroom with us. “You can’t be everything to me.”
“How do you know?” The cool weight at my nape vanished. “You haven’t let me try.”
“I did let you try,” I contradicted him. “You just weren’t interested.”
“You were a kid.” He scoffed, offended. “You should be glad I wasn’t interested. What kind of pervert would that have made me?”
“I still thought I loved you.” Heaving a groan, I propped my legs under me and wobbled to the sink to brush my teeth with my finger and a squirt of sample-sized toothpaste scrounged from the medicine cabinet. “It still hurt when you didn’t love me back.”
“I’ve always loved you, just not the kind of love you wanted from me.” His fingers trailed the side of my arm. “You were like a second little sister to me. Forgive me if it took time for me to shift gears and stop seeing you in those ridiculous pigtails you used to wear. And that rainbow jumpsuit? Gods, that slayed me. You were the cutest thing.”
I met his eyes in the mirror. “Somehow this is more embarrassing than vomiting in front of you.”
“I don’t know where this is going.” He wrapped one heavy arm across my shoulders in front, his forearm hot against my collarbone. “I don’t know if it’s going anywhere at all.” He kissed the side of my head in brotherly concern. “But the love? That part we’ve got down pat. You gripped my heart in pudgy fingers the morning I caught you hurling mud pies at Amelie, and you still haven’t let go.” Another kiss, this one softer, warmer, but still chaste. “It’s the rest we have to figure out. If you want to try.”
For a single moment, I caved to an old weakness and leaned against him. His grip tightened across my shoulders, pressing my spine against the wall of muscle at my back. Cradled in his arms, I was safe and cherished, and both those things made my chest ache after having gone so long without them. But the cost of gambling with this man could be losing this easy flirtation between us. I had never looked at him as a brother, but I had always considered him family, and the risks outweighed the rewards in my book.
“Stop perving on me and let me go to bed.” I broke his hold and exited the bathroom. “Alone.”
“Spoilsport.” He strolled to the front door but hesitated on the threshold. “Grier? Burn that invitation. Pretend you never saw it. That woman lost all rights to call you family or expect your support when she didn’t speak up for you at your sentencing.”
Having nothing to add to that, I left him to say his goodnights to Woolly and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of warm milk before bed. Visiting Odette had left the center of my chest raw and aching, and I longed for what had once been a cure-all.
“I’m going to kill him,” I muttered at the fridge, which Boaz had stocked with all my favorite junk food in addition to a few practical staples. A sticky note clung to a package of cheese slices, and I peeled it off the label. Block letters spelled out the cost of my groceries. “U O ME LUNCH.”
Shame curled in my gut as I accepted his offering. His concern warmed me, but I hated him thinking I was a charity case. First the bike and now this. Tomorrow I would have to set him straight. But tonight… I poured myself a tall glass and nuked it to perfection with a sappy grin in place.
I was on my way upstairs with my treat when I spotted the plastic bag on the counter. I poked it with a finger, revealing an opened package with one cuttlebone left and a bag of seed twisted off with a sandwich tie. Another note clung to the packaging. I read it out loud, though I was sure Woolly already had the scoop. “You take worse care of that zombie bird than Macon did. I found him zooming around your bathroom crapping everywhere. I cleaned up the mess and put the little turd in his cage. You can thank me later. I will accept dirty pics as payment. Left you something to pose in.”
I tossed his note aside and skidded into the living room to find Keet dozing in his cage. Boaz had positioned the stand near the picture window overlooking the rose garden, exactly where I’d intended for him to go. It’s not like Keet required seed or water to live, just the occasional drop of blood, but he seemed to enjoy the catharsis of cracking seeds, and some of it must be going down the hatch since he pooped enough to be an ostrich.
Wary of what other gifts Boaz might have left me, I jogged upstairs and shoved open the door to my room. I’m not sure what I expected. Lace. Silk. Something highly inappropriate. A scrap of fabric that wouldn’t cover anything. What I found was an olive drab tee that smelled like him and could wrap around me three times. The reminder he knew what it was like to wake from fractured memories with a scream lodged in his throat soothed my earlier irritation enough that I shucked my top and slid into his, snapped a picture and texted it to him. No caption. Anything I could think of now felt too much like an invitation, and I’d already received one too many of those for one night.
Five
I woke in a nest of twisted sheets on the floor in my usual corner. Guess not even Boaz’s shirt was enough to ward off the dreams. Oh well. It was the thought that counted. Woolly, usually the first one to prod me after an episode, left me blissfully alone. But then again, I was taking her advice and talking to people. That must have been enough to earn me a gold star for effort.
The clatter of dishes jarred me, and I leapt to my feet, pulse thundering in my ears. “Woolly?”
A hiss escaped the floor register, a sigh of disappointment that I thought she would let in trouble.
But she had welcomed a vampire. And Boaz, whose middle name, I was pretty certain, was Trouble.
Maybe it was time to educate the old girl on the meaning of stranger danger.
After pulling on a bra and a pair of pajama bottoms, I shoved open my door and padded into the hall. That’s when the dueling scents hit me. Coffee. Onions. Cheese. Three of my favorite things. I trotted downstairs into the kitchen and came skidding to a halt.
“Amelie.” Not the Pritchard sibling I’d expected to see. “What is it with your family breaking into my house?”
“Grier? Is that you?” She hunched her spine, pretended to gasp and wheeze, and used the spatula as the world’s shortest cane. “It’s been so long. I thought you’d forgotten about your old pal Amelie.”
“It’s been like—a day.” I crept past her to sniff whatever she was cooking. “And I’ve been busy.”
“Clearly.” She plucked at my shirt. “Please tell me I don’t have to make this breakfast for three.” She lifted a halved cherry tomato off the cutting board and held it against my flaming cheek. “Hmm. Cherry tomato red. That, my friend, is the color of guilt.” She bit into the slice then yelled, “Guilt! Get your guilt here! Grab it while it’s hot and fresh, people.”
“Boaz left me the shirt.” I clamped a hand over her mouth. “He wasn’t still in it.”
“I don’t need details.” She pretended to heave. “Really, I don’t.”
I took the plate she offered me then poured us both mugs of coffee and carried it all to the bar.
“What brings you by so early?” I took a bite of garden omelet and groaned. “Not that I mind if you want to do this for me every night.”
“You only think it tastes good because you’ve been living on oatmeal. Trust me, no one else will eat my cooking. You leave a few eggshells in one time, and suddenly you’ve earned a spot on Worst Cooks in America.” She tucked into her meal. “I wanted to make sure after everything that’s happened you’re still okay with taking my shifts tonight.”
“I gotcha covered.” I waved away her concern. “Did you find out where you’re going yet?”
“Nope.” She glared at her fork. “I asked my folks again, and they fed me more super-secret Pritchard family gobbledygook.”
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable. Amelie noticed and pounced.
“What’s got you so twitchy?” Her nose wrinkled. “Unless my brother is the reason you can’t sit still on a hard surface. That you can take to your grave.”
Glowering at her, I resisted the urge to defend my honor and stabbed a tomato instead. “I heard the Society is about to name a new Grande Dame.”
“Boaz told me about the invitation.” Amelie shoved her plate of half-eaten food away. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t like her own cooking or if the topic had turned her stomach. Either way, I was making eyes at her omelet. “She’s got balls to issue you an invitation. I hope they turn blue waiting on you to show up to her soiree.”
“Will your family attend?” Her mother, Annabeth Pritchard, served as matron of their family. The voices of Low Society members might not be heard as clearly as those of the High Society, but the swearing-in of a new Grande Dame was meant to bridge the gap between classes. “You can take notes and report back to me.”
“I doubt I’ll go.” She shrugged. “I’ll ask my folks for the highlights.”
“What about Boaz?” He looked good in a penguin suit, even if he hated acting grown-up long enough to tie his patent leather shoes.
“None of us want him set free in a room full of people who turned the other cheek while you were sentenced.” She wrapped her hands around her warm mug. “He’s spent five years learning how to kill, and our parents want to keep his itchy trigger finger scratched in other ways.”
Her comment swept chills down my arms. “What exactly does Boaz do for the army?”
“That’s classified,” he growled from the doorway. “Amelie, it’s time to go.”
“Really, Woolly?” I kicked the back of the bar with the ball of my foot. “Do I even get a say in who comes in my house?”