Page 21 of Madness Becomes Her

“Hatter!” I shout, trying to get his attention.

“The this is missing and the that… The blue tulle. We’ve been robbed!”

Grabbing his shoulders, I stop him. “You haven’t been robbed. I cleaned everything up. It’s all in your workshop.”

He takes me in. “Where were you?”

“I was… Never mind that. What happened to your head?”

“Bad hatting day,” he grumbles. “Head too big, not the right moon to wear blue. I tried to tell her.”

I walk him toward the kitchen table, plopping him down. Getting a rag and wetting it, I set to cleaning his forehead.

There’s a gash, and it’s pretty deep.

In my world, it would need stitches. Here, I don’t know how it’ll heal.

“Who did this to you?”

He doesn’t answer, only keeps muttering nonsense to himself.

“I remembered the Red Queen. In my dreams, a memory came back to me. The day I followed you there, do you remember?”

“I remember everything. Every moment that had you in it, Tiger Lily.” He taps his forehead. “It’s all right here. All the time.”

I swallow over a growing lump in my throat. Emotion is clogged there, and I can’t get past it.

“You do?”

His eyes soften before he flicks them away. “Awful woman.”

I don’t know if he means me or the queen, but either way, I smile.

“I’ll need to wrap your head to keep this closed. I fear it won’t heal otherwise.”

He only nods.

Wrapping his head brings me very close to his face, and his green eyes darken when I’m near.

His breathing changes, keeping pace with mine, which shallows by the second. It has me wondering about indecent things. Like, has he had a woman before, sexually?

As innocent and unhinged as Hatter seems, it seems highly unlikely that he has, which I can’t deny has me feeling thrilled at the possibility of being his first, his only.

I bat the idea away because getting close to him would mean ignoring what I should be focused on: going home.

“You must be the beholder of beauty,” he whispers, and I hover close to him, even though I’m finished with his bandage.

“What?”

“It’s in your eyes.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”

He shrugs as if it’s no matter to him how anything goes, which is part of his charm. “You’re beautiful.”

I swallow as my mind is back to thinking indecent things about a man with crooked buttons and mental instability. “Thank you.”

He leans in hesitantly before placing a kiss on my cheek. Drifting his nose over mine, he floats over my lips. Our breathing mixes, and my body flutters to life like the rapid heartbeat of a hummingbird. I can’t control how my belly burns or how the space between my thighs clenches tight.