Page 235 of The Grand Duel
“Is she okay?” she asks, peering up at Ave who’s still resting on my shoulder.
“She’s tired. Do you want to take her for a nap with me?”
Her eyes meet mine, a knowing in them. She swallows. “Sure.”
“Ellis was a bugger for going to sleep for me when he was Ave’s age. But this one is an angel, aren’t you, Ave?”
She looks up at me with her big green eyes.
“She looks so much like Scarlet.”
“She does,” I say without looking at Lissie.
We walk to Ave’s bedroom and place her down in the nook that Scarlet and Nina built for her—although Ellis seems to use it more.
I climb in next to Ave and then turn to Lissie and hold out my hand, my smile challenging.
“This is a bit cool.”
“The coolest,” he tells me, helping me up. “Sometimes I’m tempted to come and hide away in here without the excuse of a child needing a nap.”
Ave snuggles down into the mattress, her eyes wide open and on me.
“As long as you’re not hiding away from me, I can get on board with it,” she whispers, lying on her side and looking over at me.
“Go to sleep, Ave,” I tell her gently, smoothing my hand up her back. I flick my eyes up. “Well, if I do, at least you know where to find me.”
Lissie smiles.
Ave twists her head, looking over at her. She pushes up onto her arms and drags her bunny across the bed, cozying into Lissie’s chest and closing her eyes.
Lissie looks down at her and then up at me, and I can tell she doesn’t know what to make of the little girl, but then I give her a soft nod, letting her know that it’s not as scary as it seems, andshe lifts her hand from her side, placing it gently at the top of Ave’s back.
She bites her lip and peers up at me, as if telling me not to dare breathe in case I disturb the tiny human snuggling into her.
It’s probably too much. Probably not the right thing to do after she only just told me about her mum and dad and the reasons Jovie won’t come home. But out on the lake when my friends were moving at a million miles an hour, and I worried she would find it all too much, she embraced it. I watched her light up from the inside out.
And it’s that, her light, her shining eyes now, and her toes I’ve noticed she wiggles together whenever she’s on the brink of tears, that makes me want to let her experience this with Ave.
“She’s adorable. Are you sure Scarlet won’t find this a bit much?”
“I’ll speak to her.”
She peers down at Ave. I’m pretty sure she’s already asleep. “You’re so lucky, Charlie.”
“I’m very, very lucky.”
She reads my look perfectly, and her lips twist.
“I mean with your friends and family. I know I haven’t met your parents, but from what I do know, they’re incredible. Your friends and these children…” She sighs. “You make me feel like I’ve done life all wrong.”
I frown. “Don’t say that. You’re twenty-four, Lis.”
“True. And correction, I feel like I’ve done life wrong right up until the night I met you.”
My heart thuds. “You know, you rattled me that night. Years of thinking the club was my only way, and yet you knocked me sideways in an instant.”
“I’m sure you say that to all of the girls.”