Page 109 of Ruthless Creatures

His eyes flutter closed. He swallows and moistens his lips. Then he rolls to his back, flips me on top of him, and exhales hard, staring up at the ceiling as he cradles my head in one hand and hugs me hard against his chest.

We fall asleep like that, hearts beating in time in the darkness, all our problems and the world outside waiting to break us apart held back for a while as we sleep, entangled, dreaming of a place we could be together without hiding.

A place without blood oaths or gunfights or heartache.

A place without secrets or revenge or regret.

A place that doesn’t exist, at least not for us.

TWENTY-SIX

NAT

When we wake up in the morning, the yard is blanketed with snow.

“White Christmas,” Kage murmurs, standing behind me at the living room window.

I’m wrapped in an afghan. His strong arms are wrapped around me. His chin rests on top of my head. I feel peaceful, safe, warm, and lucky.

No matter how strange our situation, some people never get even this much.

My neighbor on the other side is a woman in her seventies named Barbara who told me last year at her birthday party that she’d never been married because love was a bad risk.

She’s an accountant. Like David did, she has an affinity for things that can be relied on: treasury bonds, statistical tables, the second law of thermodynamics.

I asked him once how someone like him could’ve fallen in love with someone like me—intuitive, emotional, mathematicallychallenged—and he paused for a moment before saying darkly, “Even Achilles had a weakness.”

That was classic David. Brief and mysterious.

To this day, I’m not exactly sure what he meant.

Kage says, “I have something for you.”

My laugh is throaty. “I think I’ve already had that, sir. Twice last night and again this morning.”

“Not that.”

His voice is serious, so I turn and look up at him. The expression on his face is one I haven’t seen before. The tenderness I’ve seen, but there’s a hesitance, too. Like he’s worried how I’ll react to something.

“What is it?”

“Look and see. It’s in my pocket.”

I glance down at his gray sweats. The only bulge I see is right up in front. “You don’t have to play games to get me to grab that sucker.”

He sighs. “Just put your hand in my left pocket.”

Smiling up at him, I say, “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

I snake my hand into his pocket, pretending to look for some treasure that obviously isn’t there, or I’d be able to see the outline of it through the fabric.

“A-hunting we shall go… let’s see, here’s a nice piece of lint.” Wrinkling my nose, I flick the lint off my fingers and start digging again. “And here’s a very meaty sort of man part. What is that—a hip?”

“Lower,” he says, his voice soft.

Frowning at him, I delve all the way to the bottom of his pocket, until my fingers find something.

Something small, round, and metal.