Page 68 of Last Rites

Kit dragged a weary hand down his face. “Can you sit down, please?”

Reluctantly, I did. It felt like another surrender, but I was tired of fighting.

We sat in the pause. Wallowed in it.

Kit rubbed his face again, pinching at his temples and nose as though he could wipe away the lingering shadows of exhaustion.

I wasn’t a patient man, but I tried to be, because I had missed his voice. And his company. And his… Gods, I could reach out and touch him. I could grab his hand and⁠—

“I think what you're doing is brave,” Kit said on a long breath. “Stupid, but brave. And selfless, and maybe brilliant, and I might admire it. At the very least I wouldn't mind it if... if you were anyone else.” His gaze cut toward me, still a load too heavy to bear.

I shied away, glancing instead to my discarded sketchbook. I felt almost guilty for pushing it away, too. For isolating myself even further.

I pulled it across my thighs again, thumbing over the paper, glancing at the drawings as I turned toward the blank pages.

“I’m just doing what you taught me,” I mumbled.

“I didn’t want to teach you this,” Kit said, “or anything else that ended in you hurt. And what happened to you hating when I did things like this without telling you? We fought about it constantly, but now it’s a good idea when you’re the one doing it?”

We had fought about it. I’d hated it. So, maybe I couldn’t fully blame Kit for hating this. That didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it.

My hair spilled over my brow, and I blew it back, then bent to reach for the pencils now littering the floor. They’d scattered everywhere, some certainly lost under the couch. At least one, which came rolling out as Nutmeg darted after it with Ember on her heels.

The kittens were most often absent when I was home alone. I’d heard that animals could sense emotions. If that were the case, I couldn’t blame them for avoiding me and my foul mood the past week.

I gathered a few more pencils, blowing and pushing at my hair that refused to stay out of sight. By the time I sat straight, Kit was watching me with a half-smile on his lips.

It seemed foreign after so long, and I couldn’t fathom the cause for any level of humor.

“What?” I asked.

Kit tipped his chin to indicate the strands spilling across my forehead. “It’s gotten pretty long.”

I clutched the pencils in one hand and used the other to tuck my hair behind my ear once more. My cheeks warmed at the affection in his gaze, and I mumbled, “I suppose.”

“Turn around.”

“Why?”

Kit didn’t answer, just fixed me with a look until I gave a huff and did as he asked.

His intention was a mystery, but not for long. When I felt his fingers snag in my hair, my breath caught.

“Kit…?”

I glanced over my shoulder, pulling against his gentle hold. He situated himself behind me, combing his fingers through my errant locks and gathering them together.

“Hold still,” he said. Calmly. Softly.

The held breath left, taking with it the tightness that had kept me rigid for what must have been days. I situated my sketchbook in my lap, the kittens skittered around with the pencils I had failed to recover, and Kit played with my hair. But it wasn’t just idle play, he was methodical about it.

My mouth curved in a grin. “How do you know how to braid?”

Kit chuckled. Such a warm and wanted sound.

“I fixed more than a few horse’s tails in my time on Delmer’s farm,” he replied. “Kept them out of the mud. This will keep yours out of your eyes.”

He worked and, after a few moments, began to hum. I didn’t recognize the tune, but that didn’t matter. I was soothed by the sound and the feeling of his hands and his warmth so near my back. Before long, I found myself leaning into him, stretching toward his body like a plant straining for sunlight.