“We’re not blind,” Ava coldly replied. “And believe me, we’re fuming. The only thing stopping me from biting your head off”—she fixed Gedeon with a glare—“is the fact that Jayla has food poisoning and I don’t want to let her go.”
“If it would make you feel better, I can hit Gedeon in your stead.” Kali reached for the glass of water dangerously positioned at the edge of the desk. Probably on purpose, based on how she smirked at Gedeon each time she caught him side-eyeing it. “The swelling in his jaw is from my own bout of healthy smacking, so this could be a perfect opportunity to maximize his pain.”
“I taught her a few moves.” I leaned sideways, bumping my shoulder against Gedeon’s. “You’re welcome.”
He grunted in response, but his pinkie hooked over my own.
It’d been surprisingly difficult to leave him to marinate in our bedroom alone while Kali and I had tended to the most pressing matters of our compound. Thankfully, for me, it’d entailed teaching three close combat classes back-to-back today.
It also meant not much thinking had been involved in my day, which I couldn’t say about Kali. Her day had consisted of re-planning the distribution of our meager food reserves. At least with spring about to reach its middle, we could harvest certain vegetables and plant new crops for reaping in summer and autumn.
Reaping. Such a peculiar word. Delicious, in a sense—if we considered Gedeon to be a kind of crop. Perhaps corn. An eggplant. A cucumber.
I could harvest him every single morning for breakfast and still not have enough.
“Well, knowing we don’t have your trust is fantastic.” Ezra fiddled with his crimson cup, and the steaming liquid almost sloshed over the rim. “Just what I needed to top off my dinner tonight.”
Gedeon’s second finger crept over my own as he explained, “It’s not that I do not trust you. It’s that Ican’ttrust you.”
Ezra paused with his tea midway to his mouth. “As if that’s better.”
Before inviting everyone to the meeting, Gedeon, Kali, and I had reached an agreement. We would use Gedeon’s return as a way to flush out the rat—the traitor lurking in our ranks. In this room, we had gathered seven people—five, if we eliminated Eli and Ava, due to them having grown up in the compound—and one of them had to be at fault.
Someone was surely going to leak the information about Gedeon’s reappearance to the city. We could catch them in the act.
“Why?” Eli twisted in the chair to face Gedeon, but his hand remained on Eislyn’s thigh. “Why can’t you trust us?” The warm table light cast shadows on the raised scar running from his lip corner to underneath his jaw, the forked end hidden by his blond stubble.
“I cannot tell you,” Gedeon stated. Inch by inch, his palm glided over the back of my hand until he enveloped it.
Maybe he was not a vegetable, but aberry. A strawberry. His fingers, like stolons slithering toward me, the slender stems seeking to twine around my wrist.
I liked strawberries. Lush and juicy, sweet but with a note of our sourness, the acidity as sharp as broken glass.
Irrefutably perfect. Like Gedeon.
The conclusion settled in my gut with rightness.
Shifting in her seat, her knee bumping Eli’s, Eislyn beamed at Gedeon. “It’s nice to finally see this.” She gestured to his palmresting on my own. “We’ve been guessing how long it would take for you to break and give in.”
He smiled, and my limbs went limp at the tenderness in his expression. Yeah, he was definitely a strawberry. His thick lips had a perfect cupid’s bow, the dip carved out to fit both the strawberry leaves and for my tongue to trace the slope.
So, of course, I had to ask, “Who won?” I would reward the winner myself. They’d get a pass to skip my next close combat lesson. Or better, their entire class would get one. I’d rather spend my time licking my strawberry up and down and all around.
“I did,” Ryder piped up. Sitting on the couch, he tousled his tight brown curls. The cloud of locks bounced around his shoulders. “I voted on Zion making the first move.”
Gedeon fixed me with a dirty look. Nobody had been aware of our situation until now. Well, as far as he knew.
My thumb hooked around his. “Ava might have seen a thing or two in the shooting range.” After accidentally catching me going down on Gedeon, she’d drilled me for details I was more than happy to provide.
Gedeon stared her down. “You saw?”
Ava glowered right back at him. “I lingered nearby in case you’d need…help. You were so angry, Gedeon. And rage can persuade anyone into making the wrong decisions.”
“And he did make one.” I raised our interlaced hands, my grin so wide it ached. “I’m the worst decision he couldtake.”
Groans enshrouded the study. Their cacophony blended with the storm-bringing wind, caressing my ears and ruffling my hair.
“Can you close the damned window?” Nestled in the armchair, Ava pulled Jayla’s legs to lay over the armrest. “She’s trembling.”
