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“Not my house.” But he doesn’t say it with as much vehemence as he did other times. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure you were coming, just...” His voice grows uncertain. He stubs his cigarette on the porch rail, putting it out. “Fuck.”
He’s cute when he’s nervous. He is, isn’t he? And since when is Ross Jones nervous around me?
I bet I’m imagining it, wanting him to feel like I do when I’m around him, palms slick with sweat, heart palpitating, torn between pleasure at this nearness and fear that I’m the only one feeling this way.
Get your head on straight, Luna. You’re here to check on him, see how he’s doing. And in fact, taking a closer look as I go up the porch steps, he looks... well, hot. Though the side of his head is still crusted with dried blood and I remember he doesn’t have water at home.
“Are you okay now? You’re looking better. Did the fever drop?”
“Honey, this man in front of you has cauterized his wounds with a hot iron stake,” he drawls, “poured Scotch over them, then drunk the bottle dry. Disaster has been averted.”
“What are you talking about?”
He grins at me. His incisors are slightly pointed. It gives him a wild look. “It always seems easy in the movies. Ya know. How real men treat their wounds in the wilderness.”
“Real men.” My disbelief is evident in my voice. “What, in Westerns?”
“Dad liked watching them.” His voice goes grim. “And survival shows. I bet he’d have approved of his son searing his infected flesh off and then applying maggots, or some such shit.”
But his dad didn’t approve of him, the implication goes. He beat him, called him a retard...tried to kill him. Suddenly I wonder what else he’s done to Ross.
I walk up to him, really looking, past the handsome face and the attitude he likes to wear like armor, and notice he still is pale, his cheeks thin and hollow.
“Brought you something.” I present the sandwich with a flourish, then feel foolish as he stares at it in seeming incomprehension.
Did I make a mistake? Is this Florence Nightingale syndrome? Maybe I just want to feel useful. But the way my heart is racing, it’s never happened to me with anyone before. I was telling the truth when I told Ross I like looking after the people I care for.
Oh God...
“I thought, you know. You don’t have a working kitchen yet, and you’ve been feeling off, and you should eat with those pills...” I trail off, starting to feel uncomfortable since he’s not saying anything yet.
He finally reaches for it, and I brace for some snide comment.
I guess I’m still a little unsure about him. He’s been acting nice mostly, but occasionally he bites, like a pet tiger you think is tamed but sometimes discover is still feral. I haven’t figured out the pattern yet, if there is one, to predict when one of those moods will hit him. Why does he lash out like that sometimes when I least expect it, hitting me with his words, flustering me and leaving me to flounder and sink into the past?
Vowing to pay more attention to what makes Ross Jones tick, I watch him take the wrapped-up sandwich. He’s still quiet, and I can’t read his face.
Eventually, as the silence stretches uncomfortably long, he pulls in a long and strangely shaky breath.
“I’m not used to—” He breaks off, starts again. “You know, you can pet my snake anytime. No need for bribes.”
“Shut up,” I mutter, torn between laughing, or slapping him.
Or maybe kissing him.
Really, it’s a toss-up.
It’s so weird to realize I l
ike him. His dry sense of humor, his stubbornness. Bastard. He’s making me care. I bet he doesn’t realize that either, and it’s... endearing.
“Thank you,” he says, and this time he sort of looks away, and something in his gaze, in those precious moments I catch it, tears at me like a thorn. I can’t name the emotion—not disdain, not insolence, not scorn, none of that.
No, it’s something else, softer and deeper, like a cross between pleasure and pain. Why would he look at me like that? What does it mean?
I don’t know what to do with my hands. I wring them together. God, who’s nervous now, huh? How could it get so weird between us after this morning’s easy connection?
“I can’t stay long. I haven’t told anyone I’m going out, and Dad chewed me out about leaving home without telling him where I’m going.”
