“Nothing,” I wail into the cavern my too-small body creates between my thighs and my chest, filled only with the tears that track down my face that drip onto the too-cold blanket and my too-big shirt.
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me, bub.”
I shiver and roll my head over that open palm. It’s warm and rough on my skin and nothing like the touch of my aunt.
“Fuck you,” I mumble. “I’m not your bub.”
“That’s more like it.”
The fingers attached to the phantom of a person I’m not sure is real flex and scratch along my scalp.
I immediately rear back.
“Okay, okay.”
The tone is placating, borderline condescending, but I don’t get a chance to react or even see the man behind the voice before my aunt is pulling my jaw in her direction.
“This man has been coming in to check on you for the last three days, honey. Be nice to him andyourself.” She snaps the last bit but recollects herself by pasting on a smile I know that she thinks is for me. It does nothing to ease any of this shit inside me. “Now I’m going to go grab something for that belly ache. Tell me what else you need.”
I level her with a look that does me no good because she just arches a brow that makes me feel small.
She doesn’t mean to, I don’t think. My aunt is a nice person.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling two inches tall.
“Toast,” I mumble in a small voice that cracks, and pick at the wet spot that’s gone warm on my shin. “Please.”
“Good. Some bread will help settle that stomach.” She turns away from me only to lean back, snatch my blanket, and run.
“Hey!”
“Here, I got you.”
Hot fabric drapes over my knees and I melt into it. Pull it up to my nose. Tuck it under both hips.
It smells like hospital and antiseptic somehow, but it’s like a hug that has my eyes watering all over again.
“Thanks,” I mumble and swallow, fisting the scratchy material around my ribs.
“I stole a second one from the warmer, too, if you want.”
I nod to the mattress.
My shoulders are covered before I even stop moving my head.
It’s like a cocoon of safety wrapping around me, holding me tight enough to stay mostly together.
“My name’s Tristen, by the way.”
Swallowing hard, I finally glance to my left where his presence has taken up more than enough of my attention. But when I finally let myselflookhis way … follow the line of his jeans stretched over decent-sized thighs to his white shirt that’s mostly hidden behind the open zipper of a leather jacket …
I want to vomit.
“Who are you?” I mutter to his shoulder and hold myself tighter.
“Oh, I’m nobody,” he says with such …pride, such … enthusiasm, that my sight snaps to his and I freeze.
Those eyes.
