“Ready?” she asks, winking as she steps out and glides on the ice.
“Why did that look so easy?” I grumble.
“It’s easier when you’re not so far from the ground, Mister,” a little girl says, following Silva out onto the ice.
“I’m going to fall on my ass,” I groan.
Silva skates back to me, her eyes mischievous.
“Are you ready to confess?” she asks.
“I don’t know how to skate,” I grumble. “I figured it couldn’t be that hard.”
“Such a baby,” she coos, teasing me. “First step is to side step onto the ice.”
She coaches me through the basics: marching, falling, and more. Within the next half hour, I learn enough that I can stay upright and skate without falling too often on my ass, while she skates circles around me.
“Stick around and you’ll get the hang of it,” she says.
Oh, I’m not going anywhere, Princess.She’s stuck with me forever. One day, she’ll trust me enough to ask for a bond bite. I just need to be patient.
We have a really good time skating together until I notice her teeth chattering, so I talk her into going to lunch.
“I’m starving,” I pout when she looks like she’s going to argue.
“I guess we should feed you then,” she decides.
The rink is getting busier now, and I don’t really trust my skating skills either. I’ll let the kids enjoy this. I’m done. Getting off the ice, we return our skates, and I sigh in relief as I put my boots back on.
“What kind of food are you in the mood for?” she asks.
“Something warm,” I chuckle. “Syrus mentioned that there’s a place with really good soup you like?”
“Getting insider secrets, I see,” she grins.
“I don’t play fair, and I never will,” I confess, holding out my hand for her to hold.
“Rules can be overrated,” she admits, taking it.
I mean, she’s not wrong. The “rules” of society would cringe, clutch their pearls, and cry about what we did to Brad Fielding. A missing person report has been filed since he didn’t show up to any of his meetings and his room was empty outside of his belongings. His rental car was also still in the parking lot.
No one knows where he is, and it appears as if his brother has also disappeared.
I fucking love my life. I don’t want to be respectable, even though I can pull it off if necessary.
“They’re often overrated,” I agree, squeezing her hand as we walk to the car.
Silva hasn’t asked about what happened to Brad, and I’m not offering up anything unless she does. Plausible deniability is important. There’s no way we’ll ever get caught, but I don’t want to have the burden of that information.
She slept so well, she barely even twitched last night. Sometimes, the best therapy is murder.
Once we’re in the car, I turn on the radio as we drive, smiling as she begins to sing. Silva has a beautiful voice, clear and strong.
She can rap with the best of them, she sings to Pink, and she’s an adorable little emo omega as the songs change. I almost miss the restaurant as she points to it with a smile, helping me find parking.
The town is bustling with people now that it’s lunch time.
Evelyn’s is set up like a tea house. It’s gorgeous and reminds me of some kind of Victorian era house. I can’t stop looking at the architecture as we sit down, kind of enamored with it. Harlan and I have worked together on lots of different construction jobs while undercover, and I can appreciate pretty buildings.
