“I found a big one,” he says. “So that she can tumble a bunch of rocks at once. Yours looked like it would fit maybe four and be at capacity.”
“The one I got her fits more than four rocks.” My teeth grind as I fight to keep my cool. “Why would you do this? I know you hate me, but I didn’t think you’d let it affect my relationship withAmia.” Screw butterflies. My stomach is straight sour now. “That’s low. Way lower than I ever thought you would go, and my opinion of you isn’t exactly sky high at the best of times.”
He has just enough audacity left in him torecoil,as ifhe’sthe victim here, and my anger turns to lividity.
“Tell. Me. You’re. Joking.”
He does not.
Seething, I walk away. Because I made a promise to Wolfe, and I’m not a lying liar promise breaker.
“Poem,” he says, fingers brushing my arm before I manage to move out of reach.
I slash a hand behind me, throwing a glare over my shoulder. “We can talk about it later,” I grit. “When it’s not Amia’s birthday party and I don’t want to kill you.”
His hand drops, and he shoves it into the pocket of his jeans. He nods, a sharp jerk of his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For what it’s worth.”
Yeah. And the grass is blue.
“Whatever,” I mumble, giving him my back. I move to the other side of the room and set up camp next to my sisters at the bar. They eye me warily, but don’t comment.
Muse glowers at Fox, wrapping an arm around my tense shoulders. Sonnet worries her bottom lip.
I keep my focus on Amia, smiling whenever her face tilts my way and doing my very best not to dread the moment she gets to Fox’s gift and mine is set aside for something bigger and better.
Amia loves me, I remind myself.
Amia thinks of me as her aunt, I remind myself.
Amia will not up and abandon me just because Fox gives her a better gift than me, I remind myself. Not only because she’s a child and can’t make the decision to abandonanyoneall on her own, but because she’s a sweet angel child who would never abandon someone she loves over something so small as an apparently useless birthday gift.
Maybe she can keep the lesser rock tumbler at her grandparents’ house to use there. Or at Almond’s. Or at my house. We could get her more and more, and she could have a rock tumbler at every place she visits.
Or maybe Fox can take a casual walk off a cliff into shark-infested waters.
When Amia finally opens his gift, joy spreads across her face as she launches herself once again across the room, this time to hugFoxin thanks forFox’sgift. I focus very, very hard on that joy. A child’s joy over something good for her, which I shouldnot be selfishly upset or insecure about. A child’s joy, which can balm many frustrations and feelings of inadequacies.
A child’s joy, which pangs against my stubborn pride when she turns to me, lifting Fox’s tumbler and declares, the happiest girl alive, “Now I havetwo!”
I grin at her, even as my heart beats heavy with frustrations my brain works overtime to logic away. “Two!” I answer her joy, feigning my own.
She squeals, running to set the tumblers side by side.
Pointedly, I do not look at Fox.
Pointedly, I do not look at Fox for the rest of the evening.
Pointedly, I’d like to not look at Fox for the rest of my life.
Chapter Six
?
Remember that pipe Poem made leaky? We in the biz like to call thatforeshadowing.
Fox
My eyes narrow as I scan the Blackwood Brew floor, looking for a head of butterscotch blonde softness. I come up empty.
