Gizmo lifts his head from where he lies on the chair and watches us as she slowly changes while I finish drying off. And her gaze immediately shifts back to the spot where we woke and then lost ourselves in each other.
I snag her brush from the top of the dresser and move behind her, slowly running it through her hair. She lets me take care of her silently, but the longer she goes without saying anything, the more worried I become about what’s going on inside her head.
Where are you going in there, Lucky?
She’s getting lost in the past, the same way I have so often lately.
That can be a very dangerous place.
Grabbing the towel, I gently dry her hair the best I can, letting the long blue locks dangle down her back. I drift my fingers through it. “Why blue?”
She startles slightly at my voice and glances over her shoulder at me. “What?”
“Why the blue hair?” I lean forward and kiss her cheek. “It suits you, I’m just curious.”
Her eyes darken again, and she gives me a tight smile. “I had this stupid idea that the louder I was, the more people might actually ignore me. That they would pay more attention to my hair than my face.”
“And you could be anonymous?”
She nods.
I clench my jaw, despising the fact that her beautiful hair is tied to something as awful as feeling like she needed to hide.
A woman like Lucky should never be in the shadows.
She deserves to live in the light that matches how brightly the rest of her glows.
I place a kiss on her temple. “Well, I love it. Don’t change it unless you want to.”
The smile she gives me now is a genuine one, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. They follow me, filled with trepidation, as I tug on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then grab the towels to bring them back to the bathroom.
“Come on.”
I snag her hand and lead her down the stairs into the kitchen to sit her at the small two-person table while I go to hang the towels in the bathroom. When I get back, she hasn’t moved, frozen in place by her own fear of the truth.
It twists my stomach as I fill the teapot with water and turn on the stove to boil it. I grab the tea I got from Willow and a mug, occasionally glancing toward Lucky to gauge how she’s doing.
But it’s hard to tell when she’s rebuilding that wall.
Brick by brick, it goes up as I work, moving in near silence, the only sounds the cabinets opening and closing and Gizmo’s little snorts as he finally wanders down the steps after us to see what’s happening.
He sits next to me, staring up expectantly.
“You hungry?”
His head tilts to the side, and I open the fridge and pull out the food I grabbed from Killian’s for him last night—a mix of ground beef and vegetables Willow made until we can get some sort of dog food for him since Lucky ran out of what she was carrying with her.
I toss it into a bowl for him and set it in the corner, and he runs right to it and digs in as I pour the boiling water over the tea leaves in the infuser for her and let it steep while I snag the honey harvested from Willow’s hives and add some.
By the time I bring it to Lucky, all the tension this morning’s activities removed is back, and she’s trembling again, her shoulders tight and hunched forward as if she wishes she could disappear.
I set the mug in front of her and snag the other chair, dragging it over next to her so that I can touch her, so there isn’t any space between us when we talk. Because I don’t want her to put even more there, and I feel like she’s going to.
Or at least she’ll try.
She stares into her cup of tea. “So, I guess we have to talk now.”
I nod. “Yes. And I’m sorry I have to make you do this, but?—”
