Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I winked at him, and before he could say anything else, leaned forward and wedged my face into the same place it’d been in before. Between his shoulder and throat. A spot that wasn’t just warm but smelled like rain and something woodsy like cedar.
Good, so freaking good.
And I didn’t want Henri to know that. Not if I had the choice. “See, Donut? Friends,” I told my puppy, inhaling as discreetly as I could a little more.
When I pulled back, Henri was watching me, his eyelids still lower, but his mouth was pressed tight.
“He stopped,” the man so close to me said.
I hadn’t noticed. I pulled all the way back and smiled again, hoping it didn’t look as tight as it felt. “You’re sure you’re fine with us being here?”
The face I hadn’t seen in over a decade hovered there, and after a moment, he nodded tightly.
A low ring exploded from the direction of Henri’s pants. He stood up and dug into the back pocket of his jeans. He started talking as he read whatever was on the screen. “Breakfast is at nine. Be careful with the branches. Our physician’s assistant isn’t here right now, and the nearest hospital is over an hour away.”
“Okay.”
Henri hesitated for a second. It wasn’t until that moment that I noticed he’d changed out of the dusty white shirt he’d had on earlier. His lip was healed too.
He gave me a long look. “I don’t need to worry about you, do I?”
We both knew what he was referring to.
I was and I wasn’t like them, and I didn’t want to let myself take it personally. I had once asked my dad why we lived across the street from our neighbor if they were scared of him, and he’d said, “For that reason, Nina. His presence keeps the things we love safer than we’d be anywhere else.”
“How?”
He had patted my head. “We’re not the only ones scared of him.”
I understood now what he’d meant. There was fear and there was respect, and there was a gray area in between. And there was a reason why the only little pig who survived had hidden in the brick house.
I shook my head. “No, you don’t need to worry.” I lifted my hand, my fingers formed in a V-shape. “I come in peace.”
For the second time that day, no one laughed at my joke.
His phone rang again, but he ignored it. “Just making sure.” He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry I knocked you down earlier,” he claimed in that low voice, shooting me another expression I couldn’t recognize, before swiping his thumb across the screen and bringing it up to his ear as he started walking toward the house with a barked, “Blackrock.”
“Sleep well,” I wished him anyway, not sure how exactly I felt about that interaction. About him in general, to be honest.
To Matti and Sienna, I was always Nina. They knew every single good and bad thing I’d ever done, and they loved me anyway. I thought they always would.
There were other people who liked what they did know about me. We could have a good laugh. We could talk. But I kept them at a distance, I filtered what their knowledge of me was because of my concern over how they could or would react to things that didn’t need to be worried about. Wearing my bracelet around other magical beings had always made me feel like I wore a constant filter—like some people only got to see part of me, which was true.
A tipsy mermaid could tell me some of the darkest things she’d ever done, but I’d never been forthcoming enough to do the same.
And to Henri? In the span of just a few hours, I’d been Cricket, the girl he’d known, and Nina, the adult he didn’t understand and was struggling not to judge too hard—at least it seemed that way to me. His fluctuation between those two people had already been evident. There wasn’t much I could do about that other than just show him who I was, and I needed time for that.
On top of that, there was my attraction to him. Not just a little attraction, but more than I would’ve wished, if I had a choice. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone I would describe as a hunk before, but now that I’d seen him, I understood how that word could be used.
In the middle of thinking about all that, Duncan climbed into my lap, his attention on the figure walking away from us. I set my nose into the crown of his head and watched too, the low murmur of Henri’s voice reaching us despite the distance; it was one of the good and the bad things about being out in the middle of nowhere: you could hear everything. The front door opened and closed soon after.