“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Just a few minutes ago, you were so sure I wouldn’t hurt you.”
She exhales sharply. “Asher’s right. You can go to hell.”
“You say that now,” he points out, “but you’d still let me feed on you if I asked.”
He anticipates her slap, tugging her effortlessly into him. They collide inelegantly, her wrist shackled in his grasp.
“I guess you have a little fight in you, after all.”
“Screw you.”
He smiles. “Maybe someday.”
She thinks of his voice in the bath, the edges hard and wanting:It’s making me fucking crazy.
“You’re feeling it right now,” he guesses. “A rush of blood to your head. An ache in your stomach. Your brain has tricked you into thinking it’s an infatuation, but it isn’t. It’s your body telling you to run.”
Her heart beats off-kilter. “How the hell do you know what I’m feeling?”
“Because I feel it, too. I feel it every time I’m around you. Every time you get close.” He swallows up her space, his head ducking low. “But it’s not telling me to run. It’s telling me to sink myself into you until the aching stops.”
Shea doesn’t speak to either Lys or Asher the following night.
Not even when they stop to refuel, the wind tunneling beneath the sagging steel-frame awning. At Lys’s direction, they pull off the main road just before dawn. The early-morning sun burgeons on the horizon by the time they find what Lys is looking for—an old bed-and-breakfast, forgotten in the trees.
The wooden sign out front hangs loose on its chain.Nutmeg Nook. 1898.Several steepled roofs of alternating height sit wedged in an overgrown snarl of juniper. The white stucco is engulfed in a wall of bloodred sweet spire, windows embellished in a thick diamond lattice. Lys spends the day holed up somewhere dark. Asher, in stark contrast, sits out on the porch, the sun on his face and his ears plugged with wax. Watching the road.
“They’re not very chatty,” notes Poppy, picking snarls out of her scarf. She’s sitting cross-legged on a lumpy old love seat, her green turtleneck and appliqué overalls at odds with the puce-colored cushions. “Do we think they’ll ignore each other all the way to the Flatwood?”
“Hopefully,” says Shea, who has been drafted into untangling a hank of yarn. Thus far, her efforts have proven futile. “How did you tangle this so badly?”
“It wasn’t me, it was Kit. He keeps batting at them.” Poppy pokes despondently at the scarf with the tip of a needle. It’s a few minutes more before she speaks. “I heard the argument. Yesterday, I mean. At the motel.”
Shea feigns nonchalance. “Did you?”
“It isn’t like the three of you were very quiet. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really, no.”
“You can, if you want. I’ll keep my opinions to myself.”
“Don’t bother, I’m sure I can guess.”
Poppy hums. “You might be surprised.”
Shea glances across the room and finds Poppy laser focused on a knot, dissecting each individual strand with surgical precision. When Poppy doesn’t offer up anything further, Shea sags back against the couch. The cushions are upholstered in dizzying floral.Everythingin Nutmeg Nook is floral. The wallpaper. The glassware. The pillows. Even the artwork. It gives the house a charming sort of ugliness.
Outside the window—framed in hideous floral drapes—Shea can just make out Asher’s profile set against the sun. She tosses down the yarn and sits up in a stretch, her patience frayed.
“I quit.”
“Maybe I will, too.” Poppy holds up the scarf between them, peering glumly at Shea through the misshapen holes. “This is turning out to be the ugliest thing anyone has ever made.”
“It’s not that bad.”
