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Sean tugged at her wrist. “Lie down. You look like you’re g-going to ffall over.”
Katie dropped her knees to the bed, and he put a hand out to steady her as she lowered to the mattress and curled into a ball. “I feel awful,” she confessed.
“You don’t ssmell so hot, either.”
“Sorry.”
“I know.”
When he lay down beside her, he was still radiating tension, but she scooted close and put her head on his chest anyway. He gathered her in and held onto her, his arm a band around her shoulders that squeezed a little too tight. When she closed her eyes, the space behind them pulsed purple and red.
She felt sick and tired and scared.
But at least he was here.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Judah kicked a chunk of ice toward the storm sewer and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
He’d forgotten how cold Iowa winters were. Probably they weren’t technically colder than winter in the Windy City, but it seemed that way. He felt raw and exposed here no matter how many layers he wore.
The quaint faux-Dutch streets of downtown Pella might have sheltered them from the wind, but Ben lived in a residential area on the fringe of town, and there were plenty of cracks between the houses for the wind to whistle through. Judah and Katie moved in and out of the small circles of illumination cast by each house’s security light.
The sun had just barely poked over the horizon. Still dark and gloomy at eight in the morning—that was Iowa winter for you.
They turned onto Ben’s block.
He’d insisted on walking, irrationally feeling that he needed to approach the house on foot. It’s only a ten-minute walk, he’d told Katie, but it had been a while since he could feel his toes. A smart man would have driven.
A smart man wouldn’t have brought along Katie, plus Sean and an entourage of pissed-off security agents driving thirty feet back in an unmarked sedan.
Judah didn’t think he was stupid. Nor was he drunk. He was resigned. Though resigned to what, exactly, he couldn’t say. Fate?
Maybe to the Fates, plural. He’d always liked the idea of those three Greek goddesses spinning out the thread of his life. Measuring and cutting it before he took his first breath. If you believed in the Fates, the ultimate outcome of your actions was beyond your control. You did your stupid, flailing human thing, but in the background the end was already written somewhere.
But the Fates didn’t dabble in the details. They weren’t micro-managers. No higher power had brought him to his hometown or impelled him to call up Ben yesterday and invite himself to breakfast. No mysterious force pointed his feet in the direction of the Abrams house. It was only him.
Him and Katie.
“If I get killed, make sure Paul gets my guitar, okay?”
“Are you an organ donor?” Katie asked. “If you are, I’d like your ego.”
Judah flexed his stiff fingers inside his pockets. If he did get killed, it would suck. He’d made so little of his life. He’d turned over decision-making power on everything important to Paul, because after he’d made the decision to leave Ben, he hadn’t wanted to decide anything ever again.
r /> It had split his life in two, that choice. He didn’t want to live half a life anymore.
He glanced sideways at Katie, huddled in her peacoat. “I apologized to Paul, you know.” Guilt over the way he’d treated Katie drove him to it, but it had turned out pretty well. He and Paul ended up talking through the night, and Judah found a lot more things to apologize for. For taking Paul’s loyalty for granted, taking him for granted. For being an asshole.
“Yeah, so you said. Did it help?”
“Yeah.” Paul forgave him. Paul loved him, though Judah could scarcely credit it.
“It’s magic,” she said.
“Cheap magic.”
“All magic is cheap.”
