“Jeez, Reynner.” She tried to yank them back, her fingers fisting. “My hands are fine.”
“I don’t care about your scars. I want to see if you’ve burned yourself.”
“I haven’t.”
He didn’t relent, just held her gaze with determined ones.
Scowling, she uncurled her fists. He traced the bumpy scars and calluses with a finger. Satisfied she hadn’t hurt herself, he let her go.
She cut him an I-told-you-so-look, then turned back to study her life-size sculpture. “A little more work and it should be ready.”
To him, the sculpture looked done with all the weaves and gaping slits. But what did he know?
“Do you mind handing me that sketch on my table? The one with a photo attached,” she asked him.
Playing errand boy, Reynner went back and flipped through her stack of sketches. His gaze landed on the photo and he froze.
“Eve—” He broke off, unable to speak—to breathe, like someone had used a vise on his chest. “Eve, where did you get this?”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the photo he held. “Oh, that’s for Brenna’s friend. It’s a present for her husband. She gave me the pic and specifications.”
His attention back on the photo, Reynner felt the precarious foundation he lived on shudder beneath his feet.
“You okay?” Eve’s voice came to him from a distance.
He nodded, wondering why Eve hadn’t made the familial connections. Sure, Aerén’s hair was far lighter, and Aethan’s looked much darker than normal in this picture.
“You—” He had to clear the rust from his throat to ask. “You do commissioned work?”
“This is my first one. Echo seemed to like the unusual. Said my style appealed to her.”
Liked the unusual?Naturally, she would. She was mated to his friend.
“Did you meet them?” he asked, waiting for an answer and dreading what he’d hear.
Eve gave him an enquiring look. “Just the wife—she’s pretty nice. She’s coming to see the final product today before I send it off. Why?”
The vise eased. He could breathe again. At least he was spared that meeting. “Just curious.”
Eve finally left the sculpture and came to the table. She took the photo from him and studied it. Seeming satisfied, she set it aside. Then she hopped on the high, swivel stool, picked up a carton, took one of the plastic forks, and started to make inroads in her chicken noodles.
Reynner ignored the other stool—a really rickety one that guaranteed to have him falling on his ass the moment he sat his weight on it.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Eve lifted her gaze from his untouched food and frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Yeah, he could very well face his past.Something he wasn’t prepared for and would never be. Not now, not after so many millennia.
Unable to answer that question, he shook his head. He picked up his fork and forced down food he didn’t taste—and was spared a second bite when he felt a brush against his psychic senses.
He stilled. Waited. The same sensation he’d experienced in the alley last night crept over him. Sticking his fork in the carton of noodles, he was out the door in seconds.
Moments later, a light peachy scent drifted to him.
Shit, of course, Eve would follow. His inner alarm continued to sound.
“Reynner, what is it? You’re scaring me.” She glanced about her where they stood on the dirt-encrusted asphalt, the clammy noon heat enclosing them.
He searched the lane, farther up where the alley met the main street. A man leaned against the wall, smoking and conversing to another. Cars droned by. But the alley itself remained quiet.
