A project at last.
He returned to Greenbridge Glen feeling rather chuffed. A project had been his therapy homework, and he managed to find one right within Cleghorn Crook. He hoped he was up for the challenge, because a challenge she would be. She was likely in a sorrier state than even the Pixie had been, and nothingbut perfection would suffice before she was ready for Aelin and Silva.
Tate sucked in a breath at the thought.
A new start. A perfect little house for his perfect little family, the first he’d had in nearly two hundred years on this side of the veil.
Sorry, Jack. Whoever you are.
* * *
He’d barely been back in the apartment above the Pixie for a half-hour before there was a knock at the door.
Tate swung around, his hackles raising instantly. There was no access to the staircase that led up to the apartment unless one came in through the back alley, or in through the pub itself, which they shouldn’t have been doing.Unless it was Rukh. Rukh or Elshona.His shoulders dropped, his posture relaxing as his head fell back.You’re too fucking paranoid, boyo. Who do you think it’s going to be? You killed the cunt. There’s no one else who’s a threat.
It was with that thought that he swung open the door, realizing how wrong he was the instant he did. The orc on the other side of the threshold was a bigger threat to his peace of mind than his grandsire ever had been on his most terrifying day.
Ainsley looked different.
Different hair, yes, a bit older, of course, but it was more than that. He looked wounded.He lost his sparkle, because of you.
Tate felt the ocean of grief he carried within him rock, nearly knocking him off balance for a moment. It was always there, always churning, a maelstrom of regrets threatening to drag him down if he succumbed to its blackness. Heknewwhat the shape of regret felt like. He carried it with him always.
“Hi, Ains.”
Ainsley’s eye twitched, but he said nothing.
“You look good.”
“Don’t.” Ainsley’s voice was strained and raw-sounding. “Don’t youdarefucking start withsmall talk.”
Tate nodded, his grip on the doorframe tightening. He motioned minutely. “In?”
“No.”
He watched his best friend suck in a shuddering breath. He knew what that felt like as well, control balanced on a knife-tip, your very lungs trying to betray you.
“You left.”
He nodded again, slowly.
“And you knew. You knew before it happened. Why didn’t you tell me? Whycouldn’tyou tell me?”
He had begun to understand what Zola meant by identifying his physical triggers. It was a creeping sensation up his spine, a clawing at his chest, his heart rate increasing until the muscle beneath his eye jumped. His muscles clenched, his entire body tightening, as if he were armouring himself for attack. He was meant to remove himself from the situation and regulate himself before making his defensiveness the world’s problem, but there was no way to remove himself from this. Tate knew if he took even a step away from the door, Ainsley would leave, and he’d never see him again.
“I didn’t know how, Ains.”
His voice was a whisper, holding on by a thread. It was the most honest answer he could give. He could tell Ainsley that it would have been too dangerous, that he wouldn’t have understood the compulsory tether of it, but he understood that mattered little.
He hadn’t known how to disengage himself from the relationships he’d been foolish to form in the first place.No. Not foolish. Ainsley and Silva hadn’t been foolish attachments, easily cast off, much as he would have wished he could pretend they were.
“Well, that’s great. And you couldn’t figure it out? You know, you didn’t spare us anything by just vanishing. You left us holding the worst version of the story. And you can’t give me anything, still?”
“What would you like me to say, Ainsley?”
“Something that’s real.” Compared to his own choked whisper, Ainsley’s shout filled the space, reverberating off the tiles above. “Give me something that’sreal, Tate.”
He nodded, heat burning his eyes. “You want to know something real? I was lying on the forest floor, bleeding. Probably bleeding out. I was going to die there. I didn’t see any way out, and I wasn’t strong enough to find my way to a doorway that would get me there, so I just laid there and waited to die.” Tate was aware that his voice was breaking, but he had no intention of stopping. “And then I saw it there, above me. It was a boot, and there was something written on it. And I realized what it was. Fucking Ainsley’s phone number. Just hanging there in the middle of the forest on the other side of the veil. I still have no idea how it got there. But there you were.You. Like an arrow, leading me home. And I knew I had to follow it, because it was Ainsley’s. Nothing bad had ever come from following you. And it worked. If it hadn’t been for your fucking phone number on the bottom of my shoe, I’d be dead on that forest floor.”
