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He takes his bowl to the sink and rinses it out. “You ain’t so bad.”
I turn in my chair, hooking my arm over the back. “Jace Wilder, was that a compliment?”
He glances over his shoulder. “Don’t get used to it.”
When I lift my bowl and set it in the basin, he begins to wash it as well. Now I know something happened to Jace. While I was hiding from him in Cindy’s room, I’m certain he was abducted by aliens. The real Jace is off on a spaceship somewhere, getting poked and prodded while this new, somewhat nicer one was left in his place.
Hell, I’ll take it.
Together, we clean the kitchen. I set what’s left of the soup in the fridge and sweep the floor while he finishes the dishes and wipes the counter. We whirl around the tiny space like snowflakes on the breeze. A silent dance, a shared experience, a moment of calm before the eventual storm.
The old broom handle is rough in my hands. I open the door and brush the debris outside, but it splinters as I run my palm down the shaft. A gasp hits my lungs, and the broom falls to the floor. Jace’s attention whips in my direction. “What’s up?”
“I got a splinter,” I whine, sucking in air through my teeth. Pain throbs up my wrist, and I cradle my wound against my chest.
“Lemme see.” Jamming my eyes closed, I extend my arm. He lifts my hand to inspect the sliver of wood lodged under the skin. “That ain’t nothin’.” His fingers close around my wrist. He drags me to a seat at the table, then disappears for a split second before returning with a needle.
Panic rises up my throat. “What? No!”
I try to wriggle away, but his grasp is hard. “Hold still.”
“Ow, ow, ow,it hurts!”
He rolls his eyes with a gravelly sigh and yeets the needle on the table.
“No, no, not like that either!”
But his brows pull in grim determination. He drives his fingernail into my palm, forcing the splinter up and out. “There ya go. Big baby,” he muses as he holds it up for me to see.
“You’re a sadist, you know that?”
“You’re welcome.” He taps me on the nose and gets up to throw it in the trash while I soothe the ache with the pad of my thumb.
“Thank you.”
“You’re gonna wanna put some alcohol on that,” he says, but instead of going back to the medicine cabinet, he opens the fridge and pulls out a beer.
I guess I can’t argue with that.
The cold bottle feels good on my tender palm. I lift it to my lips. Jace nods his head toward the door before stepping out onto the porch. I follow and settle in a rocking chair as he lights a cigarette. Pink gashes split the purple sky. Say what you want about Hell’s Bend, Texas, but I’ve never seen a more beautiful sunset than I have right here beyond the trees while sitting on this rickety old porch.
The air cools as the sun goes down, and I can finally breathe. I close my eyes and pull it into my lungs, then let it out slowly. His eyes are on me as I stare into the night.
“Bet you city folk prolly never seen a sky like this.”
“It’s better to look at the sky than live there.”
“Come again?” Jace’s expression pinches.
A shy grin tugs the corner of my mouth. “It’s fromBreakfast at Tiffany’s. It was my mom’s and my favorite movie.”
“Oh,” he says.
“But to answer your question, the city’s never dark enough to even see stars, but at my home in Jersey, it was nice sometimes.”
“I thought you were from New York?”
“I spent a lot of time there, yeah, but our home was in a small town about thirty minutes from the city called Franklin Plains.”
