Page 35 of Remmen

Chelsea looked at me for one more second, and I decided I didn’t want to know what was in it. “I guess. Yeah.” She stepped back. “Bye.”

I was already closing the door. I got it shut as softly as I could manage, put my back against it, and made myself breathe like I hadn’t just run the length of the settlement.

Remmen hadn’t moved. He wasn’t going to, not on his own, and not while I couldn’t make myself quit looking at him. He had to go. I’d known it before he knocked last night, and I’d let him in anyway. Now I had to get seven feet of minotaur out of my apartment in broad daylight without a soul on that street seeing him.

And god help me, I didn’t want him to go.

CHAPTER 15

REMMEN

I wasn’t sure what purpose the blanket that Anne had thrown over me was supposed to serve. Anyone who looked into her bedroom would see a minotaur-shaped lump lying in her bed, decorated by a purple quilt.

But she had put it there and I didn’t push it off.

I heard only the whisper of voices as she talked to the person at the door. I should have felt nervous, like a fiend caught in the act. Instead, I wanted to march into the front room and drape my arm over Anne’s shoulders and declare her mine for all who could see.

It was the last thing I could do. It would see her sent packing before the day was out.

Unless…

Would she agree to bind herself to me? To marry me without Agency interference and stay by my side?

I didn’t dare ask. Anne was here as a counselor. That was her job, her passion. She lived to help people and if we stepped together into the light, she would have to abandon that path. I couldn’t do that to her.

The outer door shut. I heard the latch, and Chelsea’s steps going down the stairs, and then the little apartment went quiet.

I waited for her. I knew what was coming. I’d faced down men with knives and felt steadier than I did lying there under her purple quilt, waiting for a small human woman to come back and tell me what a mistake I was.

She came in white around the mouth.

I was on my feet before I thought about it, my hands on her shoulders. She was shaking.

“Anne.”

She shoved me. Both hands on my chest, all of her weight, and I didn’t move, and my not moving was the wrong thing. She stepped back on her own.

“Don’t.” Her voice was low and shaking. “Don’t be gentle with me right now.”

“She’s gone. She didn’t see anything.”

“She heard you cough.” Anne wrapped her arms around herself. “From under a blanket. In my bed. In the morning.” Every word came out clipped. “Why did you stay? The whole night, Remmen. We don’t do that. We can’t do that; we can’t do any of this, and you stayed.”

She wasn’t only angry. Under it she was scared, and there was nothing I could do about that.

I tried to find a reason and came up empty.

“I slept,” I said.

She stared at me.

“I slept.” It sounded stupid, so I gave her the rest. She deserved the truth and it was all I had. “I lay down after. I meant to go. Then it was morning.” I looked at my hands. “I sleep hard next to you. I haven’t slept a whole night through since before this town was mine. I didn’t know I would.”

Most nights I woke in the dark with my hands up and the pit all around me, and I’d lie there until the walls came back and my heart slowed down. Next to her that didn’t happen. I went under and stayed under and woke up with her hair in my mouth, and I hadn’t reached for the door. I hadn’t even thought of it. It was the best sleep I’d had since I was a boy, and I’d stolen it in her bed with the whole town a wall away, and I would do it again that night if she let me.

Her arms came loose a little. Then she caught it and folded them tighter.

“That’s not a reason.” She pushed her hair off her face. Her hand wasn’t steady. “You have to go. And maybe…” She made herself say it. “Maybe you shouldn’t come back.”