Page 118
“You need to eat,” I said, my voice husky when we finally broke apart. Licking his lips, he nodded and slid into a seat at the island.
I set the plate in front of him, the sandwich a little lopsided but stuffed with meat and lettuce and tomatoes. In silence, he picked up one half and took a bite.
“I didn’t tell Holt anything except that I’ve spoken to you,” I said, starting to clear up the mess while he ate. “But… we should probably tell him what your mom has threatened to do. So he can be on alert. He might have people he knows who can stop her if she does try anything, or at least mitigate the damage.”
He cringed, keeping his head bent as he nodded. “Yes.”
“It’s not your fault, Crossbody. All you did was try to make a life for yourself. No one can control which family they’re born into or who their parents are.” After a hesitation, I found myself saying, “My parents suck too. My dad took off when I was really young, and my mom… I mean, she didn’t really want me, I guess. She wasn’t interested. My uncle raised me.”
Crossbody had stopped eating, the sandwich clutched in his long fingers as he looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. I gave him a tiny smile.
“It’s okay. My Uncle Robbie is a better parent anyway. I would’ve turned out a lot worse if I’d stayed with my mom.”
“There’s nothing bad about the way you turned out, Vince. You’re…” He licked his lips and looked back down at his sandwich. “Wonderful.”
Heat crept into my cheeks, making me clear my throat self-consciously. “Anyway, uh… yeah. I just… This isn’t about me.”
“I want to know, though,” he said quietly. “I want to know everything about you.”
“I’ll tell you later.” I smiled at him. “When this is all over.”
The reminder had him loosing an unsteady breath and setting his half-eaten sandwich down. Quickly locating the glasses, I filled one with water and passed it to him.
“Vince, I just…” He shook his head weakly. “I don’t see how there’s any other way.”
“There is,” I told him. “You’re not going back there. And you’re definitely not fucking marrying Iana.”
Over my dead body.
“Ianthe.” He corrected me automatically, then took a shaky sip of water. “How?”
“I know some people who might be able to help.”
He stared at me. “Who?”
“I’ll tell you after you’ve finished your sandwich.” I nodded sternly at it. Trying to inject some levity, I added, “I’m not having that beautiful ass waste away because you aren’t eating enough.”
A tiny smile tilted his mouth, and he dutifully picked up his sandwich and had another bite.
“This is good,” he mumbled around his mouthful. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know what half the meats I put in it are, but I just added a bit of everything.”
He snorted weakly, smiling at me again. “You have a knack for making gourmet sandwiches.”
“Well, I was a fry cook at a burger place for a while when I was a teenager.” I shrugged, wiping the crumbs I’d left off the counter to dump them in the sink. “Wasn’t gourmet burgers, but still.”
“What was it like?” he asked curiously, reminding me that his childhood had been very, very different to mine.
“Working at a burger joint?” I chuckled. “It was fine. Except I left every shift stinking of grease.”
“When I started sneaking over to this world without my mother knowing, I… I would see places like that—fast food restaurants and bars with their neon signs and bright lights and so many people…” He picked a tomato slice out of his sandwich and delicately nibbled on it. “It was all so foreign to me. Intimidating.”
“Yeah. I bet it was,” I said, watching him.
“It felt forbidden. I knew my mother wouldn’t approve, but I just wanted to see what it was like here. We heard stories about this world from the fae who visited, but we—my brothers and I—weren’t allowed to come here. My mother didn’t want us to be… tainted by a world she deemed too modern and filthy and hedonistic.” He snorted. “Even though the fae are hedonistic in their own ways.”
