“How do you know how to do all this?” I took another pull. “You’re like a kitchen ninja.”
A pleased smile broke across his face. “I enjoy cooking.”
“You know that saying?” I said around a third slurp. “Jack of all trades, master of none?”
His pleasure dimmed a few watts. “Yes.”
“They never met you.” The cold numbed the inside of my mouth, and the dull ache in my jaw faded to nothing. “It’s ridiculous that you excel at everything.”
“Not everything,” he murmured, his gaze colliding with the table. “Only what I can learn from books.”
“There are books on every topic imaginable.” I pinched my eyes closed after giving myself brain freeze. “You realize that, right?”
“True,” he allowed. “How about this? I’m better with books than people. Books I understand. People…”
Seeing where this was headed, I squinted up at him while my brain thawed.
“You have to talk to people, hang out with them, observe them, to get them,” I explained gently. His mouth opened, and somehow I knew what was about to pop out. “Teaching doesn’t count. Your students don’t act like themselves around you. They want to impress you. You’re going to see the best versions of them. Same for faculty. They’re going to posture with you because of who you are.” I glanced around the carriage house. “Are you going out at all?”
“Yes.”
“Society business doesn’t count. Neither do covert ops.” Chatting up Volkov and doing goddess knows what else he did in the name of science was not social interaction. “Have you visited any of your friends since you arrived? Or family?”
The hand stirring his drink stilled. “No.”
“Why not?” I kicked him under the table. “You’ve got time to get out and have a life while you’re here.”
“I don’t consider anyone I left behind in Savannah to be a friend, and family is…complicated.”
“Oh.” Considering my inner circle included a pair of siblings, a house, and a parakeet, I wasn’t one to talk. Neely and Marit were friends too, but they were also human, and yes, complicated. “What about your friends in Atlanta?”
“We’ve chatted.” Genuine fondness softened his expression. “Mary Alice is threatening to drive down for a weekend. So is Oslo. He wants to pick up some sketches I’ve been working on. I offered to scan them, but he wants the originals and doesn’t trust the postal system. He’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist.”
“Are Mary Alice and Oslo an item?” I flexed my straw back and forth. “Or…?”
Laughter exploded from him, lighting up his entire face until even his eyes shone bright. For a minute, I worried he might rupture something the way he was carrying on. I had never seen him do more than an under-his-breath huff of amusement. I hadn’t thought him capable of full-on belly laughs.
“No.” He cleared his throat a few times. “Mary Alice is like a den mother to everyone who works at the Mad Tatter—the tattoo shop where I apprenticed. She appears to be a well-preserved sixty-seven, though I suspect her true age is closer to four hundred and sixty-seven. Oslo is seventeen. He’s an intern.”
I hadn’t noticed the slight pressure building in my chest until it eased after hearing Mary Alice wasn’t…
No. Absolutely not. No with a side order of no way, no how. Nah-uh.
Who Linus dated was none of my business. I didn’t like him in that way. I didn’t think of him in that way. He was family. Sort of. We grew up together.
You grew up with Boaz too, a helpful inner voice reminded me. But Linus was the Grande Dame’s son. I couldn’t trust him. Sure, he had saved my life, but—but—
Goddessdamn Boaz for putting the idea of Linus as, well, a man, in my head in the first place.
Groaning, I wedged my elbows against the table and covered my face with my hands.
I was going to kill Boaz. Except I could never admit to him why he needed to die, or he’d murder Linus.
Cool fingers brushed my knuckles. “Are you all right?”
“Brain freeze.” I lowered my hands and smiled weakly. “Hate when that happens.”
Except my glass was empty. Noticing this, Linus passed his over in case I wanted more. I stared at the straw, hoping he thought I was wondering if it had cooties instead of being curious if his mouth had—
Fiddlesticks.
Fire consumed my cheeks in a raging inferno that made my jaw heat like infection had set in. Too bad that didn’t excuse the sting racing across the rest of my face.
“You’re flush.” Linus still held my hand. “Do you have a fever?”
“Maybe?” Anything was better than admitting what was on my mind. Namely him. “I don’t feel so good.”
For as long as I could remember, I had wanted one thing, and that one thing was Boaz Pritchard.
Now I had him, some days more than others, and I was blushing over drinking after Linus.
Ridiculous. Absurd. Impossible. Ludicrous.
I didn’t like Linus. I didn’t want Linus. I didn’t find Linus attractive.
He has pretty hair.
“No,” I grumbled. “He doesn’t.”
I clamped my jaw shut, winced, but it was too late. The words had already tumbled out for him to hear.
“I’m calling Heinz.” Linus punched in the number he must have gotten from Taz. “He’s not my first choice, but you seem to have a history.” His mouth pinched. “This is Linus Lawson. I’m calling on behalf of Grier Woolworth.”
Shaking my head frantically, I tugged on the cuff of his shirt. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Her face is scalding,” he told Heinz. “She was talking to herself. I worry she might be delusional.” His shoulders stiffened. “I didn’t realize. I’ll call over there.” He ended the conversation, and his expression shuttered. “Boaz is here.”
“He got in early this morning.”
“I don’t have a thermometer, and my hands…” He lifted them, palms up. “I can’t determine others’ body temperatures well thanks to mine running lower than most.” He scowled at his fingers like they had individually banded together to betray him. “Call him.”
Linus drifted to the sink and started washing the blender, the measuring cups, and the spoons he’d used, a sure sign he was agitated. Yeah, he liked to clean when he needed to think, but what was he thinking? Better yet, what was I thinking?
“I’ll just go home.” I pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll feel better after a nap.”
A hundred years of sleep might clip the thorns off the prickly idea Boaz had planted.
“I’ll go with you to the doctor if Boaz needs to leave.” He kept his back to me. “I won’t make you do it alone.”
“That’s not…” I crossed my arms over my stomach. “You don’t have to do that.”
“All right.” Tension curved his shoulders as he dried a bowl and set it aside. “Suit yourself.”
“I need to learn to be okay alone.” I crossed to him and kept my gaze on the bubbles in the sink. “I can’t expect you or Boaz or Amelie to drop everything and run to my rescue all the time.” To prove my point, I washed out my glass. “I can do this on my own.”
“I understand.” He swung his head toward me, his eyes searching mine. “You need to feel like your actions don’t set a domino effect into motion with everyone around you.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “That’s exactly it.”
“Amelie was wrong to blame you for what she did to herself.” He pulled the plug in the sink. “There’s nothing wrong with having friends who love you enough to drop everything and come when you call. The problem is those friends blaming you when the things they drop shatter.” The swirl of gurgling water held his attention. “Our actions have consequences, Grier. We are all responsible for what we do—or don’t do—and that’s it.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” I curled my fingers into my palm to avoid touching his hand before I left, a recent habit I ought to work on breaking. “Do you want to assign me homework before I go?”
“No.” His forearms flexed when he gripped the sink, the strain a fine tremor in his muscles. “You should rest. I’ll bring over dinner later.” His head lifted, brow pinched. “Unless you’re going out with Boaz?”
“No.” I rested my hand on his shoulder before my brain threw on the brakes, but I couldn’t ignore the way his muscles relaxed under that small contact, like my touch soothed him. “Dinner sounds great.”
I lingered a moment longer, watching him for signs the black cloak might emerge as it had earlier, but he kept control of whatever I had unleashed, and it got awkward with me standing there, staring at him. There was no point in peppering him with questions. No matter what I asked, he would say it was a side effect of bonding with his wraith.
He told me once that he had never lied to me.
I didn’t want him to start now.
Six
Needless to say, I did not go to the hospital. Or to see a doctor. There was nothing wrong with me that a pint of ice cream wouldn’t fix, but I couldn’t very well explain to Boaz that I was bingeing because he had opened my eyes to an unsettling realization that had been creeping up on me for weeks.
I liked Linus. Maybe not epic love story like, the way I used to feel about Boaz, the way I maybe still did?
As much as I wanted to hit my favorite ice cream parlor to hide my sudden need for a double chocolate chunk fudge cone, I had obligations. Boaz had cleared his schedule to visit me, and I couldn’t duck out on him. And, yeah, maybe I was counting on the way his larger-than-life personality blocked out everything else to shore up my resolve that I didn’t like-like Linus.