Liv starts shaking her head but has to take a drink before answering me.
One she quickly starts choking on for no apparent reason.
“You gonna make it?” I ask as I hand over my water when hers is empty and hasn’t helped. “Or is this little outing going to turn into a visit to the ER?”
Her coughing subsides and she shakes her head again. “Sorry.” Liv clears her throat and finishes my drink, too. “You caught me off guard.”
“Clearly.”
“Again,” she says with a smirk despite the way her eyes are watering. “But I don’t want you sleeping in the truck.”
“This is fine, then.”
“The table doesn’t fold away.”
I shrug and look over the half moon shaped booth. “I see that.”
“But you’re tall.”
“True.” I finish my bacon and watch her face as Liv tries to to work out the mechanics of my six-foot-one ass sleeping here. “I’ll be fine.”
She looks at me skeptically. “You’re going to be one giant cramp in the morning.”
“I’ll stretch out in the truck. Assuming you’ll let me ride in it when we leave.”
“I’m not that big of an asshole, Niko.” She rolls her eyes. “If I’d have known you were back here, I would have made you come up to the cab sooner.”
Clearing my plate, I nod then wait for her to do the same. “Then it’s settled. I'll sleep here tonight then uncrumple myself in the morning.”
“Uncrumple?” Liv asks as she takes our dishes before I get the chance. “Niko, honey, that’s not a word.”
Honey.
One stupid, insignificant word. A slip of the tongue. A habit, even. Meaningless. It’s nothing to read into.
For something so dumb, it has us both reacting.
Liv clears her throat again as her cheeks go pink, quickly giving me her back as she starts washing the plates. All while my heart starts to beat a little faster and my stomach dips before shooting back up to my throat.
Dimitri was the only person to give me a nickname, a pet name with some sort of emotional tie. There were a few over the years, probably close to a dozen, butdarlingwas my favorite. He always said it with so much love, like he meant it from the bottom of his soul, and each time he called me that, I believed him.
I shouldn’t have.
Just like I shouldn’t think Liv means anything by calling mehoney.
It’s hard not to, though.
I don’t form attachments, I don’t feel attraction or desire for people. I didn’t, anyway, not before Dimitri, and Liv is the only other person to make me feel similarly.
It’s probably a trauma bond.
We didn’t go through our bullshit together, we haven’t even talked about it, but I know a bullet wound when I see one. Liv has a few and they were still relatively fresh when we met. I probably made the connection back then and somewhere in my twisted mind, it became a lot deeper than I intended.
An accidental bond formed out of separate and silent trauma.
One that’s grown over the last year and a half, and it took essentially trapping myself with her for me to see it for what it really is. For me to understand it.
“There are extra blankets in the closet.” Liv sets the dishes in the drying rack before walking past me to the tiny bedroom. “If you need anything else, just…” She bounces on the balls of her bare feet then nods behind her. “I’ll be in here, so just give me a shout.”
