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I sighed. “Is there a good reason they can’t be my toes and fingers?”
“Yes. Because I don’t want you hurt, either.”
I cupped his face and bent to bring our lips together, trying to somehow put everything that was bottled up inside my chest into the kiss. How much I needed him. How desperately I wanted to keep him safe. How much I—
“Val?” he asked, pulling back just far enough to rest his forehead against mine.
“Yeah?”
“I’m okay. You kept me safe.”
I breathed in the scent of his skin, the warmth of his breath. “This time,” I whispered.
“Every time,” he said softly.
I pulled him to my chest again, needing the heat and solidity of his body. His arm came around my waist and he hugged me back. “I didn’t stop the truck,” I pointed out.
“But you were here when I got back.”
The timer went off again, and Taavi extricated himself.
I waited beside the doorway, still leaning against the wall and trying to pull together the shambles of my psyche.
We sat on the floor across the coffee table, eating spaghetti and meatballs—well, fake meatballs, in my case—and garlic bread, drinking our beer as Taavi told me about his day. It was much less gory than mine, and I appreciated the change of subject. I needed to get my head out of the ground and the dead buried in it.
He talked about the kids at AAYC, about a couple of the guys at Hands and Paws who’d found jobs, reminders that some stories do have happier endings. Or at least new beginnings.
It was something I didn’t see a lot of. Whether I worked in the force in Milwaukee or Richmond, or even at Beyond the Veil, I was always surrounded by the dead—rotted and in their graves or translucent and ethereal—trying to find justice for those whose lives had been taken from them.
“Val.”
I looked up at him, realizing that I hadn’t been listening for at least a couple minutes. “I—I’m sorry, Taavi.”
He stood up, gathered up several dishes, and took them into the kitchen.
Feeling like a complete jackass, I picked up the rest and followed him. “Taavi, I’m sorry.”
He looked up at me, but the anger and condemnation I expected to see in his face weren’t there. “Oh, Val.” He took the dishes from me and put them in the sink, then turned back around and put his hands on my hips.
“I—”
“Come with me.” He gently pushed me out of the kitchen, then took my hand and pulled me with him to the futon, sitting us both down.
I felt like complete scum. The dogshit that stuck to your heel even after you’d already wiped your feet a dozen times. “Taavi—”
He put his fingers over my lips. “Hush.” I stared at him, not knowing how to fix what I must have broken.
And then he took away his fingers and kissed me.
It was tender, gentle, and soft. Reassuring. A reminder that, for good or ill, he’d chosen me. And it choked me up, emotion welling in the back of my throat as I threaded my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.
I needed him close. Needed to feel the heat of his body and breath, to remind myself that he was alive and that he wanted to be with me, of all fucking people.
So I pulled him closer, using my hands on his jaw to guide him into my lap, the warmth of his thighs straddling mine.
I didn’t mean for things to get heated. Well, okay, I wasn’tobjecting, but I’d really just wanted to wrap Taavi around me so that I could convince myself, even if only for a few minutes, that he was safe, and that he wasmine.
Yes, I wanted him. I always wanted him. But his mouth was like a fucking drug, and once I’d gotten past the ball of fear and paradoxical gratitude stopping my airway, my body remembered how very much it liked Taavi’s.
