Page 56 of My Faire Lady

A smile spreads across her face.

“What?” I shove the door shut.

She kicks off her shoes and drags the sack into the back room. “No one has ever really worried about me. But I would always come back, Lottie, to you.”

Her words cinch around my heart.

The lights flicker a third time, and I swallow. “Could you stay here tonight, with me? I don’t want you going back into the storm.”

She unzips the rucksack, eyes widening as she shakes her head. “I only brought a sleeping bag for you. I didn’t think⁠—”

“Please?”

She freezes, chewing on her bottom lip. “I don’t know, Lottie.”

“What if I told you I was scared of the ghosts?”

She scoffs and pulls out the sleeping bag. “There are no ghosts. And if there are, they’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

As she goes back for the rucksack, I yank it out of her reach. “I don’t want to be alone.”

I don’t want to be without you.

She blinks, and her eyes lift to mine.

The power goes out.

I yelp, and a warm arm wraps around my waist as thunder crashes outside and rattles the foundation. Wind howls against the curtained windows, and I bury my face in the crook of her neck.

“I’ve got you,” she whispers against my hair. “I’ll stay.”

Inhaling a deep breath, I lean into her, soaking up the rain clinging to her shirt and rolling off her hair. It drips onto my bare feet, but the rise and fall of her chest settles my pulse.

“Is there a breaker somewhere?” I whisper.

“We already had a generator running. It must have overloaded.”

My eyes adjust to the dark, barely, and she untangles her arm from around my waist. It takes every bit of restraint not to pull her back.

“There’s bound to be candles in here somewhere,” she says, padding into the shoppe.

Stumbling around the back room, I ease open a lower cabinet and pull out a towel. A match strikes, flames crackle, and a dim glow casts over the space as Scarlet lights a handful of pillar candles.

“Tomorrow I’ll make sure we stock the place with flashlights.” She balances a candle in each hand as she reenters the back room. “Is this enough light for you to work?”

“It’s perfect.” I hand her the towel. “I have about two thousand chainmail links to make.”

Smirking, she sets the candles on the table and accepts the towel, wringing out her hair. Wisps of frizz curl away from her temples. “Let me know what I can do to help. I’ve never made chainmail, but I’ve worn it enough to know what it should look like.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I want to do this completely on my own, without any help, so I can feel like I earned it myself. But you can keep me company? Tell me a story?”

“A long one?”

I hum my approval.

Flames dance in her eyes, casting shadows along the plane of her jaw. She smiles, brighter than the light from the candle. “I think I can do that.”

I heave the box of stainless-steel rings into my arms. Digging through a drawer, I balance a pair of pliers on top of the cardboard and set the supplies on the floor beside the sleeping bag.