Page 34 of The Devil Takes
“I missed you too, you big jerk,” he huffed with a wry grin, shaking his head. “It’s not like I was ignoring you.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t being…you, you know?” It had been lonely. My heart throbbed.
“Ah.” Tommy’s grin faltered, and he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before dropping his hand and leaning over to give my thigh a gentle squeeze. “Trust you to give me those fuck me eyes and not even know it. But yes. You’re right. I was putting some distance between us.”
I grimaced. Fuck me eyes? Yeah, fucking right.
Tommy was the second person to say that, though Haden hadn’t been quite so crass.
Whiiiich just reminded me of Haden again.
“Any luck tracking down your mystery alpha?” Tommy asked curiously. He’d gone from murderous to murderously curious. Which was a vast improvement.
I sighed and shrugged. “Haven’t been looking.”
“Then why do you look all fucked up today?”
I looked fucked up? I peeked over at the mirror on the closet door that Tommy had installed and grimaced when I realized he was right. Dark circles. My tawny brown hair sticking up in sweaty spikes. Chapped lips. Pale. Ugh. I really did look fucked up. “Dad came to visit.”
“No shit?”
I hadn’t told him when Dad was coming. After the whole blow up thing and the “alphas are shit” conversation, I hadn’t been ready to hear another rant about how shitty my dad was. I already knew that. Hearing about it didn’t change reality, just made me feel powerless and a little pathetic.
I loved Dad.
I couldn’t stop, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Even though I knew it was bad for me. Even though I knew that there should be a limit to love, that it shouldn’t be bottomless. When someone makes you feel like a fraction of yourself, the love should stop. But it didn’t. It never had. I loved him anyway. Even when he hurt me, sometimes especially then. I could see how twisted he’d gotten inside, and I’d always hoped that one day he’d get himself untangled.
Even now, the fact that I was disappointing him—hurting him—only made me feel worse than his anger.
Because I knew deep down, beneath all that bite, he was just a scared old man who’d lost too much too soon and something had broken inside him that could never be fixed. No matter how much I loved him. No matter how much I forgave him.
Tommy got the tequila out again.
Somehow, he got me talking too. My words were stilted. Awkward. But the longer I talked, the easier it became until suddenly, talking didn’t make me feel like I was choking up shards of glass anymore. He stroked my back in that friendly way he always did, booted up a movie on his laptop, and when the lights flickered off and the screen flashed to the main menu, he gently nudged me with the Mountain Dew bottle I’d given him.
“I don’t even like this stuff,” he said quietly, poking me in the ribs. “But I know you do.” My cheeks burned and my eyes began to sting. I took the bottle, fumbling with it as I cradled it protectively to my chest. “The fact you gave it to me means a lot, so thank you,” Tommy added sincerely.
“You’re welcome.” The words came out choked, and I curled around my knees, making myself as small as I could as I stared at the laptop screen and thanked the gods I hadn’t lost the only friend I’d ever had.
When I woke, the boy was back. Percy. It had been a few days between his last visit and now. Not that I was keeping track, because I most assuredly was not (seven days and three hours since his last visit.) But he was back. I still wasn’t sure how he was here at all. It seemed I’d have no choice but to find a new source for the research I was conducting to discover the truth of his peculiar housecalls. So far, he didn’t seem to comprehend that this place was real, that while he was here, he affected things just as he did when he was in the land of the living.
I should send him away.
Banish him.
Cut his soul tether from mine and be done with it all.
But…
As he lay sleeping inside my bed—this was a first; normally, he was awake when he visited—I had no choice but to admire him.
Percy’s hair was tragic. It was matted to his head, his skin sallow, the dark circles under his eyes blossoming with bruises. His soft pink lips were raw and gently parted, full cheeks cleanly shaven despite the hour. His hands were tucked underneath his face, his naked body curled up tight, like he was trying to take up as little space as possible despite the width of his broad shoulders.
As I’d noticed the last few times I’d seen him, the freckles that were scattered across his cheeks stopped there. Instead, there were moles that danced across his porcelain skin—his arms, his shoulders, his collarbone. I traveled between them, tracing the valleys and dips of his surprisingly muscular body with my eyes, a curiosity I hadn’t felt in eons thrumming under my skin.
The smattering of hair on his chest was sparse. His sweet nipples full and flushed where they sat atop the shapely swell of his pectorals. I wanted to sink my teeth into the meat to feel the give of it. The desire to touch was so visceral it nearly took my breath away.
I spared a single glance for his thick hips, his long muscular legs. Forcing myself not to ogle just because I had never had another man in my bed. Anyone in my bed, actually.