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I smiled at her.
“Tell me something.”
“What would you like to know?” she asked.
“Anything. Anything at all that you want me to know,” I told her.
She laughed quietly. “I shouldn’t care that you know anything about me, Spencer.”
“And? Do you, or don’t you?”
She shook her head. “This is dangerous,” she said, uneasy.
“We’re just talking,” I lied.
She sighed, pausing for a moment, gauging whether she wanted to open up to me. In the end, she said, “I don’t want to live here forever.”
Her face bunched as if bracing for a hit.
I laughed. “And?”
She cracked open one eye and warily peered my direction. “I can’t believe I said it out loud,” she giggled, as if she couldn’t help herself. She looked at me fully. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” she said with thought. “I guess-I guess I’ve never thought about it past that. Is that strange?”
“No, I definitely understand that. There’s a fear there. I know that fear very well.” I narrowed my brow, searching her face. “In your case, I suspect it’s a fear of hurting those you love. You don’t want to leave them, but you want to find yourself. You want this,” I told her, gesturing at the shelves filled with extraordinary creativity.
Her breaths deepened with each revelation and her eyes looked on me fiercely. She swallowed, her eyes turning glassy. “Yes.”
“When Bridge has the baby, I could take you to New York. I know someone,” I told her.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just offered, couldn’t believe what I was saying, what I was thinking, what I’d just promised.
She looked at me intensely, her hand going to her neck. I briefly observed her hands were nothing like Piper’s. Her nails were short, unpolished. Her fingers were slender and dainty. They looked so delicate to me, as if made from paper. I wanted to wrap them in my own and keep their porcelain beauty all to myself.
“I can’t,” she said, giving me the out my brain was begging for, but confusing my heart, causing it to fall at my feet.
“Why?” I stupidly insisted.
“I just…” she started, her eyes growing glassy once more. “I cannot go,” she told me gently, “and I beg you not to ask me why. Please?”
“I would do anything you asked me, Cricket,” I told her quietly.
Her eyes closed then slowly they fluttered open. “Spencer,” she breathed, slowly shaking her head.
I cemented my arms to the table, my feet to the floor. When she said my name, I very nearly pulled her into me just so I could hold her, just so I could feel her skin against mine, pull the scarf from her head, breathe in her hair. Cricket Hunt was doing things to me I never imagined I could feel.
“I know,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
“We have to tread carefully,” she told me.
“I understand,” I told her truthfully.
She began to dig through little pieces of metal, setting aside the ones that interested her and I examined every single movement, riveted to how graceful she was. She was the human equivalent to a butterfly. Light and airy, graceful...and defied logic.
“What are you making?” I asked her, genuinely interested.
