Page 22 of Crowbar

I ate. The eggs were fluffy and buttery, the toast was golden, and the strawberries were sweet enough to make my eyes water, though that might have been something else entirely. Crowbar sat in the chair with Noodles on his chest, watching me eat with an expression that had no business being on the face of a man named after a blunt instrument.

“So,” I said between bites of toast, “on a scale of one to witness protection, how badly did I embarrass myself last night?”

“Solid eight.”

“Eight.” I bit the bacon. Chewed. Considered my options. “What pushes it past a seven?”

“Pookie.”

“Right.” I ate another bite and stared at the ceiling. “And the mouth-cleaning comment?”

“That was a seven on its own.”

“So combined we’re looking at, what, a fifteen? Is that how math works?”

“Not how math works.”

“Good. I failed math.” I scooped up a forkful of eggs, and the taste was so good I almost launched into another Drift appreciation monologue before catching myself. Noodles pressed her nose against the edge of the plate, and I angled it away from her. “No. These are mine.”

She whined, a theatrical, full-body sound that said she’d been practicing in a mirror.

“Don’t fall for it,” Crowbar said. “She ate an hour ago.”

“Manipulative. I respect it.” I scratched behind her ears and she collapsed sideways across my legs, instantly content. “So. Did I say anything else catastrophically humiliating, or can I stop bracing?”

“You told Deadeye you’d die for him.”

“I would. His energy is immaculate. Terrifying, but immaculate.”

“You told Drift his beans were transcendent.”

“They were. I stand by that sober.”

“You told him if we didn’t work out, you were proposing to him over his cornbread.”

I mentally groaned. “Anything else that’ll shoot me past witness protection and into hermit in the mountain?” I licked the butter off my fingers, noticing the way his eyes tracked the movement. “I really called you pookie.” No regrets.

“In front of my whole crew.”

I set my fork down. “In my defense, that pill was very strong, and I have no impulse control even without pharmaceutical assistance.” I watched his eyebrows climb a fraction of an inch. “It suits you. I’m not taking it back. Do your worst.”

The toothpick rolled from one side of his mouth to the other. He looked at me for a long moment, those storm-cloud eyes moving across my face.

“Holler’s been calling me pookie since you passed out,” he said.

“Good. Peer reinforcement. It’ll stick faster.”

“Deadeye made a sign for the garage.”

“I love Deadeye. I take back every fearful thing I said about him.”

The corner of Crowbar’s mouth curved, softening the hard lines of his face.

“How’s the arm?” he asked.

I flexed my fingers inside the sling, testing, but the deep ache was still there, a bruise that went all the way to the bone. “Better than last night. Worse than I’ll admit.”

“That’s what I figured.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You work today?”