This man…who just minutes ago confessed that people make him uncomfortable because he grew up in an environment where too many were literally willing to stab him in the back…likeshaving me around?
My vision blurs as he lifts my glasses, tuts, and swipes his thumb beneath my eyes to catch the moisture. Citrus scents waft off his skin. “Come on, Lemonade, don’t juice yourself on my account.”
A wet laugh leaves me. “I’d hug you, but…” I weakly lift what remains of my meal. “My hands are full.”
He replaces my glasses on my nose, so I can clearly see his brow rise before his arm links around my back, his fingers thread in my hair, and his hand securely drags me into a pocket of warmth against his chest.
Even after a two-mile trek uphill filled with chopping fallen logs and cleaning up storm debris, a clean, woodsy scent floats around me. His fingers comb. His chin brushes my forehead, stubble scratching. I feel him breathe; I feel him chuckle.
His murmur vibrates against my back. “Finish your food, Lemonade. You’re okay.” Then, softer, as his lips skim my hairline, he says, “Everything’s gonna be just fine.”
Chapter 18
♥♥♥♥
The terror of compliments and small talk.
“I was beginning to think you didn’t want to learn how to fish.” Laumon laughs, leading me down the bank toward the beach, his trusty fishing rod propped over his shoulder and a bucket of writhing conquests in his other hand.
“W-what? Don’t be silly.” I laugh, too, and watch a crab scuttle across the white sand into a hole. Oh, if only I could be that crab.
Earlier, after my journal blackmailed me into getting on top of the quest I’d been neglecting by refusing to press my stolen Samson petal unless I did, I found Laumon fishing at one of the rivers that cuts through the Ridge. The fishing spot is somewhat off the beaten path, but exactly where my mental schedule said he’d be. With more and more reality coming to light each day, knowing everyone’s schedules by heart is starting to make me feel like a stalker, but it’s not like it’s my fault. I didn’t know I was studying the behaviors of actual people.
As we pass the new beach house, Neptun exits, smiles at us, and waves.
I wave back, because I’m kind like that, and not a crab, which is somehow devolving into a more depressing fact by the minute.
“Careful of the hook,” Laumon says, somehow having retrieved a wooden rod to thrust into my hands while I was waving and mourning my human flesh.
Hooboy.
I’m not looking forward to this experience with the realism mod active.
What are we going to talk about while we’re standing on the beach, hoping our lines don’t tangle or I get a wormy hook in me?The weather?
When Laumon’s attention lifts toward the pristine clouds lazing across the azure sky, I tense.
Please no.
Not the weather for real.
Come on, Laumontite. Be more interesting than a secondary mineral in basalt. I beg.
With zero context, he offers me a gentle smile and turns up the beach. I follow, trying to hold my fishing pole over my shoulder like he is, grateful only that I had the foresight not to wear my cute lemon pocket dress today. I’m in my starter khakis, ready to cover them in fish guts, probably.
Ready as I’ll ever be, anyway.
My heart dunks into my toes as an inlet stuffed full of splinters comes into view.
My legs stop working.
The fishing pole sags right off my shoulder, tip landing in the sand.
A chill pours down my spine, as though it’s not beyond mid spring and sun isn’t boring into my light-colored hair.
“This is where our home got stuck,” Laumon murmurs, breaking the eerie static in my head. “Very little survived. But we’re lucky. So lucky. Lazul mandated an evacuation to his manor, and he wouldn’t let anyone laugh off his urgency. Nep and I grumbled when he made us bring as much as we could carry all the way up to his place before the rain started, but if he hadn’t…” A broken chuckle leaves Laumon. “Well, we’d have had barely anything. He had everyone in town bring things to safety, just in case the streets flooded, and they did at least three inches, but Chrysa’s flour and sugar reserves were in his parlor, all the general store food took up his guest room… We barely hadany space to move, and we all slept on whatever floor we could find, but we all made it through with enough to manage in the aftermath, too.”
So that’s why Lazul offered me the farmhouse instead of a guest room. I showed up barely after the storm, when his home still would have been filled with the town’s things.
