“I’m sure there’s a laundry list of them.”
“You’re too good.” I ignored his scoff. “I mean it.”
“I just told you I bartered my sight away to ablack witch.”
“Burdock has told me enough stories for me to realize you and Liam were a lot more alike than I realized when you were kids. I figured you put away childish things when you ascended to magnus, but even that wouldn’t explain the lockdown on your emotions or the leniency you show Liam. It’s almost like you’re letting him be obnoxious enough for the both of you, and he knows it, so he’s always out to one up himself in your honor.”
“For someone who thinks she doesn’t read people well, you’re painfully insightful.”
The truth was that anyone with a volatile homelife became an expert at reading people. Empathy, some called it, and maybe it was, but it stemmed from awareness earned by living with someone or someones whose emotional state became the barometer for your own life. To enter a room and pause to gauge the moods of those around you became habit. Not because it was a superpower but a survival instinct.
“Any other skeletons in your closet? Dark pacts? Blood oaths? Questionable streaming memberships? Anything else I should know going into this?”
“Thisbeing a relationship with me.” He studied me for a long time. “You’re not obligated, you know.”
“I’m aware, and if you keep throwing that in my face, I’m going to think you’re looking for a way out.”
“Never.”
“Then let’s move forward and stop looking back.”
“Easy as that?”
“Hell no. Nothing worth having is easy. But I am willing to work on it. With you.”
“Can I hold you?” He flexed his fingers around mine. “Just for a minute?”
“I might even give you two,” I said, lying next to him and resting my head on his shoulder.
The hard muscle shouldn’t have made a good pillow, but I conked out the second my eyes shut.
Bright light stabbed me in the eye, and I cracked open a lid, expecting to find a flashlight in my face with an irate Sloane on the other end of it. But this was worse. Much worse. Rían and I had fallen asleep on the lawn. The flashlight? Yeah. It was the sun. Beaming right into my skull.
I attempted to sit up, but the weight of his arm kept me pinned against his side. Judging from the warm spot on my face (and the damp spot on his shirt), dreams had consumed him shortly after they gobbled me down. He was breathing deeply, his expression wiped clear. He growled when I wiggled to escape, a faint rumble that puckered his brow, and I couldn’t help myself.
Sleeping Rían wasadorable.
“Aww,” a small voice complained behind us. “I wanted to camp out too.”
“You were grounded,” Sloane explained gently. “You’ll have to camp out next time.”
“They didn’t even use a tent.” Goldie tapped her chin. “I would have loaned them mine for ten dollars.”
“That’s a very generous offer.” Sloane barely held in her laughter. “How much for the sleeping bags?”
“Five dollars each? Another five for the electric lantern. I have a camp stove too.”
As the tally climbed higher, I decided I should wake Rían before Goldie rang up our future purchases.
“Rise and shine.” I gripped his shoulder, my pillow, and shook. “Time to face the day. And your sister.”
“Umph.” He rolled against my hip and looped his arms around me. “No.”
An evil grin stretched Sloane’s cheeks as she mouthed a cure for the problem then hustled Goldie inside.
“We slept together last night,” I told Rían, lips brushing his ear, “and Goldie walked in on us.”
“Fuck.”He shot upright, wild-eyed, groping his lap for, I assume, a sheet. “Goldie, I?—”
