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But I knew that on the inside I was short and stocky, with a too-square face and dull brown eyes and mouse-brown hair. Utterly forgettable, in physiological terms. I’d made up for it by being memorable in the personality department. But I was a cop—so beingnicewasn’t something that fit the person I thought I wanted to be.
Turns out, I had all sorts of totally fucked-up priorities.
So now, a decade after becoming a supermodel elf, I was working on sorting out the rest of my shit, starting with pulling my head out of my ass and trying to not automatically default to sarcastic asshole mode. It was an instinctive defensiveness. And it was one I didn’t need even half as often as I used it.
It was one that Taavi had seen straight through.
Taavi sighed, dropping his gaze.
“Taavi.” He looked back up at me. “I know I fucked up. Badly. But—” I pressed my lips together, trying to find the right words. I had a hard time with words, which is why I tended to mostly use vulgar ones. “Look, I—Fuck.”
“It’s okay, Val,” Taavi murmured, his voice soft, edged with a sadness that threatened to break my heart.
“No, it isn’t okay. It’s—” I took a deep breath. “It’s stupid, is what it is. I’m stupid. I—I wasn’t a good-looking guy, before. I got used to being an asshole to make up for the fact that I was just… blah.”
Taavi tilted his head to the side. “I don’t think you could be blah if you tried, Val.”
I snorted. “Well, I definitelylookedblah,” I replied. “You wouldn’t have given me a second glance.”
“I’ve met elves before, Val. I didn’t want to date any of them.”
I blinked. I mean, I’d met other elves, too, not that I hung out with them much. A lot of them had internalized the bullshit high fantasy mythos of being all mystical and shit, which made most of the elves I’ve met pretty fucking insufferable.
Unlike Taavi, I’d even dated one. He’d given me a whole new understanding of people’s potentially unlimited capacity for narcissism. He only dated elves. That had been my first clue that maybe I didn’t want to be dating him.
My second clue was the fact that he kept trying to change my wardrobe to be more… elven. I don’t wear weird tunics or embroidered leggings. It just isn’t me. I’m not fucking Elrond. I’m a cop—or I was. The most formal I got was a goddamn non-dry-clean suit, not a fucking embroidered robe. Not even a bathrobe.
The third came when he’d told me that I needed to connect more with our people. My people are short, stocky Germans. We like beer and cheese and baked goods. It didn’t matter if I didn’t look like that anymore. My Arcana transformation didn’t make me a differentperson. It just made me look different, so I’d ditched the leggy bastard and went back to what I thought weremypeople.The kind who wore blue uniforms and carried guns.
Sadly, it turns out that they weren’t my people, either.
My people were my family, Elliot, and Ward and Doc. And Taavi.
Clearly, Taavi was smarter than me, since he’d never been suckered in by hot elves. Until me, anyway, which maybe wasn’t the best testament to his taste in men.
It had never occurred to me that Taavi might have become interested in me irrespective of my looks. But my looks had nothing to do with the fact that I’d taken Taavi home with me fresh from a dumpster. I’d have done that either way. And—well, if he actually did likeme, then he’d have decided that if I were still five-nine with a square jaw and lackluster hair.
“And I’m a complete dumbass,” is what I said out loud. “We’ve established that.” I sighed, gently rubbing Taavi’s cheek with my thumb again. “I might not have believed that you might likeme, but I spent every day of those six months thinking about you.” My ears had flushed again, but I ignored them. “I knew to the day when six months was, and even though I told myself a thousand times that I shouldn’t expect you to call, I hoped you would. And I blew it because I’m an insecure asshole. I don’t deserve another chance because I fucked it up not just once, buttwice. And if I’m going to be completely honest, I’m probably going to keep fucking up, because that’s what I do. But I will take as many chances as you’re willing to give me, because even though I’m absolutely going to stick my foot in it, probably a bunch of times, I do know that this—us—is quite possibly the most important fucking thing I’ve ever done.”
Having just said an awful lot of words at once, I sucked in a breath, then held it, waiting to see what Taavi was going to do with it. Because he had every right to tell me to get the fuck out. Or to tell me that maybe we should take a break or try again when he was healed. Or—
He pulled me into another kiss, slow and tender. It was a kiss that spoke, a kiss that begged and wished and promised.
I had to break away from him to breathe, even though he felt more important to me than air.
I ran my hands over his hair, my thumbs brushing across the buzzed sides even as the silky longer strands slid between my fingers.
“Taavi…”
He looked up at me, eyes wide.
And then my stupid fucking kitchen timer went off. God fucking dammit.
Taavi cocked his head to the side. “What are you making now?”
“Bread.” It was the truth. I just wasn’t telling him why I was making bread.
He sniffed a couple times. “I like bread.”
