The Crossroads liked Card, always had. After all, he was the reason it was still alive, instead of a burned out, abandoned ruin.
“This is not permission for you to stay,” I said.
“No, of course not.”
“I’ll probably just throw you out, no matter what you tell me.”
“Prudent.”
“But I will listen. Tell me your story.” Those were the same words I said to so many others who had come here for help. They were easy enough to say to him.
I sat at the table and slurped coffee, pointedly not offering him any.
He should know better than to push my hospitality, but his gaze slipped to the tea kettle on the stove before cutting back to me.
I shouldn’t. I didn’t owe him tea. I didn’t even owe him a second of my time.
Except that I did.
“You can have a cup of tea if it means you’ll start talking and get out of here quicker.”
He hopped to it like a kid who’d just been released from time-out. He worked behind me, which should have made me nervous, but instead settled something in my heart I’d been ignoring for a long time.
I missed him, dammit. Even though I had every reason to not want him in my life.
Hadn’t I given him enough chances to patch things up between us?
Yes. Yes, I had. Years of chances.
And yet, I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t even heard from him since the day he walked out without a word.
But before then, he had been my joy, he had been my life, for a very long time.
The ink, the songs, he saved our lives, the house hummed to me. The house wasn’t wrong, but the house hadn’t been Card’s lover.
The house didn’t have a heart that could be broken.
I shoveled food in my mouth and chewed. Even with a bucketload of pepper on it, I couldn’t taste anything.
All my senses were homed in on Card, the scent of his skin tugged on my chest, making me want to open my arms, making me want to touch him again, laugh with him again.
Be touched.
He was humming under his breath. Some old Irish song about a lively young man off to save his homeland.
Appetite gone, I sat back and drank coffee, trying not to think about old times.
Out there on the road, the engines of Fate rumbled closer and closer. The god would be here in a half hour, tops.
“You need to talk fast,” I said. I knew he must have tripped up with the goddess, because there was zero chance it was a coincidence he’d shown up one step ahead of Fate.
“A while back, I was contacted via phone. Hired to do a job,” he said, pulling out the chair across from me and dropping into it as if he were exhausted. His long, wide fingers were wrapped around one of my oldest mugs, the one that had a chip in the rim and the tiniest crack near the handle.
His knuckles knotted under his skin as he squeezed the ceramic.
Val moved around the kitchen to glance out the windows. His wolf paced him, blending and stepping through the ghost as they moved, tethered together, skin and fur, earth and moon.
“It didn’t seem like much,” Card said. “The pay was good. I owed—owe—a few people money. This fell into my lap when I needed it.”
