I shake my head and throw some money on the table. “One day, you’ll be happy, and I can’t wait to tease you endlessly about it.”
“One day, I’ll be dead. You gonna tease me about that too?”
He’s looking for a bite, and I refuse. I’m not Hudson, who’d latch onto that and say something equally as fucked-up back.
I’m the mediator.
And I’m tired.
All I want is for everyone to be happy.
Is that so much to ask?
CHAPTER
THREE
ZIGGY
Shit.
The metal slices through my finger, and a bubble of blood springs out, then slips from the cut.Stupid. How hard is it for me to pay attention? I suck my finger into my mouth, pressing my tongue piercing to the sting as I inspect my handiwork.
I’ve raided our supplies barn for everything I need to make a little wire bird, and while it’s slowly building into something recognizable, it’s taking longer than I thought it would.
Slow, talentless, thoughtless.
I set the little statue down and walk back inside to drown out the words. My home is built into the hillside and was used as a mine shaft back when Wilde’s End was built. Something caused it to cave in and kill a bunch of people, so since then, the town has all but been forgotten about. Until us Wenders took over.
I love my home. It’s cozy. And most importantly,echoey.
The small box TV is turned up loud, and voices from whichever show it is are filling the cave-like space, bouncingthem back to me in a way that makes no sense but keeps my head so full my thoughts can’t run away with themselves.
Between the TV, the road that passes overhead through Hobby Straight, and the birds that wake me every morning, I’ve landed in the best spot I could have hoped for.
Especially now that the brothers are here.
Unlike Wilde, our leader out here, I’m not scared of what the brothers are planning. Do I want to be pushed out of my home? Of course not. But I packed it up once and moved out here, so I know that if I need to do that again, I’ll manage. We’re squatting on this land, so it was only a matter of time before all this good came to an end.
I’m not here to make an enemy of anyone … especially not Kennedy.
The way I get all floaty—and sick—thinking about him isn’t something I’ve ever experienced before. Sure, I had crushes when I was younger, and thought Wilde was hot when I first moved here, but that died quickly.
Wilde is … closed off. I don’t do well with people who bottle everything up inside, because I have enough of my own stuff bottled.
Kennedy doesn’t even seem to know where the bottles are stored.
And more importantly, he talks. Even when I don’t. There’s rarely a moment of silence when I’m with him, and the way it fills that deep, frightened gap in my soul isn’t something I’ll ever be able to put into words.
And I’m full of them.
Words, I mean. They’re on an ever-present rotation in my head, loud and needy and sometimes too much. All the words I’m scared to let out build and build, until it’s this constant buzz of words and letters and shapes that don’t make sense but weigh me down.
I reach my sink and open the side drawers as I rinse my still-bleeding finger under the water. The second one has most of my first aid shit in it, and I snag a Band-Aid before drying off my hands and wrapping it around the cut. It’s not deep enough to worry about, but the damn thing stings, and I don’t need to catch an infection out here. That will lead me to Booker, which is a visit I always avoid.
AndstillI don’t have a gift for Kennedy.
I look around my place for the millionth time to see if I have anything that works, but other than the necessities, my place is barren. Gifts and trinkets aren’t something I’ve ever worried about before. Beyond washing his bikeagainor checking his car’s oilagain, there isn’t a lot else I can offer him. Like me, he doesn’t have a lot of things, at least not here, so there’s only so many acts of service I can shower him with.
