Kelter returns, still barefoot and shirtless. I slap my hand over my knifeless pocket again, feeling empty and defenseless, but I can’t imagine shoving it through that tan skin of his anyway. I don’t know how to hate him. My heart says to keep him close, but that’s another thing I can’t trust.
It’s night, though the Underbroke looks the same any time of day. I can only tell because the cold seeps through the walls and into me. My visions wear on me, and my arms and legs are sore, as if stretched beyond their limits, making the cold an even more brutal assault.
I sit on the floor of the dirt room, an impressive ten-by-ten-foot space for such aspecialguest as Kelter. Aside from the four light stones in the corners, the only other brightness comes from a large entryway leading to a passage I haven’t been able to explore, not with Fable’s frequent march back and forth. The hide-covered walls of the room curve into the ceiling where water gathers and drops down occasionally on my back or scalp in icy splatters.
Kelter brought me here this morning after the unfortunate introduction to Zandrite, let me sleep half the day then disappeared. And even after everything, my heart itched for his return without explanation, as if it might not keep beating without him. An actual physical threat. He should be the one fearing his life after what he’s done.
“I couldn’t find any bars for you. They don’t eat those in the Underbroke. Zandrite makes all the Half Links eat raw meat like him,” he says.
It’s not much of a greeting, but my entire body relaxes with his arrival when it should be running. Food is the last thing on my mind. I push on my temples and look up at him, searching for words.
He examines me. “You grew.”
“What?”
“I’ve only been gone a couple of hours, and you’re at least a half inch taller,” he says.
I grip my knees, squeezing my thumbs against the corduroy ridges. “That’s ridiculous. Why did you come here, Kelt? Tell me what’s going on. I came to bring you home, not get stripped in front of a nasty fur-man and thrown in a cave.”
He stares down at my bloody shirt and gray pants dusted with dirt, toenails near black with filth. “What did you expect when Eli told you I was at the Underbroke? Didn’t he tell you that I need you here with me?”
“No. I’m here because I thought you needed a friend after what happened with him.”
“There’s so much you don’t know.” He drops down in front of me, knees spread, and takes my cheeks into his hands.
He’s warm, and his touch reaches right through me, quelling the cold. Something awful wakes up inside me. Something like longing, like desire.
But not for him.
He only stirs it up. But slathered on top of that awkwardness is the need to protect, to defend. To keep him. Like how I came to believe we’d be friends no matter what, but stronger. So much stronger. It powers through my veins. Even worse than that, an urge comes on full strength, like every minute I spent waiting for Eli’s touch, a hundred times over.
I gasp at the rush, the tightening of my breasts, the full body flush. Suddenly Eli seems so far away. I try to hide the storm inside me. “Then tell me, Kelter. Tell me everything.”
“I’m not ready.” He rubs his thumbs over what must be the rosiest of cheeks and moves his hands to my shoulders, considering me. Maybe he can tell I’m imploding.
I wince at the pressure on my wounds and push him away. “You sucked dripping blood from raw meat. What else could you possibly behiding from me that’s worse than that?” I shiver. From the cold. And the memory.
He looks over his shoulder at the cave entrance. “To the back wall. Go.”
I scoot back until my spine hits dead animal skin. Kelter nearly sits on top of me with how close he gets.
“I know how you’re feeling right now. I promise it will be okay,” he says.
“You have no idea what I’m feeling. Start talking.”
He controls his response with a twist of his neck, a deep breath through his nose. “I came to Sonnet for a cure.”
“A cure for what?”
“My cravings.”
I reach for him, a hand on each shoulder. He trembles at my touch and bends his head to the side, capturing my hand against his cheek. Goosebumps ripple over my exposed skin.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Tears roll down his cheeks, and he glides his hands over my arms, caressing the bumps. “Let me hold you. Let me warm you up, Ever. Let me do it differently this time. All of it.”
And it could be that itch in my heart or the throbbing need to be touched or that fractured look on his face, or maybe the cold in my bones that makes a tiny part of me want to say yes. But I don’t. Not with all he’s done. Not with Eli tugging at my heart. Not with every other part of me shrieking no. I’m pulled to Kelter like never before, but still, I’d rather be wrapped up in my own darkness than in his arms, as familiar as they once were.
