"Thanks?" he said, accepting the ridiculous stack with a bemused expression.
"No problem!" My voice came out an octave too high. "Anything else I can get you? Water? Coffee?"
The werewolf blinked. "Just the check whenever you get a chance."
I nodded too enthusiastically and turned to fetch his bill, only to realize my path would take me directly past Krampus's table. No choice. Head high, smile fixed, I marched forward with as much dignity as my still-aching thighs would allow.
As I passed his booth, he shifted slightly, the movement bringing his mouth closer to my level. Without turning his head from the newspaper spread before him, he murmured words meant only for my ears.
"You're walking a little slower today."
Heat flooded my face, but I kept moving, refusing to acknowledge I'd heard him. I rang up the werewolf's check with shaking fingers, mistyping his order twice before getting it right. By the time I returned to the werewolf's table, I'd composed myself somewhat. I set down his check and began gathering empty plates from a recently vacated table nearby. The path back to the kitchen would, unfortunately, take me past Krampus again. I squared my shoulders and moved forwards, balancing the dirty dishes with practiced ease.
This time, his whisper carried a hint of amusement beneath the dark promise.
"Do the collar marks still sting?"
I nearly stumbled, the plates rattling dangerously in my grip. I swallowed hard, feeling the phantom pressure against my windpipes and kept walking. In the kitchen, I leaned against the wall for a moment, eyes closed, trying to steady my breathing. I couldn't avoid him forever, the café was only so big, and my job required me to be out there, among the customers, where he could watch me.
When I emerged with fresh coffee for the vampire couple in the corner, Krampus was typing something on his phone, seemingly absorbed in business matters. I relaxed fractionally, making my way between tables with the steaming pot. Perhaps he'd grown bored of tormenting me. The reprieve lasted exactly four minutes. As I collected payment from an elderly witch, I had to pass his booth a third time. He didn't look up from his phone, but his voice curled around me like smoke, intimate and inescapable.
"Should I sit back and let you ride out the stress again?"
I sucked in a breath and practically ran back to the counter. Around us, customers continued their conversations, oblivious to the current of tension crackling between us. No one seemed to notice how I stood too still, breathing too quickly. No one except Silas, who caught my eye from behind the pastry case and made an obscene gesture involving his fist and tongue that had me turning away so quickly I nearly collided with the counter.
I slipped through the vine-draped doorway to Bramble's greenhouse alcove like a woman seeking sanctuary, which wasn't far from the truth. The glass-roofed space hit me with a wall of humid warmth that immediately beaded sweat along my hairline and the back of my neck. Black-petaled blossoms hung from the ceiling in trailing curtains, their centers glowing with faint purple light. Moss covered the floor like a plush carpet, soft enough that I found myself wanting to kick off my shoes and sink my toes into its springy coolness.
Condensation dripped from the glass above, falling in fat drops that pattered against broad leaves and splashed onto my heated skin. Bramble hovered near a cluster of hydrangeas whose blue-purple blooms seemed to pulse gently, as if breathing. Her wings shimmered with collected dew as they beat too fast for human eyes to track, keeping her suspended. She didn't acknowledge my entrance, focused instead on misting the plants with a tiny copper watering can proportioned for pixie hands.
"If you touch the spotted ones, your fingers will go numb for three days," she said without looking up, her matter-of-fact tone making the warning sound like a casual weather observation. "The purple ones cause hallucinations. The blue ones are just poisonous."
I carefully clasped my hands behind my back. "Noted. No touching the pretty death flowers."
Bramble's wings stilled for a brief moment as she finally turned to face me, her expression unreadable on features no bigger than my thumbnail. She hovered closer, until we were eye-to-eye, her tiny feet dangling just inches from my nose.
"He wants you," she said simply.
No preamble. No cushioning. Just three words that landed like stones dropped in still water, ripples of meaning expanding outward. I took an instinctive step back.
"I—what? Who?" The denial was automatic, pathetic, and completely transparent.
"You want him," Bramble continued as if I hadn't spoken, her second declaration as blunt as the first.
"I don't—that's not—" I sputtered, fussing with the hem of my dress. "He's my boss. The owner of the café. It would be inappropriate and unprofessional and—"
"And he already fucked you senseless, so that ship has sailed," she finished, her tiny voice somehow filling the humid space between us. She drifted closer, head tilted like a curious bird's. "You gonna stop pretending or just keep running every time he breathes near you?"
I grabbed a nearby vine, fingers fidgeting with its waxy leaves just to have something to focus on besides Bramble's too-perceptive gaze. The plant trembled slightly under my touch, responding to my agitated emotional state in a way that made me wonder if it was more sentient than it appeared.
"It's not that simple," I muttered, eyes fixed on the vine. "I can't just... fall apart over some monster, especially not one who basically owns my life." My voice dropped to a whisper.
Bramble snorted, a sound like tiny bells being shaken too hard. "That sounds like a you problem."
I looked up sharply. "What?"
"Ayouproblem," she repeated. She fluttered to a shelf of tiny glass bottles, rearranging them. "You're the one making it complicated. He wants you. You want him. The rest is just you finding excuses to avoid happiness because you're scared of getting your heart broken."
"I'm not scared," I protested weakly, even as my chest tightened with the recognition of truth in her words. "I'm being realistic. The holiday party is in a few days, and he's going to announce a new manager. He's probably firing me. How am Isupposed to trust anything that happens between us when my job, my home, is on the line?"
