Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
The urge to kiss that spot is a bright, roaring pain. My mouth waters, and I taste the metal of it. The want.
But I can’t. Not until I tell her what happened with Jag. And after that, she’ll no longer have a reason to stay.
Carefully, I slide out of bed. The room tilts, then steadies. I’m lightheaded, and my stomach cramps like I didn’t eat yesterday.
Oh, right. I didn’t.
I wrap the edges of the housecoat around me, covering my boxers and scars and tying the sash. The sleeves fall too short on my arms, and the purple fabric is worn to a thin nap. After all these years, I don’t know why I still wear it. Dr. Freud would analyze the shit out of that.
Dove sighs, and I go still, but she doesn’t wake. A shiny curl of blue hair hangs across her face. I don’t touch it. I memorize it.
Then I leave without looking back because if I do, I’ll climb into bed and make the wrong kind of promises to myself.
The walk to the main house is too warm for my Arctic-bred bones, the daylight too honest, and when I reach the back door, my reflection in the glass looks like a trespasser in a dead woman’s robe.
In the kitchen, I find Frankie at the island, barefoot, red hair twisted up in a knot, and shoulders slumped in a way that says she didn’t sleep as well as I did.
She glances over at me, and her eyebrows rise a millimeter. I know the robe caught her eye. It always does. But she doesn’t comment. One of the thousand gifts she gives me.
“I was just going to make eggs.” Her voice sands down to a gentle roughness that loosens tight places inside me. “You want—”
“Yes. Feed me before I start gnawing on the furniture.” I cross to the back counter and pour a mug of coffee. I’d offer her a cup, but caffeine isn’t good for the baby. “Where are your daddies?”
“Still asleep.”
“Let me guess. They stayed up all night braiding each other’s pubes.”
She smiles without showing teeth, and the softness of it makes my throat ache. She doesn’t need to correct me. I know they were up all night discussing my mental health.
I don’t have to pretend with her. We’ve seen each other at our worst. She held my eyes when Denver raped me. I held her hand when the doctor raped her. She has PTSD like me, though her panic attacks are growing fewer and farther between.
She moves around the kitchen. Pan on the burner. Flame. Butter hissing. The sound is indecent. My stomach groans and folds into cramps.
I sit at the island, slurping coffee and slicing bread to make toast.
“Did you sleep?” She approaches my stool, careful not to spook me, but close enough that her warmth presses into my space.
“Yes times a thousand. I slept beside Dove for the first time.”
“And?”
“It was… Clean.”
Anyone else would assume that meant no sex and move on. But not Frankie.
“Emotionally clean.” Her gaze pries me open. “I’m glad Dove could give you that.”
She hovers so close I feel her need to touch me like a hand held near a fire. I look down. She looks up. There’s a question in her eyes and a hundred unsaid words circling like wolves.
I give her a tight nod.
With a relieved breath, she throws herself against me. Not in front like a hug would be, but onto my back. She hangs there, arms looped around my collarbones, cheek at the hinge of my jaw, her weight comforting, familiar, her warmth sinking into my spine, into places where last night hollowed me out.
When she exhales, the sound comes out of me, too. I let my head tip back until it hits her shoulder and rests there, waiting for her questions.
“How much did you tell her?” She nuzzles my hair.
“Bits.”
“Graphic bits?”
“More like big-picture bits. In fairy-tale format.”
“Did these fairy tales feature a drag queen?”
I nod.
She pulls a heavy breath through her nose, doing her best to remain neutral.
The silence that follows is a barbed wire fence. I could grab it and bleed. Or I could sit here with her arms around me until I say something offensive that sends her running away.
Except Frankie doesn’t run from a challenge. She faces it head-on.
“We knew, Wolf.” She kisses my temple and shifts around to face me. “We all knew about your scars.”
“Leo told you.”
“He loves you. We all do, and we’re trying to give you space, knowing you’re talking to Dr. Thurber—”
“Dr. Freud.”
“Right.” A smile moves through her voice, a tremor rather than a sound. “I know it’s hard.”
Hard implies there’s a correct angle of attack, and if I apply enough force, it yields. This isn’t that kind of hard. This is a cliff in the way of a river, and the river in the way of a cliff.